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SEO News for November 2006 from searchenginejournal.com

“Elite Retreat� with the “SEO Whack Pack�
Elite Retreat is the name of a mini SEO conference for a small number of handpicked people that register for the opportunity to meet Jeremy Shoemaker aka Shoemoney and his sister Andrea (co-host of Shoemie’s WebmasterRadio.fm Show “Net Income�), Aaron Wall from SEOBook.com, Lee Dodd from ForumTrends.com.Last but not least, Dave Taylor, no, not David Naylor [...]

Google Acquires JotSpot Wiki Collaboration Software
Google has acquired Jotspot, which allows businesses and individuals to use wikis for collaboration. Google made the announcement today on the Google Blog, and gave some clues to their possible Google Borg integration intentions:After all, information created by a single user becomes exponentially more valuable when it’s shared and combined with information from other people [...]

Compete?s SnapShot : Alexa Alternative?
B2B research firm Compete has launched SnapShot, a free traffic tool that draws on the company’s 2+ million consumer panel.So you say that sampling is inherently problematic and flawed? I asked the company about that and they provided a range of explanations regarding why their data are better and more representative than other samplers in [...]

Paypal Offices Bombed in San Jose
This is perhaps the most disturbing and strangest news we’ve reported in some time. The offices of PayPal in San Jose, California were reportedly bombed last evening when an explosive device was detonated outside of a building exit. No one was hurt, except for a plate-glass window. But this is still a very scary situation. [...]

Digg Changes Its Algorithm : Harder to Get on Homepage
Have you noticed a decrease in the amount of stories hitting the front page of Digg.com over the past 24 hours and the increase in the quality of those stories? If so, there is a reason behind the change.Digg.com has tweaked their algorithm so stories will require, in some cases, more Diggs to reach the [...]

Utube.com Suing YouTube.com
Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment, which has its web site hosted at Utube.com, is suing Google’s YouTube over domain name similarity and the harm which has been caused by YouTube’s popularity to Utube.com.As YouTube has grown in popularity, Utube.com’s site has become paralyzed, especially after the Google YouTube deal. Essentially, about 2 million people a [...]

Ask.com Providing Search &Advertising to Lycos Network
Ask.com has partnered with the LYCOS Network to provide the search results and sponsored listings on Lycos properties. Under the agreement, Ask.com will provide branded algorithmic search, including Web Search, Image Search, and Zoom Related Search, as well as the Ask Sponsored Listings advertising product across Lycos. Implications? According to their press statement Lycos is [...]

Yahoo Video 2.0 Expanding to Europe
Yahoo! has said that they are now launching country specific portals of their Video website in Europe.They have now launched local Yahoo Video websites in France, Spain, Germany and Italy. The company said that each of these websites is being customized to the individual country’s language, culture and trends. Yahoo manager of social [...]

Yahoo Autos ?Green Center?
Getting out in front of the increasing market for “green” products and services, Yahoo! Autos has launched a “Green Center.” The site profiles and rates/ranks hybrid and energy efficient cars. It also integrates Yahoo! Groups and other community content. Yahoo! worked with an organization called Environmental Defense to generate its ratings system.Taking a design cue [...]

GMail Mobile : Java Powered
Steve Bryant at eWeek’s Google Watch notes that today Google is unveiling a new java powered Gmail for mobile devices. The new Gmail mobile should be compatible with 300 different types of US based mobile phones and will not be serving Google AdSense ads in the mail interface, yet.Gmail for Mobile Devices is a free [...]

Cracking the Digg.com Algorithm
Yesterday we looked at the new changes to the Digg.com algorithm which makes it more difficult for stories to make it to the Digg front page, essentially filtering out the unqualified Diggs and adding more value to the overall Digg.com experience.Today Cristian Mezei digs a bit deeper into the new Digging system and how the [...]

Google Intern Behind Fake Boarding Pass Site
Christopher Soghoian, the Indiana University student who created the fake boarding pass site and was busted by Federal Officials, is a Google Intern according to his resume.Ironically, Soghoian is interning in the Application Security Group at Google where he has:* Invented and designed a new anti-phishing tool. Patent submission in progress.* Invented and designed [...]

Amazon.com?s Clickriver Pay-Per-Click Search Advertising
Amazon.com’s A9 Search division has finally launched a service which is sure to catch the eyes of the search engine marketing world, Clickriver. Clickriver is a pay-per-click search engine advertising service which will let advertisers purchase sponsored search links directly through Amazon.com.Like Google AdWords, Microsoft adCenter & Yahoo Publisher Network, Clickriver ads will be shown [...]

Yahoo Food : Munchies 2.0
Yesterday, Yahoo! launched its “Green Center” for Autos. Today: Yahoo! Food. Among others, this is an Epicurious competitor.Food looks like a pretty rich (no pun intended) site, with community, Answers and video among other features. But what’s more interesting — on a “meta-level” — is the contrast between Yahoo!’s approach to verticals and Google’s.Compare “Thanksgiving [...]

Microsoft Ponders Leaving China, Blogspot Blocking and Other Non-issues
Microsoft Ponders Leaving China, Blogspot Blocking and Other Non-issuesChina is in the news for many reasons but when it comes to the Internet one of the the main stays is the blocking of websites, persecuting of bloggers that cause social unrest with their writings and making foreign internet companies comply with national laws in order [...]

MySpace.com Launching in Japan
Big news in terms of the expansion of social networking empire MySpace beyond US borders. Japanese company Softbank, which owns Yahoo Japan and Vodafone Japan (branded as Softbank), has partnered with News Corp’s Fox Interactive, the parent company of MySpace.com, to launch MySpace Japan.MySpace Japan will be a 50-50 venture between Fox and Softbank, which [...]

Top Affiliate Marketing Blogs and Podcasts
Loren asked me to write a post about my favorite Affiliate Marketing blogs, because Affiliate Marketing is the background where I am coming from. Well, I ended up here, because a decent part of Affiliate Marketing is very much involved in Search Engine Optimization and Marketing, PPC etc.Especially Affiliates, but more and more the Merchants and [...]

Yahoo! Shopping : New Features Abound
Yahoo! Shopping has added a whole lot of goodies to its service, just in time for the holiday shopping season. New additional services include integration of Yahoo Answers, Buying Guides, and new Search Short Cuts.From the Yahoo! Shopping Blog:* Right off the bat, you’ll notice we’ve redecorated the site. We tried to clean things up [...]

Google Testing Ads in 50 Print Newspapers
Google is launching what it is calling an “alpha” program in which 100 advertisers, both large and small, will have an opportunity to buy ads of all sizes (not classifieds, but ROP) in over 50 US major metro daily print newspapers (not online). Combined, the participating dailies have more 15 million print circulation. Publishers participating [...]

Click Forensics &Focus on Affiliate Click Fraud
Click Forensics updated its enterprise-class click fraud detection service, Click Forensics 4.5 for Enterprise, which includes new features that allow advertisers for the first time to distinguish the click fraud rates of pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns that run on search engine sites and their affiliate properties, allowing them to adjust their campaign spending to maximize return [...]

Cameron Diaz : Yahoo Japan Commercials
Arnold Schwarzenegger did car commercials during his prime, Brad Pitt was pitching canned coffee in Japan until last year, and Bruce Willis is currently pushing Subaru, but the hottest new commercial series on Japanese television comes by way of Softbank, Yahoo Japan and Cameron Diaz.Cameron has been a mainstay in high profile Japanese advertising campaigns [...]

Microsoft?s Live Search Virtual Earth 3D Goes Live
Today Microsoft went live with Virtual Earth 3D, an online mapping system which is part of the Live Search experience which serves local search mapped results in a three-dimensional setting.Currently Live Search offers 3-D results for 15 U.S. cities, which include San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Detroit, Phoenix, Houston, [...]

Like.com : Celebrity Look a Like Search and Commerce
Like.com formerly known as Riya.com launched today. A new concept that makes a lot of affiliates (including myself) just watch in awe and envy :).Image pattern/face Recognition, a strength of Riya is used in a new innovative way to identify objects on images, such as the latest blink-blink or Gucci hand bag of your favorite [...]

Google Audio Ads to Hit Radio Waves By End of Year
Google Radio Advertising is close to being a reality as Reuters reports that the search engine & advertising company is planning on beginning a massive radio test of its AdWords Radio, which became a reality after Google’s acquisition of dMarc Broadcasting.Google Audio Ads will be able to be purchased via the Google AdWords interface and [...]

Yahoo Testing Banner Ads on Cell Phones
Yahoo is growing its mobile advertising base by beginning to deliver graphical ads to wireless users who view Yahoo properties via mobile phones.Yahoo will be testing ’slimmed-down’ banner ads and other display ads on Yahoo Mobile Web, where it has also tested Yahoo Search Marketing ads.Eric Auchard of Reuters reports:The brand advertising trial comes a [...]

Google Checkout Offers Free Transactions for Merchants
In an effort to accelerate merchant adoption of the Google Checkout payment system, especially at the peak of the holiday shopping season, Google is offering Free Google Checkout Transactions to its merchant base.Google Checkout sent the following email out to merchants:As you may know, for every $1 you spend on AdWords, you can process $10 [...]

MySpace.com Rules Social Networking
Social networking is hot and apparently, Hitwise confirms that MySpace is burning up the competition. For every 20 times a person in the US visited a website in September, one of those times the visit was to a ’social networking’ site.Social networking sites are online destinations where profiles can be built and users can connect [...]

ReviewMe Launches : New Blog Advertising Network
Looking for a new way to monetize your blog or build links, awareness and buzz about your service or product? ReviewMe, the new service which pays bloggers (under full disclosure) to review products has launched and intends to change the paid blogging world.Somewhat similar to the controversial PayPerPost formula, ReviewMe pays bloggers to review products [...]

Baidu and eBay China Partner Up
Baidu and eBay China Partner UpEachNet, the Chinese auction website of eBay, has expanded their partnership with Baidu, the leading search engine in China.From Newsweek:Under terms of the agreement, Baidu will promote PayPal Beibao, PayPal’s service in China, as the preferred payment method on Baidu. In return, eBay EachNet will use Baidu as the exclusive [...]

Google AdWords Landing Page Quality Ranking Initiated
The new Google AdWords Quality Algorithm kicked into gear today which will change the way advertisers bid and are ranked in sponsored Google AdWords results. The new AdWords ranking system relies heavily on Landing Page Quality, which is a sign that Google is getting more conversion and ROI focused in its serving of AdWords ads.Sarah [...]

Looking at StumbleUpon, Yoono, &Web 2.0 Toolbar
Was searching for video coverage of the 2006 Web 2.0 Conference this morning and ’stumbled’ across this excellent & entertaining video which highlights and explains the Web 2.0 Toolbar, Stumble Upon & the Yoono toolbar.Each toolbar is a bit unique in its own way and the video identifies each toolbars’ differentiation point. Currently, I use [...]

Google Local Search &Libraries
Bill Slawski looks at patents behind Local Search ranking systems and their dependency on local business directories. All fine & dandy for the local restaurants and coffee houses, but what about when it comes down to local organizations or government services?One of the places that a local search service might look for business information about [...]

MySpace Founders ?Shortchanged?by Fox Interactive?
VentureBeat’s Matt Marshall reports on MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe being “shortchanged” by the Fox MySpace acquisition. Reportedly he received only $5 million. On the one hand, how many people have $5 million? On the other, the company was sold for $580 million and so, if true, he was really diluted.I spoke to a reporter last [...]

A True 2nd Tier PPC Click Fraud Story
It happened actually last month and I wanted to blog about it earlier, but I did unfortunately not get around to it until now.I started some advertising for a project of mine at several 2nd tier PPC search engines like Looksmart (putting the SES coupon to good use), Kanoodle and Miva (formerly FindWhat). I put [...]

Google?s Vision for Free Cell Phones + How Newspapers and Marketers Can Prepare
How much do newspapers spend on paper, printing and printing infrastructure per subscriber? Would it make more sense for them to make their content fit well on a mobile device, partner with a phone company and provide phones for cheap to their local populations?They had better shake a leg in this direction because it looks [...]

Wink: Now a Better Social Marketing Tool
Besides its new people search functionality Wink seems to be a pretty run of the mill social search engine. Once Wink users login they can create collections, upload bookmarks, tag items, change rankings of results and all those other things Jim Lanzone thinks searchers are too lazy to do.So the differentiating factor is Wink’s MySpace, [...]

ValueClick Adding Video Advertising
ValueClick will be integrating video ads into their current display advertising solutions for publishers. The following email was sent out yesterday evening:As a valued publisher partner, we wanted you to be first to know that in the coming weeks we will formally announce an open beta of our new in-stream video product.Our video solutions will [...]

Snap Preview Everywhere: Distributing Search Boxes by Enabling Site Previews
WOW! I love creative ideas for distributing search!We have Eurekster (and now Google) that provide customizable search experiences for website owners. We have search companies like Pixsy almost solely focused on distribution for growth (though in a more formal partnership-based format).In both cases we see search companies creating opportunities for OTHER PEOPLE to distribute their [...]

Google?s Early Efforts to Monetize Video
Video. I can’t stop thinking about it.Neither can Google. A recent tour of the Google plex by Beet.tv yielded some news (to me) on Google and their efforts to monetize video.I did not know that “They have done limited advertising, notably post-roll ads for HP on the Charlie Rose Show.”Or that Google helped out Eepybird [...]

Google, Yahoo &Microsoft Team for Sitemaps.org Search Engine Indexing Initiative
Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft have joined forces to support Sitemaps 0.90 (www.sitemaps.org), a free and easy way for webmasters to notify search engines about their websites and be indexed more comprehensively and efficiently, resulting in better representation in search indices. No news as to why Ask.com is not part of the equation, or whether they [...]

Loki : Local Meta Search
Loki is a toolbar/technology from Skyhook Wireless that, once downloaded, uses WiFi triangulation to determine user location and saves the step of having to enter it on visited websites. It has very interesting local search uses and implications (for those who partner). For example:Beyond making local search more usable, the most interesting implication of Loki [...]

How To Obtain Techmeme Blog Coverage
Techmeme usually sends thousands of unique users per month to Search Engine Journal, dependent upon our percentage of breaking news stories and coverage. Like other news aggregation sites out there on the web, Techmeme has its own special way of selecting blogs and the coverage they receive. Gabe Rivera, who I had the pleasure of [...]

Yahoo Publisher Network &Vice President Shakeup
I’m a little late to the punch here due to a couple days of International travel, but wanted to cover the recent executive shakeup at Yahoo a bit. Two of their heads of the Yahoo Publisher Network are out the door as the new network is making changes which may help it better compete with [...]

Google Local Events Search Added to Google Calendar
Google has added a “search public events” button to Google Calendar. Here’s more from Philipp Lenssen and the Official Google Blog.Here’s an example of a search for “kids events” in San Francisco this week:The view above is a “list view.” You can also see events posted on a calendar view (day, week, month). I [...]

Expedited Upgrade For Yahoo!?s Panama Available Per Request
I blogged about a month ago about the long awaited launch of Yahoo!’s Panama Update of their Pay-Per-Click System. Yahoo! announced that accounts will be upgraded gradually over a period of time and probably continue until spring 2007. There was no mention about a process where advertiser could request to get their accounts upgraded earlier [...]

Jason Calacanis Quits AOL
After his Weblogs Inc empire was acquired by AOL and in the midst of heading up the transformation of Netscape from a one foot in the grave ISP to the next social news monster, Jason Calacanis is moving on.Jason confirms his leaving on his personal blog.TechCrunch broke the story (less than two hours after I [...]

Favorite SEO Blog : Missing in Search
I read too many SEO blogs everyday. It started with adding rss feeds to Firefox until I got fed up with seeing just titles. I moved on to Bloglines to have them all neatly together and I’ve decided I won’t move away, whatever cool, great or efficient new reader will emerge. I’m used to eying [...]

Danny Sullivan Launching New Blog; Search Engine Land
Danny Sullivan announced yesterday that his new search news blog, Search Engine Land, will be launching on December 11th. I’m sure Danny is excited to get Search Engine Land up and running and the experience he brings to the independent search news blogging world will result in top quality material after nearly a decade of [...]

Yahoo Acquiring Bix.com, Online Contests 2.0
The New York Times is reporting that Yahoo is acquiring Bix.com, the site which allows advertisers to create, enter and judge online contests. Yahoo hopes to integrate the service into its social media and user generated media offerings.Like Yahoo’s past acquisitions of del.icio.us and Flickr, Yahoo plans to let Bix.com continue to operate independently while [...]

Google Maps Adds Click-to-Call Ads
Google Maps has added Click-to-Call (my apologies for the short post, today will not be a heavy blogging day for me). From the Google Blog:Search for a business, like a hardware store, on Google Maps, and click the ‘call’ link next to its phone number. Then, enter your phone number and click ‘Connect For free.’ [...]

Microsoft Live Search &Firefox Snooping on Search Queries
Bill Slawski of SEO by the SEA looks at Microsoft Live Search and the Firefox Browser and how these companies are harnessing their web browsing and desktop applications to monitor search queries and then ’suggest’ them to the same user from their own search boxes.You can see query suggestions in action at Microsoft’s Windows Live [...]

Yahoo Maps Adds New Features
Deciding to avoid the arms race that Google and MSFT are engaged in around dynamic and 3-D mapping, Yahoo! has taken a more pragmatic approach:Satellite maps are fun, but online map users want features that get them where they are going. More than half (52 percent) of online U.S. adults said that they would be [...]

Yahoo to acquire MyBlogLog
Techcrunch and Valleywag report that Yahoo! has agreed to acquire MyBlogLog for an estimated $10 million.That takes the number of Yahoo acquisitions we’ve heard of in the last 24 hours to 3 - Loren talked about Yahoo acquiring Bix earlier, while Katie Fehrenbacher from GigaOM also reports that Yahoo! has confirmed its acquisition of Swedish [...]

Technology Top 100 Awards - South Africa
Congratulations to Vinny Lingham and his team over at IncuBeta for winning South Africa’s Technology Top 100 Award again this year. I am sure that Brett Tabke from WebmasterWold.com will forgive you for not being able to attend PubCon and fulfill your speaker assignment, considering the reason. PubCon 2006 in Las Vegas was also a [...]

Europes Xing.com - The LinkedIn.com Killer?!
It was not too long ago when the European Business-Networking Service OpenBC.com announced their planned name change to Xing.com. OpenBC.com is no longer and all links to OpenBC.com, including the links to profile pages, are being redirected to Xing.com. The reason for the name change is the plan to aggressively expand worldwide and to use this [...]

Yahoo Peanut Butter Memo : Cut Workforce by 20%, Build Focus
An internal Yahoo memo written last week by Senior Vice President Brad Garlinghouse has been leaked to the press and urges a major organizational shake up which would cut 20% of the current Yahoo workforce.In what may become a nightmare public relations day tomorrow, the restructuring of Yahoo may be just what the company needs [...]

Google : Was This Link Useful?
Google is prompting user response to its organic search query results via a small “Was this link useful?” question in the Google web listings.Peter Da Vanzo at V7N found this today when searching at Google (yes, the man is known for his love of Gin & Tonics):And no, this is not from AdWords, but from [...]

Yahoo! Hotjobs Newspaper Deal Coming Soon
Rumored for some time, Yahoo! is apparently close to closing a deal with six newspaper groups. According the WSJ:Yahoo Inc. is close to a deal with six major newspaper groups representing more than a hundred newspapers that would allow them to sell listings on Yahoo’s HotJobs online classified service, according to people familiar with the [...]

Pronto.com Out of Beta, Adds Aggregated Product Reviews
Pronto.com, part of the IAC family which includes Ask.com, is out of beta and the shopping comparison engine is ready for the holiday season. Pronto.com has added aggregated consumer reviews of products from around the Internet and has increaed its search index to 50 million products.From the press release : Pronto.com is the first comparison-shopping [...]

Microsoft?s Live.com Banning Sites for Link Exchanges
Live.com is banning sites that take part in spammy and irrelevant link exchanges which are designed to corrupt and mislead search engines into ranking such sites highly.Barry Schwartz looks at a thread from Search Engine Watch which published an email from Live.com to a publisher:Your site is acquiring links through posting to or exchanging links [...]

Yahoo &Newspapers Form Major Partnership
Proving they can spread their peanut butter and eat it too, Yahoo has sealed a major alliance with the nation’s newspapers which include 176 daily publications under the houses of MediaNews Group, Hearst, Belo, E. W. Scripps, the Journal Register Company, Lee Enterprises and Cox Enterprises.During the first phase of the partnership, newspaper companies will [...]

Tabblo : Screw The Yahoo Bashing!
In response to the ‘Yahoo Bashing‘ going on throughout the blogosphere after the public leaking of SVP Brad Garlinghouse’s Peanut Butter Manifesto and the recent drops in Yahoo stock value brought upon by their inefficiency in monetizing search until now as well as shake ups in the Yahoo Publisher Network; Tabblo has posted their thoughts [...]

Yahoo! Answers &Answers.com Working Together; For All the Answers!
Yahoo! and Answers.com have announced that the social media driven question and answers content from Yahoo! Answers will now be integrated into Answers.com. Yahoo! Answers has more than 60 million users globally, and will now be providing Answers.com users with a rich supplementary source of community-generated questions and answers on almost any topic, according to [...]

Google Ad Placements for AdSense
Google AdSense is giving publishers the option of assigning and labeling certain AdSense placements within their site as primary real estate for Google AdWords advertisers who wish to advertise within specific placements on specific publisher sites. With Google Ad Placement, publishers create and serve custom channels which can be made to be visible to advertisers [...]

Advertising.com Partners with Mitsui to Enter Japan?s Online Ad Market
AOL’s Advertising.com, the largest third-party display advertising network in the United States, has reached a joint venture agreement with Mitsui & Co., Ltd. to serve the Japanese online advertising market. Under the title of Advertising.com Japan, the venture will operate the leading performance-based online advertising network in Japan, the world’s second largest market. The [...]

Urban Mapping : Natural Local Search
I had lunch last Friday with Ian White, CEO of Urban Mapping. The genesis of Urban Mapping is a fascinating story of perseverance and timing — starting from a printed map of New York.At any rate, Urban Mapping is a technology and B2B data provider that is collecting and normalizing huge amounts of [...]

Google Still #1 Search Engine in US
Nielsen//Netratings released their statistics on search engine market share and usage today which ranked the search engines by usage and growth. Google still dominates the American search engine market with almost half of all US searches taking place via Google.com and its partners. Google also enjoys more than double the amount of searches than Yahoo, [...]

Yahoo Search Growing Faster than Google
According to a recent study from Nielsen//Netratings, Yahoo & Ask.com are growing faster than Google in terms of search engine usage.While Google still undoubtedly holds the number one spot for the amount of searches at over 3 billion searches in the past year, or 49.6% of the search engine market share; Yahoo search usage grew [...]

Webshots Adds Video Sharing
Webshots, which is one of the preferred photo storage and sharing destinations for millions of bloggers and MySpace members, has just gone video. While I don’t see them dethroning YouTube, they will serve millions of video impressions and advertisements. Quite a smart move by Webshots which already enjoys an active and vibrant user community.Now you [...]

Free Google Base / Froogle Submission and Optimization from SingleFeed
My friend Brian Smith of Comparison Engines and SingleFeed is currently running a promotion for Search Engine Journal readers to help them submit nd optimize their shopping cart feed for free to Froogle / Google Base. Cyber Monday is only 10 days away. If you’re not up on the shopping comparison engines, you’re potentionally [...]

Google &Yahoo Compete for Mobile Search Market
While Google is currently the undisputed king (making others the queen, prince, baron, duke and viscount) of search that’s not necessarily going to automatically translate into mobile — the next big opportunity. Indeed, mobile is potentially disruptive (ring the bell!) of online market share.GigaOm’s Katie Fehrenbacher has a good post on Google and mobile along [...]

Thanksgiving Recipe Searches Doubling Recipe Site Traffic
Recipe sites experience the doubling of traffic during the Thanksgiving holiday week according to a recent Hitwise study, which shows that traffic to online recipe sites was up 17.5% last week. The bulk of the recipe searches are centered around traditional deserts such as pumpkin pie and sweet potato pie. A bit of irony as [...]

Google News Sitemaps for News Publishers
In an effort to assist news publishers with control over which articles are included in Google News and how, Google has now added Sitemaps for Google News to its arrary of Webmaster Tools. From Nathan Stoll, Product Manager, Google News on the Google Blog:… we’re adding Google News support within Google webmaster tools.Now, English-language publishers [...]

Mpire Shopping Plugin: Market Analytics Distributed Across Thousands of Shopping Sites

I interviewed consumer empowerment engine Mpire’s CEO Matt Huelett in July. Mpire started *out of the gate* with an eBay partnership. That’s hot shit people.I dug in back then to understand why eBay invested time with them, and how their approach to shopping comparison (perhaps better called consumer empowerment) differed from the 100 or so [...]

Local Search Growing for Service Businesses
Believe it or not there are still people out there who are skeptical that the Internet is having a real impact in the “yellow pages” space. New survey data — albeit from an online panel — should silence those skeptics:Local online marketing firm WebVisible conducted an online survey this past August regarding Internet usage to [...]

Miva Response to PPC Click Fraud Story
After my blog post “A True 2nd Tier PPC Click Fraud Story” last week did I get contacted by Miva and had some email conversation and a phone call will them. I offered them to respond to the items stated in my post and also to the comments made by readers of Search Engine Journal. [...]

Popular Thanksgiving Searches from AOL : Hold the Turducken
The Thanksgiving PR train rolls on as AOL Search has sent out their list of the most popular Thanksgiving oriented search terms over the last month. AOL notes that Turducken has ‘flown the coop’ as the popular turkey-duck-chicken meal did not make this year’s list:Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and Americans are heading to the grocery store [...]

Google News Sitemaps Generator for Wordpress
Google Webmaster Tools recently introduced the Google News Sitemaps for news publishers who are indexed within the popular Google News service. David Stansbury of KB3KAI.com has put together a Google News Sitemaps Wordpress Plugin for blogs (or sites) which use Wordpress as their CMS to manage news stories. Google announced their new Sitemaps for Google [...]

Wal-Mart Website Crashes on Black Friday
In an effort to take advantage of the online Black Friday sales currently going on which mirror the in-store sales, I tried to cruise over to Walmart.com and see if I could purchase the Sony PSP for the advertised price of $169.Because of the popularity of online shopping and Wal*Mart television ads publicizing the ability [...]

Black Friday &Online Shopping
Yesterday’s Thanksgiving was a good one with about 15 family members, a pit smoked turkey, an accompanying Butterball, two pumpkin pies, and all of the trimmings. If you’re like me, you probably tried to sample everything on the table, they devoured the smoked turkey, only to end up dozing off by halftime of the Cowboys [...]

AbbreviationZ : Acronyms &Abbreviations Search Engine
AbbreviationZ is a directory / search engine of categorized acronyms and abbreviations which helps Internet users figure out what’s behind those niche abbreviations found in different business sectors.During my experience as an advertising agency account representative, I was exposed to numerous acronyms & abbreviations from clients who would regularly use such industry jargon in their [...]

Last Week in China - Baidu, Blogspot and a China Summer Ends
Last Week in China - Baidu, Blogger and a China Summer EndsSome of the more noteworthy news tidbits that happened in China last week.Baidu wins lawsuit over MP3’sA bit more than a week ago Chinese search engine Baidu won a MP3 copyright infringement case lawsuit, brought to court by 7 of the world’s largest music [...]

Will Google News Pay for Content?
Google has reached a settlement in its copyright suit in Belgium with with news photographers and journalists. The NY Times (reg req’d) carries the Bloomberg story:Google, the world’s most-used Internet search engine, reached a settlement with Belgian photographers and journalists yesterday in a copyright dispute over how Google’s news service links to newspaper content.The [...]

Google Earth Hack Receives Polite, Complimentary Cease and Desist
Gaia, which bills itself as “an attempt to reverse engineer famous Google Earth and implement its functionality in open, portable, customizable and extendable way,” recently published the cease and desist letter it received from Michael T. Jones, Chief Technologist for Google Earth.Mr. Jones writes that he and his team “are concerned that you may not [...]

New Way of of Circumventing the Internet Censor
New Way of of Circumventing the Internet CensorDecember 1, an early Christmas gift will be released for those living in countries where governments have a nag to control what users can and can not see on the Internet. At the university of Toronto a team of political scientists, software engineers and computer-hacking activists have created [...]

The end of SEO will be here by friday. Just right in time for tea.
Dave Pasternack from the SEM/PPC Firm Did-I could not resist it. He had to post at his DMNews.com Blog the story titled “An SEO critic answers his critics“, which is in fact a direct sequel to his post “Troubled times for SEO firms” from about a month ago. The original post was stirring up a lot of things [...]

SEO Customers That Know Choose Specialists
SEO Customers That Know Choose SpecialistsAmmon Johns talks on SEOmoz about the new model SEO customer. A client that is very knowledgeable about SEO, has employees working on its basic SEO and chooses to work together with SEO specialists for the final touch.He asks himself:So why does this new type of SEO savvy client want [...]

AskCity : New Local Offering from IAC
Barry Diller and IAC are going to launch something called “AskCity” next week, which will be a consolidated local offering under the Ask brand:The new Web-based city guides, due out on December 4, will be followed later in December by a redesign of IAC’s Ask.com search service, a small but fast-growing rival to Google Inc. [...]

Google?s Secret Display Advertising Network
Google has created a ’secret’ Google Display Advertising Network to attract Fortune 1000 companies into the Google advertising realm. Google’s Display Advertising Network is exclusive and invitation only, and based upon high CPM (cost per thousand impressions) rates and not cost per click, like Google AdWords or the current AdSense network.John Chow describes the Google [...]

Yahoo Search Marketing Bid Management Changes
Yahoo Search Marketing just sent out the following email which alerts its advertisers to the changes in bid management from the current ‘auction PPC’ format to the new Yahoo Search Marketing ‘Estimated Average Position’ and Bid Range for Top Positions.’ Dear Advertiser,As you will soon notice when you log into your Sponsored Search account, we [...]

Yahoo Answers Thrives as Google Answers Dies
Google has canned its Google Answers program, which was the first major search operated question & answer service. Simply enough, Googlers would rather use the Google search engine to find answers to their questions, or turn to social question & answer services which are thriving due to their active member base.Enter Yahoo Answers. In about [...]

SoloSEO : Self Service Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization for small market sites and businesses just got a bit easier with the launch of SoloSEO; a web based self service project management tool for SEO campaigns. Is SoloSEO the replacement for an expert SEO staff member or agency? No. But for those businesses which want to try and tackle basic SEO [...]

YouTube.com &Verizon : Mobile Video
Here’s the WSJ (sub req’d) on the deal:The agreement with Verizon is YouTube’s first major deal with a wireless carrier as it tries to extend the reach of its Internet video content beyond personal computers. YouTube, which was acquired by the Mountain View, Calif., Internet company for $1.65 billion, has attracted a huge audience for [...]

Yahoo Search Marketing Grandfathered Bids Not Carrying Over
For those long term search marketers who have been taking advantage of Yahoo’s generosity of allowing grandfathered bids below $.10 from campaigns which were carried over from Goto.com and Overture, those days are over. According to an email sent to a Webmasterworld member, Yahoo will not be honoring the old Goto.com grandfathered $.01 and $.05 [...]

Digg.com Explained for Search Marketers
Todd Malicoat has put together a simple yet effective guide to Digg for search marketers which is packed with stats on Digg usage, the traffic which Digg can bring to a site, the aftershock of linking and continued traffic and references to some of the best articles out there about Digg, which are penned by [...]

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