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SEO News for February 2008 from searchenginejournal.com

Delver Introduces Socially Connected Search Engine
The quest for the next big thing in search is never-ending. Existing search engines are constantly revising and updating, and new search engines are popping up every day. Today I’d like to introduce you to a new socially connected search engine by the name of Delver, which was discussed at Demo 08. Delver will [...]

The New Yahoo : Smartly Optimized for a Microsoft Takeover
Microsoft plans to buy Yahoo for $45 Billion, but not the old unfocused Semel version of Yahoo. Nope, Microsoft is buying the Yang version of Yahoo : efficient, focused, trimmed down and profitable version of Yahoo … for CHEAP! On the eve of Microsoft announcing their plans to acquire Yahoo for $45 Billion (based upon Yahoo’s [...]

Auction Bids Reach Google’s “Open Access� Threshold
It’s good news for Google and others who backed open access policies for the winner of the largest block of wireless spectrum in the Federal Communications Commission’s auction which is currently on-going. Bidding has reached beyond the magic number of $4.6 billion for the most desirable portion of the spectrum, the so-called “C-Block”, which [...]

Microsoft Proposes to Buy Yahoo for $44.6 Billion, Should Google Be Afraid?
So finally, the long standing rumor becomes a reality. And although this has been a long-awaited proposal, no one seemed to have predicted it to happen this soon. Microsoft finally proposes to buy Yahoo for a whooping sum of  $44.6 billion.  This puts the value of  outstanding  shares of Yahoo common stock at $31 per [...]

SEO Industry Survey Conducted by SEOMoz.org
In case that you are not a frequent SEOMoz.org Blog reader (something I suggest to remedy :)); they are currently conducting a very detailed SEO industry survey.  See the SEO Industry Survey Homepage The survey asks a wide range of questions about yourself, your employments, type of business, use of tools and services as well as what [...]

Megavideo : The YouTube Killer?
Megavideo is the self proclaimed Youtube Killer. They want you to stop using Youtube and to ONLY use Megavideo because they claim they love you more. Megavideo is on a mission to become the words leading video sharing site and has its goals set very high. Megavideo does have the traffic and the gimmicks but [...]

Google’s Final Score not Impressive Enough?
Google’s much awaited fourth quarter and fiscal year 2007 financial results are finally out. And to quote Google CEO Eric Schmidt: “We are pleased with our performance this quarter, it reflects strong momentum in our core business, growing receptivity to our new business initiatives, and improved discipline in managing our operating expenses.” Some of the highlights of [...]

Yahoo Opens to OpenID Beta Testing
Yahoo announced earlier in the month that they were joining the OpenID movement, where users can log into various membership driven Internet properties using one central identification, profile and password. Yahoo’s OpenID Provider service lets all 250+ million global Yahoo Network members sign into any site which offers OpenID 2.0, simply by using their Yahoo ID. Yahoo [...]

What Will Microsoft Yahoo Merger Mean for SEO?
This morning, Microsoft announced their open plans to acquire Yahoo, offering $45 Billion for the Internet communications, publishing and search company. Yahoo responded, saying that their Board of Directors (minus Terry Semel) would review the proposal from Microsoft. The acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft is something the tech community has been anticipating for months now, and [...]

Yahoo Rumored To Announce Acquisition of Video Start-up Maven Networks
According to TechCrunch, they’ve been tipped off that Yahoo! will be making an announcement sometime in the next day or so that they’ve acquired a video start-up company for somewhere around the $100 million range. Companies such as MetaCafe and Brightcove were initially speculated to be the targets, however, as it turns out, [...]

Zimbra Business Messaging System Could Be First Casualty of Possible Microsoft-Yahoo Merger
While a Microsoft takeover of Yahoo would most obviously impact consumers the most, it would also affect businesses.  One of the first casualties of such a merger would likely be Yahoo’s Zimbra open-source messaging server, which they acquired in September 2007 for about $350 million. Zimbra is considered to be an open-source alternative to the Microsoft [...]

Privacy Groups Ready to Oppose Microsoft Takeover of Yahoo
Google isn’t the only one concerned about a Microsoft takeover of Yahoo! Inc.  After Microsoft announced on Thursday that they had sent a $44.6 billion offer to Yahoo’s board of director, privacy groups are already vowing to fight any such move.  This is before the deal even comes under the intense scrutiny of U.S. and [...]

Superbowl Commercials Online from Yahoo, AOL &YouTube
Last night’s Superbowl XLII probably marked one of the more recent occasions where the game itself was much more gratifying, dramatic and exciting that its commercials. And for those of us who found ourselves in the line to the bathroom or stocking up on chips and dip during the commercial breaks during the big game; [...]

Google Yahoo Alliance May Thwart Microsoft Takeover Attempt
Over the weekend Google became more involved in undermining a hostile buyout of Yahoo, Google’s largest search competitor, by Microsoft, Google’s largest tech competitor, by responding to Microsoft’s $45 Billion offer to buy Yahoo. Google’s Chief Counsel David Drummond responded on the Google Blog that Yahoo is not just another company, but a cornerstone of the [...]

Google is Bothered by a Microhoo?
Google has finally published an official reaction to Microsoft’s proposal to acquire Yahoo for $44.6 billion. In general, the statement speaks of worries not for Google itself as an internet company, but on the issue of preserving the openness and innovation principles of the Internet. But of course, one doesn’t have to read between the [...]

Barack Obama vs. Hillary Clinton : Super Tuesday &Search
Super Tuesday, today, is the day which may be the defining point for who becomes the next President of the United States of America (that is, the Democratic nominee). Instead of a handful of candidates bidding for the position, only two remain : Hillary Clinton & Barack Obama. About a year ago I looked at the [...]

Flickr Users Protest Microsoft Buyout of Flickr &Yahoo
Flickr users are openly protesting the idea of Microsoft aquiring Flickr’s parent company, Yahoo. A Group has opened up called MICROSOFT: KEEP YOUR EVlL GRUBBY HANDS OFF OF OUR FLICKR where users can upload protest photos. [Beware, some of the photos may be offensive in nature. Thanks Michael at TechCrunch] No big surprise here as Flickr users [...]

Google Builds Up Corporate Email Security Product
While Microsoft is busy courting Yahoo to accept its buyout proposal, Google is silently building up its corporate email security product. Through the email security technology of its recently acquired Postini, Google seemed to be enhancing its business application infrastructure, a market that Microsoft has dominated with its office suite products.  Through Postini, Google is launching [...]

MobilePeople Partners with Sesam, Norway’s Top Mobile Search Engine
mobilePeople, a local mobile search and advertising solution which provides sponsored links and banner ads to mobile publishers, has partnered with Norway’s top mobile search engine Sesam. The partnership willl bring Sesam users a wider choice of search options says the company. in 2007 mobilePeople announced the introduction of banners and sponsored links into Sesam’s [...]

China’s Search Engine Baidu Under Fire for Music Piracy
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry representing major music companies, Universal, Sony BMG (Hong Kong) and Warner Music Hong Kong, has filed a court proceedings against Chinese search engine Baidu for perpetrating music piracy. The music companies are complaining about Baidu’s ongoing practice of delivering music to their users via “deep links” to hundreds of [...]

AOL Buys Goowy Media Desktop &Widget Company
Buried in the Yahoo - Microsoft - Google fight over who’s going to control Yahoo, its search engine and Yahoo Mail & Messenger tools which are a starting place for hundreds of millions of Internet users is the news that AOL has purchased Goowy Media : a startup which specialized in simplified widget creation [...]

Google Groove Coming to SMX West
Sure, we’re all down with the Google Dance at SES San Jose, but a more intimate and perhaps even more funky version of the Google Dance is on the horizon at SMX West : the Google Groove! Adding to the list of networking events (um, parties) at SMX West, Google Groove will compliment the Search Bowl [...]

How Did Super Bowl Advertisers Score on Search &Social Media?
In case you somehow escaped the news, the New York Giants took home the Lombardi trophy last night as the Super Bowl XLII champs. Next to the game itself, the television ads that run during the game are the next most talked about thing. Reprise Media released the results today of their 4th annual [...]

Microsoft Adcenter Labs Introduces Digital Advertising Technologies
The Microsoft adCenter Labs is developing several new technologies that will enhance its digital advertising program. The new technologies feature latest advances and algorithms in content analysis and computer vision for handling video and images, speech recognition for contextual video ads and advanced marketing intelligence. Tarek Najm, technical fellow at Microsoft said that the researches they [...]

Track Super Tuesday Election Results on Yahoo News &Google Maps
If you’re like me, you’re pinned in front of the television right now watching the news channel of your choice as results from the Super Tuesday primaries come in. I’m currently watching CNN, a Google Earth partner, and monitoring the 8 pm results as different states are now reporting. If you’d like to track the results [...]

Thank You Search Engine Journal Sponsors!
We’d like to take a brief moment to thank our sponsors, who make it possible for SEJ to continue serving our readers, pay hosting costs and bring the daily search engine news for four years and counting. I don’t make these posts very often, but it has been a good month so far and [...]

Yahoo Releases Zimbra 5.0 Featuring BlackBerry Support
Yahoo’s open-source alternative to Microsoft Exchange Server - Zimbra - has just released version 5.0 of their collaboration suite.  If you recall, Zimbra was acquired by Yahoo in September 2007.  This latest release includes some much-needed upgrades, including support for RIM’s BlackBerry devices, and improvements to their browser-based email client. With Zimbra 5.0, users will now [...]

MySpace Developer Platform Opens for Third Party Developers
On Monday MySpace announced the launch of their developer platform, and beginning today developers can begin building applications for use with the popular social networking site. What is interesting about this so-called launch is that it is launching without any actual applications for users to mess around with. Instead, the idea is that [...]

Yahoo Small Business Web Hosting Limit Becomes Unlimited
Who says Yahoo is on the brink of collapse and badly needs a saviour? Well, I don’t think financial woes is hitting Yahoo right now, as it can still afford to give out unlimited disk space, bandwidth and email storage space to its hosting clients. Yahoo’s Small Business hosting service just announced that it is giving [...]

Create Forms in Google Docs Spreadsheet
Google Docs spreadsheet is introducing a new feature in its otherwise useful functionalities. Google spreadsheet now lets users create web-based forms. This is useful for soliciting sign ups, surveys, or any other things where you would need other people’s opinions and inputs. The good thing about this spreadsheet forms is that it doesn’t matter whether users [...]

Google News Offers Local News : Enter Zip Code &Town Name
Google News is expanding its news sections beyond election coverage and recommended reading with a Local News area which serves targeted news stories based upon the geolocation of Google users. Once a user is logged into their Google Account, they can enter their zip code in Google News to be served local coverage customized for [...]

Google close to launching music service in China
Two years after entering the Chinese search market, Google is readying to take another crack at the country’s top search engine - Baidu.com.  Baidu has remained China’s most dominant search engine thanks in a large part to offering free, unlicensed music downloads. It’s a controversial and risky tactic that might land Baidu in hot water one [...]

Searchles : The Multimedia Community Search Engine
Searchles ( pronounced “Circles”) is a complete Social Search engine founded by John Hopkins University graduate Chris Seline. The site is focussed on creation of a social network + search site where the user has control on how much the community can affect the search results. The engine focuses on letting users leverage other people’s point [...]

Yahoo Answers Links Not Working
Links inserted into Yahoo Answers discussions by its users have not been working recently, according to some webmaster forums and a post at the Yahoo Answers blog. As you may have already discovered, the url links posted on Answers are currently not clickable. We are working to fix the problem and we don’t yet have [...]

Yahoo! Live is Alive but not Kicking
This  what happens when you pre-announced an apparently cool and hip product and everybody anticipates its release. No matter how you want the live release to be as stealth as possible, you wouldn’t be successful like what happened to Yahoo’s live video broadcasting portal, Y! Live. Just a few minutes after it went live, the server [...]

Ask.com Launches “BigNews� Social Media News Site
Ask.com has just unveiled the latest addition to their line-up of features - BigNews.  As you can probably figure out from the name, it’s a news-related product like Google News or Yahoo News.  Except, Ask.com has put their own social media spin on it, and integrates something they call “BigFactor” to give you more telling [...]

Yahoo Microsoft Decision Happening Today?
Michael Arrington of Techcrunch is reporting that the Yahoo Board of Directors is meeting today to decide the outcome of Microsoft’s offer to purchase Yahoo for a $31 price per share at a total of $45 Billion. According to the Financial Times, Japan based Softbank, the parent company of the very successful Yahoo Japan was reported [...]

Google Acquiring Bebo &Plaxo Despite Social Media Revenue Challenges?
On top of the buzz of Microsoft trying to buy Yahoo over the past week, Google has been making some acquisition waves of their own : despite these moves currently being rumors. Google has been whispered to be going after two very different social networking companies : Bebo and Plaxo. Bebo & Google : Bebo is a [...]

Yahoo Rejects Microsoft’s Bid
Although the official announcement is yet to be made on Monday, reliable sources as reported by the Wall Street Journal said that the Yahoo board has already voted to reject Microsoft’$31 per share buyout bid for Yahoo. According to the WSJ report, the Yahoo Board believes that the $31 per share bid undervalues Yahoo as one [...]

24 Metasearch Engines for Centralized &Efficient Searching
Metasearch engines have risen up the web through the years and continue to grow in numbers, even in the current Google dominated search world. Companies who create their own versions of metasearch engines must have given up on trying to compete with Google and the other top search engines, and instead take advantage of the [...]

Yahoo Letter Explains Why They Told Microsoft “No No No�
Last night Yahoo published the contents of a letter penned by CEO Jerry Yang to stockholders explaining Yahoo’s reasons for denying Microsoft of its $45 Billion takeover bid (and why it may be more conditioned for an alliance or partnership). In the letter, Yahoo looks like its more or less banking on the increase in [...]

Newscorp Joins the Yahoo-Microsoft Takeover Drama
As the Yahoo-Microsoft-AOL-Google-who-gets-who corporate drama continues, we see yet again another company joining the cast. This time, it’s media conglomerate Newscorp which is being tapped by Yahoo for a possible alliance, and hopefully to finally fend off Microsoft’s takeover threats. The rumored negotiation was first reported by TechCrunch and was successively cited by both WSJ and [...]

Get Your Doodle on Google for a Day
You know how Google puts up a special, stylized logo on their homepage for various holidays and occasions? Well today Google announced a new competition, “Doodle 4 Google”, which will give aspiring young artists the opportunity to get their own Google Doodle on the homepage and in front of billions of eyeballs. U.S. students in [...]

Microsoft Live Search Announces Improvements to Crawling
This week, Microsoft announced updates and improvements to the Live Search crawler, which they say will “improve the efficiency” with which they crawl and index websites. Amongst the improvements to MSNbot are HTTP compression and something called “conditional get.” With HTTP compression, MSNbot now supports gzip and deflate as defined by RFC 2616 (Sections 14.11 [...]

Bradley Horowitz Leaves Yahoo for Google
On the verge of a takeover and after laying off 1,000 employees yesterday, Yahoo does not seem to be a stable place to work anymore and the end result of many employees who have been job searching and looking for something more stable over the past month or so is beginning to come to fruition. Bradley [...]

SEO Red Flags &SEO Misinformation : Let’s Put An End to It
A couple of days ago Eric brought up his views that overuse of the NoFollow attribute (or even use of it) may set off red flags at Google and other search companies that a site is savvy enough to practice advanced SEO and to look deeper into further site practices. Matt Cutts debunked Eric’s theory [...]

Tamar Weinberg Joins Mashable as Community Director
Some people seem to stretch their work day into 36 hours and make the most of it. One of those people out there who continues to impress me is Tamar Weinberg who, on top of working for Rusty Brick and Search Engine Roundtable, also is a blogger at Lifehacker, a super blogger at Techipedia, has [...]

Yahoo Wants to Expand Video Advertising Program, Buys Maven Networks
Aside from strengthening its mobile services, Yahoo wants to beef up its video advertising platform as well. Yahoo has just acquired leading online video platform provider, Maven Network for an approximately $160 million.  Maven Networks’ video platform, which is among the robust in the industry, is currently used to manage, distribute and monetize premium online video [...]

Yahoo Layoffs Happening Now : Employees Notified Today
Just got a quick message from one of my favorite Yahoo’s, well make that an ex-Yahoo, that Yahoo is handing out pink slips today and that friend found out they are on the list. I’ve had a lot of non-search friends ask me how the search industry is reacting to the recession, and even though search [...]

Protect Your Brand from URL Typo Squatters
I went to jump onto Techmeme.com this morning to get my fill of the Microsoft reshuffling news and instead of clicking over from my reader or bookmarks, just typed the URL into my browser. I made the mistake of typing in Techeme.com however and found a typo squatting page set up with Google AdWords domain [...]

Mobile Search Advertising to hit $3.8 Billion by 2012, $1.4 Billion in US
In a week full of mobile search news from Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and again Yahoo, eMarketer has produced a report on the rise of mobile search and mobile search advertising revenue - as mobile search advertising is following a similar trend to normal search marketing revenue predictions. The number and variety of searches on mobile phones [...]

Guide to Video Marketing on YouTube
Youtube is the largest video sharing site to date, with the most traffic and the highest amount of users on it making Youtube the definitive place for getting your videos published and marketed on. I have put together a guide on Youtube marketing for videos and I think you all will get a lot out [...]

Google Search Results Page Will Display Video Ads Soon
Google introduced video ads in YouTube a couple of months ago. Its implementation in the YouTube community has been pretty quite since it was launched. Google might have been successful with its video ads program in YouTube that it decided to extend it to its bread and butter program, search results pages. Or another way [...]

Death of SEO Transparency
Scratching deeper into my little foxhole of the search engine marketing pie, I’ve noticed a trend among true experts - if you want to be over-the-top successful, keep your mouth shut! This trend is not without exception, so for what is sure to be statistically insignificant, please take a moment to participate in the SEO [...]

Public Library of Law Search Engine Launches
On Wednesday, the world’s largest legal vertical search engine - Public Library of Law - launched in partnership with legal research provider Fastcase Inc.  According to Fastcase CEO Ed Walters, “It makes first-time legal research as easy as using Google.” Working in a library, this intrigues me.  I’m always looking for new sources, and faster ways [...]

Yahoo Video Gets a Makeover &New Site
Today the Yahoo Video Blog announced not just an update to Yahoo Video, but a complete overhaul and all-new site.  Some of the new features include a 16:9 widescreen video player, increased file sizes, lots more content, embeddable videos and playlists, and a whole lot more!  Most noticeable is the focus on social networking type [...]

Jessica Bowman Yahoo’s Senior SEO Manager Laid Off, On the Market
Among the 1,000 layoffs at Yahoo was that of Jessica Bowman, who had the dual role of Senior SEO Manager and SEO Evangelist at Yahoo, and received her pinkslip this week. As you know by now, life at Yahoo! wasn’t pleasant this week and I’m happy to report that that their in-house SEO program is now [...]

Make the Most of SEO Competitive Research : Evaluating the Competiton
Why bother about your competitors? Well, a stupid question, I know. You can’t possibly think that you can enter a new niche and get on top without looking into what has been done before you. When done properly, competitor analysis will answer your most important strategic planning questions: Is it worth trying to enter this niche? [...]

Feedburner Takes Off All-Time Stats Without Notice?
Did Google make a mistake in deciding to  take out Feedburner’s all-time stats  of  individual accounts? Or was it the decision of the Feedburner, acting independently of Google.  Feedburner was acquired by  Google last year. Prior to the acquisition,  premium services of Feedburner are on a paid subscribtion basis, until Google announced that along with [...]

Fidel Castro Resigns : Search Engine Coverage of the Historical Event
Fidel Castro today announced that he will not be seeking ‘reelection’ by the Cuban Parliament to renew his position as the leader of Cuba on Sunday after nearly 50 years; which more or less marks a first step to progress in Cuba, which may transform the Revolution to more of a diplomatic one with the [...]

v7n Network For Sale : $500,000
The v7n Network, which consists of v7n Webmaster Forums, the v7n Directory and the Contextual Links link buying service is up for sale on Sitepoint Forums. Most people in the SEO world know of v7n from its infamous V7ndotcom Elursrebmem SEO contest , which was probably the largest covered SEO ‘fake term’ contest of all time, [...]

Microsoft to Continue Battle Against Google Even Without Yahoo
It’s now time for Microsoft’s chairman Bill Gates to say something about the never ending issue about the unsuccessful Microsoft take-over bid of Yahoo. Mr. Gates who said that the Yahoo offer was as fair as they could give said that Microsoft will invest more on Web search to compete against Google. This, Microsoft will [...]

Google Local Search Flaw : State Abbreviations &Misleading Results
When searching within Google for localized terms by state, such as “loren baker maryland” or “ben franklin pennsylvania”, Google will automatically return search results with the abbreviation for the state name. Sometimes however, these abbreviations can be misleading and have different meanings. For example, if I search for someone located in the state of Maryland [...]

Contractor Sues Google, Claims They Stole “Google Sky� Idea
Last week in Atlanta, Georgia, contract worker Jonathan Cobb filed a lawsuit, claiming that Google stole his idea for Google Sky.  He is seeking $25 million in damages.  While high-profile, multi-billion dollar companies tend to attract frivolous lawsuits, what’s interesting about this case is the fact that Cobb actually worked at Google as a contractor [...]

Well-Off Use Google, the Poor Use Yahoo
Hitwise recently released some new data, which suggests that those in different income brackets have a tendency to use one search engine over another.   What the data reveals is that those who are financially well-off are more likely to use Google, while the poor and working class have an affinity for Yahoo.  The results also [...]

Yahoo Blocking Bots from Spidering Delicious Bookmarks
Over the weekend, Yahoo’s Delicious (del.icio.us) social bookmarking property has been blocking spiders and bots from non-Yahoo search engines from crawling the site and identifying new web pages, sites and bookmarks. Colin Cochrane found this out the other day, saying that ‘This isn’t a simple robots.txt exclusion, but rather a 404 response that is now being [...]

Yahoo Embraces Open Source Some More with Hadoop Inside Search Webmap
As part of its ongoing strategy towards moving to open source infrastructure and network, Yahoo announced that its webmap is now being processed using Apache Hadoop. The Yahoo webmap is a Hadoop application that produces the index from the billions of pages that Yahoo! Search crawls

Microsoft Continues Battle, Yahoo Prepares for the Worst
And so Yahoo’s battle to stay away from Microsoft’s take-over deal heats up as Microsoft prepares its proxy battle to win Yahoo. AP is reporting that Microsoft has already contacted Innisfree M&A Inc., a proxy solicitation group. According to the report, the group will help oust Yahoo’s 10-member board that incidentally is all up to re-election [...]

50 Questions to Evaluate the Quality of Your Website
I know, it has been a while since my last post, but I was crazy busy. I have something else that I plan to write about in my queue, but it is not finished yet. But I have something else ready that is also fairly useful in my humble opinion. Here is a long and pretty [...]

Google Issues Notice of Change in Ad Display URL Policy
The Inside AdWords  announced that starting April 1, AdWords will no longer allow redirects and vanity URLs in place of ad landing pages. This is in line with Google’s move toward providing more relevant advertising results and higher quality experiences to users. AdWords will require that URLs of advertisers’ ad displays should match their destination or [...]

Yahoo Won’t Accept Their Bid, So Microsoft Will Try the Proxy Fight Approach
Microsoft, it seems, is hell-bent on taking control of Yahoo, and isn’t about to let a little thing like Yahoo rejecting their unsolicited $31 per share bid get them down.  According to a report published Tuesday in The New York Times, Microsoft is about to launch a battle to take control of Yahoo’s board this [...]

WebsiteGuru Launches $5,500 Competition
WebsiteGuru.com, a new discussion forum for web professionals and those looking to make it in the online world, is celebrating their recent launch with an amazing $5,500 competition. With a top prize of $4,000, and 12 runner-up prizes, this competition is just the first of many monthly contests to come. Launched February 4th, already the [...]

Google &Microsoft Sued in Paid Search Related Patent Case
Last week an Ohio company filed a lawsuit against Microsoft and Google, alleging infringement on a patent related to paid search methods.  The lawsuit was filed by Paid Search Engine Tools of Liberty Township, Ohio.  In the lawsuit, the company claims that Microsoft adCenter and Google AdWords infringe upon patent no. 7,043,450, “Paid Search Engine [...]

Google to Roll out Adsense for Video
Finally, Google is about to roll out its Adsense for Video program. Using the inlay video advertising format it previously implemented in YouTube, Adsense for Video will give advertisers an option whether to use video or text ads in their videos. These Adsense units will be overlaid on a small portion of the video viewer, [...]

Efforts to Reduce Accidental Clicks Could Hurt Google’s Revenue
Here’s a prime case of you just can’t please everyone. Upon announcing that Google’s near-term advertising revenues might experience some negative effects from efforts to reduce accidental clicks, shares of Google dipped slightly on Tuesday. A SEC filing on Friday revealed that Google was taking steps to improve the relevency of ads on its sites by [...]

Thanks to Google, Photoshop Now Works Better on Linux Platform
Google recently confirmed that they had hired the CodeWeavers team to make improvements to Wine so that Adobe Photoshop CS/CS2 would work better on the Linux desktop.  With the help of Google, users can now run Photoshop on the Linux machine with few hassles.  Software users around the web have already begun applauding the breakthrough. Additionally, [...]

Search Engine Journal Opens Search Marketing Job Board
I’m very happy to announce that Search Engine Journal has partnered with JobThread to launch our own Search Marketing Job Board where Search Engine Journal readers can review job openings in the search marketing, SEO and online marketing industry from various US and Internationally based companies. Search Marketing industry jobs are currently red hot and positions [...]

Google Remains Steady in Top Spot of comScore Search Report
comScore’s first monthly search report for the year is already out and as expected Google still tops all core search entity. Google registered 0.1% increase in its share of searches for January (58.5%) as compared to December 2007’s (58.4%) statistics. Yahoo still stands at second spot despite getting a decrease of .7% compared to the [...]

Yahoo Moves to Protect Staff in Takeover Battle with Microsoft
Microsoft has made their intentions about taking over Yahoo very clear, and are determined to succeed. Yahoo, perhaps sensing the inevitable at this point, has gone ahead and adopted new severance plans to take effect in the event of a Microsoft take over. The plans would cover all of Yahoo’s full-employees, including top executives, for two [...]

Cleveland Clinic Collaborates with Google for Health Records Management
The world renowned Cleveland Clinic Health System announced Wednesday that are teaming up with Google to test out a new online medical record service, which would allow patients to control who can see their health information. The goal of this trial is to hopefully lead to the creation of a national system for sharing [...]

Microsoft Memos Employees about Microsoft-Yahoo Merger Plans
If there is one clear indication that Microsoft is seriously bent on taking over Yahoo that has got to be the recent memo issued by Microsoft Platforms & Services Division President Kevin Johnson to his employees. It was a long memo but among its highlights are the following:  Microsoft’s gave a compelling proposal to Yahoo and [...]

Featured Search Marketing Jobs : CNET, Link Building, eHow and Cracked
This week Search Engine Journal launched our Search Marketing Jobs Board in partnership with JobThread. The board has been a success to date, bringing several openings in search firms and in-house positions to our Search Engine Journal readers. Here are some of the job openings which really got my attention : Demand Media : Senior Search [...]

Flickr Adds NoFollow to Photo Description Links
Flickr today took away a major source of link juice for the social media marketers and search engine optimization link builders who were using its description area for link building via installing a NoFollow attribute on outbound links which Flickr members add to their photo descriptions. What does this mean? Well if you were dependent upon the [...]

Growth and Development of Google’s Local Search
On day one of SMX West in Santa Clara, I will be speaking on Local Search and Blended Results. While that panel will be focused on the generation and optimization of local search listings — I have a much broader knowledge of the local search products offered from Google. Owing Google some love, [...]

Plastic Surgery Site for Sale : Strong Abdominoplasty Domain
I have a strong domain and site which ranks on the front page of Google and other engines for the term “abdominoplasty”, which is the medical term for tummy tuck. I started this site a couple of years ago and it has just been simmering, but brings in thousands of highly targeted and educated visitors [...]

CrowdFound : Social Discovery Engine
The founders of this social-networking, social bookmarking site with people powered categorization of content hoped to provide a topic centric approach rather than a people centric approach to content on the web. At CrowdFound, users get to categorize article on the web into predefined categories and sub-categories. While the features have lot of similarity with the [...]

Hackers Release Google Vulnerability Scanner
A group of hackers known as “Cult of the Dead Cow” recently released a Google Web auditing scanner that allows users to search a specific website or domain for exploitable flaws through the search engine.  The tool, known as the Goolag Scanner, is intended for website owners to audit their own web pages. The Goolag Scanner [...]

Microsoft Introduces Engagement ROI Tool for Better Ad Campaign Analysis
Microsoft is replacing the outdated and flawed “last ad clicked� approach in measuring ad campaign performance. Through its Engagement Mapping Engagement ROI tool, Microsoft is giving its advertisers better control and monitoring of their ad campaigns performance or exposure whether display, rich media or search. Engagement mapping takes into account all various touchpoints and experiences [...]

10 Speed Bumps on the Information Superhighway
I love the Internet! But, at times it can be tough love, not because of the Internet itself, but because of human roadblocks and obstacles that are placed in the way, preventing smooth navigation of the Information Superhighway. Here are ten of my top annoyances. Feel free to add your own in comments. 1. Hotels that charge [...]

Matt Cutts Addresses Bad Linking and Google Penalties
Google’s Matt Cutts has responded to a Google Groups discussion on the Google -60 penalty, which sometimes can set a site back in Google 60 placements due to bad linking, saying that such questionable tactics like paid links in various templates can indeed negatively influence a site’s rankings, especially when those links are identified and [...]

Bloglines Has Stopped Updating Feeds - Make a Backup
Update: Bloglines seems to active again, the plumber must have been busy. Still, making a backup won’t hurt. My favorite RSS Reader Bloglines has stopped updating the feeds. It’s a weird experience to see all those blogs you have subscribed to and none has a new post. It can’t be the Oscar event I thought. From the [...]

Massive Computational Resources, Leveraging Time and Social Aspects as Factors in Search
Recently Bill Slawski from SEO By the Sea wrote on a patent application filed by Yahoo on Techniques for Searching future events. It brings forth a new dimension to consider in making search more timely and relevant to users. The patent is on making search engines acknowledge the temporal information in articles. This implies interpreting the [...]

Yahoo Wants to Redefine SERPs, Adapts “Open� Approach
Yahoo is introducing an open approach to the results being displayed by its search engine. Soon,  Yahoo search result would contain not just your traditional search engine results but a more fruitful and useful information, which  would also encourage third party participation. Yahoo aims to help web site owners no matter what their size is, an [...]

Yahoo Follows the Path of Digg and Others, Launches Yahoo! Buzz!
Yahoo finally opens up its much anticipated Digg-like content portal, Yahoo! Buzz. Yahoo! Buzz is an extension of Yahoo.com and is similar to top social bookmarking site Digg but in a more controlled environment. Yahoo! Buzz would contain major news event, intriguing videos or images, extra-ordinary blog posts, that will be selected based on [...]

Yahoo’s Yang Finally Breaks Silence on the Microsoft Takeover
It might really be difficult to be at the helm of a giant web company that is being touted for takeover by another giant company. For Yahoo’s Jerry Yang, it is inevitable not to speak about the ongoing issue facing Yahoo the past couple of weeks. Good for Yang, despite all the issues he could still [...]

Pension Funds Sue Yahoo for Stalling Microsoft Takeover
Two U.S. pension funds have now sued Yahoo over their efforts to thwart off a Microsoft takeover, and instead entertain less profitable alternatives.  The lawsuit was filed on February 21, 2008 by two Detroit retirement systems that claim Yahoo is “pursing all manner of value-destructive third-party deals” while resisting Microsoft’s $44.6 billion offer. The lawsuit also [...]

Google AdSense Updates Terms and Conditions
If you are an AdSense publisher, don’t be surprised when  the next time you login to your AdSense account, a new window will be displayed containing verbose page of text. AdSense is asking publishers to accept new terms and conditions. You don’t have to read all through the page though to get what has been [...]

Yahoo Search Marketing Minimum Bids Changing : Dependent on Keyword
Yahoo! Search Marketing is changing the minimum bid amounts on Sponsored Search keywords. Yahoo says that the changes are intended to help advertisers better align their minimum bids with the value and quality of their keywords. The change will not be an overall new minimum bid, instead Yahoo Search Marketing is making the minimum [...]

Blended Search Revolution at SMX West
Sitting in on the Blended Search track at SMX West, the first presentation of the day is on blended search with representatives David Bailey from Google, Cris Pierry of Yahoo Search and Raju Malhotra of MSN Live Search. Vanessa Fox is hoting the panel on universal search and introduces the session with an example of [...]

Google to Invest in Undersea Cable
Google, along with five other telcom companies, is investing $300 million into the construction of an 10,000 km undersea cable to carry data to and from Asia. The high-speed fiber optic cable, known as Unity, will run between the US and Japan, and will have a capacity of up to 7.68 Tbps. Unity is expected to [...]

Selecting Your SEO Competition : Thinking Young
Last week I wrote my first post here on SEO competitive research and promised to follow up on exploring your competitor’s most effective techniques. But before that let me first share my thoughts on defining who actually to compete with. Finding your direct competitors is one thing but deciding whose strategies to research and learn [...]

Yahoo: Microsoft Bid Has Been a Distraction
On Wednesday in the company’s annual report, Yahoo admitted that its executives have been distracted by Microsoft’s unsolicited acquisition bid, and indicated the possibility that advertisers might cut and run in light of the uncertainty. The unwelcome bid, which was ultimately rejected, might not just cause advertisers to leave, but perhaps even employees. Microsoft’s $44.6 [...]

Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Unite on Cross-Submission of Sitemaps
In trying to help webmaster’s life easier, at least the three top search engines could agree on something. As announced in their respective webmasters’ blogs, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are unison in adhering to the cross-submission of sitemaps to the three search engines. With the simultaneous announcement of the three search engines, webmasters who are managing [...]

Why Mahalo will Fail and the Problems with General Search
Jason Calacanis talked at Gnomdex 7 in September 2007 about the days on the internet when only a handful new site appeared on the web every day and could be announced via an email newsletter and checked out by everybody every day. The sites were generally good and rich on content. Junk was the exception, so [...]

Google Resurrects Jotspot, Renames it Google Sites
Remember that Wiki Collaboration Software Jotspot which Google acquired in 2006? Finally Google has resurrected and renamed the collaboration tool into Google sites, Google’s own take on the team website building business.  Google Sites, which will be part of Google Apps, uses Jotspot’s technology for creating team websites. It allows users comprising a team to centralize [...]

Analyzing Your Competitor’s Backlinking Strategies
This is my third post on competitive research here at SEJ; so if you missed the first two, check them out: Evaluating your overall competition; Determining who to compete with. Today I will be sharing a quick practical guide to exploring your competitor’s link building techniques. This research should be both helpful for your overall competitive research and [...]

Google Now Powering Opera Mini Mobile Search
Users of Opera Mini as the default browser of their mobile phones will be surprised to find out by March 1 that the mobile phone browser’s default search engine is now Google instead of Yahoo search. Google and Opera have extended their seven years of partnership in Opera’s Desktop browser into the mobile web, giving [...]

Yahoo Faces Second Lawsuit from Chinese Dissidents
Yahoo Inc. has been sued by a group of Chinese political activists who claim that the company aided the Chinese government in tracking the online activities of political dissidents.  This marks the second such lawsuit against Yahoo in recent years. Yahoo was sued last year by two Chinese journalists who claimed that Yahoo provided the Chinese [...]

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