Didn't Like Web Accelerator / Prefetch? - Read On (Monday, April 10, 12:28 PM EST)

Well, cacheing reaches new heights with this one:

Laptop comes preloaded with abridged Web

Squeezing Web onto a laptop

Bob's Back! (Well, TBPR anyway...) (Monday, April 10, 10:31 AM EST)

Not finding much time to post these days, but this just popped up. Bob Massa - of this parish - has PR7 at SearchKing. Via SEW Blog.

Disney Free Free Free on the WWW (Monday, April 10, 10:10 AM EST)

The WSJ reports that many popular ABC shows will be streamed over the WWW free:

Walt Disney Co. plans to make much of its newest and most popular programming on ABC and other channels available free anytime on the Web, in a move that could speed the transformation of television viewing habits and help revive the struggling TV advertising business.

The Top 500,000 Keywords Are for Sale (Monday, April 10, 08:48 AM EST)

The top 500,000 keywords from the Wordtracker's database are available for £1370. Probably worth a bit more than the recent list of top AdSense words.

UK: Free Broadband for All! (Monday, April 10, 05:47 AM EST)

The BBC news is reporting that the Carphone Warehouse is planinng to offer free broadband connections to deepen its foothold into the broadband market - Currently it has only about 75,000 punters compared to the millions served by the handful of other main players like NTL, Wannadoo etc...

Official AS Blog Profiles "Optimisation Specialist" (Sunday, April 09, 07:49 PM EST)

G's official AS blog profiles an optimisation expert who boosted one site's earnings from $10/day to $1,700/day, just by changing the ad placement!

The secret to AS preponderance...

Shoemoney the $10,000 PPC Experiment (Sunday, April 09, 01:54 PM EST)

Jeremy Schoemaker (aka Shoemoney) is quickly becoming a marquee name in the SEO world. He's just put up part 1 of The $10,000.00 experiment with ppc . In it he details his PPC learning experience where he goes from losing $75 a day to turning a profit.

Google Buys Search Algorithm Invented by Israeli Student (Sunday, April 09, 08:29 AM EST)

from the israeli newspaper (english version): http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/703986.html

Search engine giant Google recently acquired an advanced text search algorithm invented by Ori Alon, an Israeli student. Sources believe Yahoo and Microsoft were also negotiating with the University of New South Wales in Australia, where Alon is a doctoral student in computer science.

Yahoo Testing Google Like Ad Algo (Saturday, April 08, 05:00 PM EST)

Forbes reports on Panama, the new Yahoo contextual advertising algo being tested in Scandinavia, which will rank ads based on relevance as well as price paid.

I saw this, and thought of you (all) (Saturday, April 08, 08:18 AM EST)

In what seems to be the most interesting comment over at Matts FAQ for weeks there was a great link to this site (and I suspect I know where we're sourcing the Goodie Bags for this years TW meet now) - selling everything from temporary tattoos, through trendy 'show your support for spam' wrist bands to spam wine glasses, wall clocks and hoodies, ladies and spammers, I present to you..... The Spam Shop

Google Full of Shit on Only San Fransisco WiFi (Saturday, April 08, 04:26 AM EST)

The ink is not even dry (or wet yet) on the San Fransisco WiFi deal, and Earthlink's CEO is already looking for another city to partner with Google to provide free WiFi to:

Filtering Bad Leads & Filtering Information (Monday, April 10, 12:07 PM EST)
Post offering tips on filtering out bad leads to be more productive.

Monthly Keyword Research Marketing Data (Monday, April 10, 08:59 AM EST)
Post offering keyword research tips, pointing out tools to track keyword search trends throughout the year.

Easy Linkbait... (Monday, April 10, 04:29 AM EST)
Example of a post calling someone out which is spreading well through the WWW.

Boiler Room (Sunday, April 09, 05:39 AM EST)
Post about recently watching the movie Boiler Room.

Tax Time... (Thursday, April 06, 01:13 PM EST)
Post about doing my taxes and some of the new stuff I am working on with friends.

Always Sell Yourself & Always Sell Yourself First (Thursday, April 06, 10:50 AM EST)
Post about why it is better to advertise your own ideas, contents, and services instead of advertising random ads placed on your site by a third party.

Testing the Value of Smaller Pay Per Click Providers (Thursday, April 06, 05:44 AM EST)
Rant post about Looksmart.

MSN Search Spam Research (Wednesday, April 05, 08:42 AM EST)
Microsoft did a bunch of statistical spam analysis. Bill at SEO by the Sea made a great post referencing it.

Using Viral Content Ideas or Technology to Build Links in Spammy Industries (Tuesday, April 04, 08:35 PM EST)
Post about how to get authoritative editorial citations in fields hyper saturated with me to spammy product sites.

Comparative Advertising in Naming, Linking, and Tagging (Monday, April 03, 10:13 PM EST)
Post about using comparative advertising to build exposure against the brand strength of competing products and services.

Hype is Just Hype, and a Marketing Opportunity (Monday, April 03, 09:47 PM EST)
Jakob Nielson recently posted an article about hyped up Web2.0 type stories being rubbish.

New York Times Changes Web Only Headlines To Be Search Engine Friendly (Monday, April 10, 02:28 PM EST)
A featured Search Engine Watch Forum thread named SEO & Newspapers discusses a recent NYTimes article named This Boring Headline Is Written for Google. The first paragraph of the article somes it up; Journalists over the years have assumed they...

Google's New Popularity Measurement; Traffic Versus Links (Monday, April 10, 01:06 PM EST)
There is a fresh thread at WebmasterWorld named Google algo moves away from links, towards traffic patterns. This reinforces what many have been saying for the past year or so. Google's popularity came from using linkage data and PageRank to...

Google Buys Israeli Search Engine, Orion (Monday, April 10, 12:39 PM EST)
Haaretz reports that Google has purchased Orion, "an advanced text search algorithm invented by Ori Alon, an Israeli student." The search forums are buzzing on this right now. Ori Alon worked on Orion while at University of New South Wales...

SearchKing Regains Google PageRank After Four Year Penalty (Monday, April 10, 12:23 PM EST)
SearchKing has regained its PageRank valyue for its Web site, after a four year penalty. The Search Engine Watch Forum thread, Four Years Later, SearchKing Regains Google PR has Danny Sullivan providing the historical guide as to explain why this...

Using Images To Increase Your Adsense (Saturday, April 08, 05:26 PM EST)
On Digtal Point Forums user korzon starts a thread called "using pictures next to Adsense ads". Seems like most arcade games use some variation of pictures next to google ads to improve CTR and reportedly, it works great. The question...

Changing Domain Name Ownership Whois Information & Google Search Ranking Impact (Friday, April 07, 09:22 PM EST)
Every since Google became a registrar in January 2005, SEOs wondered how Google would use the whois data. In mid-February we reported that Google admitted to using registrar data to "increase the quality" of the search results. Today a new...

Yahoo! Switching Paid Ranking Model To Add Relevancy Factor: Project Panama (Friday, April 07, 08:57 PM EST)
This morning I reported at SEW blog on a Forbes article that says Yahoo! is testing a ppc algorithm similar to how Google AdWords works. The new pay per click model will use a relevancy factor, in combination with your...

Chinese AdWords Advertisers To Sue Google Over Click Fraud (Friday, April 07, 01:18 PM EST)
Search Engine Watch moderator Jeff Martin reports that Chinese Adwords Advertiser To Sue Google Over Click Fraud. The thread has a link to an article written in Chinese which was "loosely translated," into the following. Mr. Huang, who has been...

Google Toolbar For Firefox 2.0 Released (Friday, April 07, 01:04 PM EST)
Yesterday I reported at the SEW blog of the new Firefox Google Toolbar version 2.0 release. The new features include; An auto-completing search box The layout option to replace the Firefox search bar with the Google search Safe browsing, which...

Google Stealing AdWords Clients Now In Israel? (Friday, April 07, 12:49 PM EST)
We all know about Google calling folks to sell them AdWords assistance directly, we reported it back April 2005 when Top PPC Names Say No to Google AdWords Professionals. Heck, even cartoons were created Explaining the SEM & Google Relationship....

Benefits & Disadvantages of Search Engine Conference Including Search Engine Strategies & WebmasterWorld PubCon (Friday, April 07, 12:32 PM EST)
This weeks featured moderator only thread was named Pros & Cons of SES & WMW Conferences. Search Engine Roundtable moderators discussed what they felt were some of the benefits and disadvantages of attending search engine marketing conferences. We were specifically...

The Missing Element in Search Engine Marketing - Part 1 (Friday, April 07, 09:21 PM EST)
It's way past time to begin looking at your Web business as if you're standing in the clouds looking down. For the time being, don't think about search engine optimization, Web design, or technical issues. Yes, those things are crucial,...

Viral Marketing - Learn From What Works (Friday, April 07, 07:47 PM EST)
Marketing Sherpa is featuring a case study that highlights what they've pegged as the top 12 viral marketing campaigns of 2006. The winners vary from small businesses to mega-corporations and there's a lot to be learned from their ideas and...

The A to Z Guide to Getting Website Traffic (Friday, April 07, 04:44 PM EST)
As you probably already know, bringing in traffic is not easy - it takes hard work, determination and lots of elbow grease. So if you're ready, roll up your sleeves and follow these 26 simple steps, and within just one...

More on Keyword Research (Friday, April 07, 04:37 PM EST)
Last week I linked to part one of Kevin Lee's Keyword Testing and Expansion article over at ClickZ. Today, he follows up with part two which does a great job of exploring more advanced issues like how to split up...

Yahoo! Testing Google Style PPC Model (Friday, April 07, 04:24 PM EST)
The word is out that Yahoo! is testing a new project with the code name "Project Panama" that would rank pay per click ads based on a combination of bid price and relevancy, much the way that Google's AdWords system...

Even the Search Engines Need SEOs (Friday, April 07, 04:02 PM EST)
When even the biggest names in the industry start hiring search engine marketers, you know that the industry is here to stay. Martin Dinham points to SEO related job postings by Yahoo!, MSN and Ebay in his blog today. Interestingly...

Looking to Learn More About Web Directories? (Friday, April 07, 12:53 AM EST)
Among those new to the search marketing world, there's often some confusion about the difference between a search engine and a Web directory. Since directories can offer up valuable links, it's important to understand how they work and how to...

Pros & Cons of SES & WMW Conferences (Thursday, April 06, 11:37 PM EST)
Search Engine Roundtable Forums - "...for newbies, the massive amount of information available is priceless. For pros, the little nuggets of information may lead to ideas and thoughts you'd never had before, and the networking is great. For everyone, the...

Death In Gmail (Thursday, April 06, 11:30 PM EST)
v7n Forum - "...if you type in something like 'death' or 'died' anywhere in the email, you'll never get the ads because ... someone could be sending someone an email about someone dying and they don't want to offend anyone."...

EarthLink & Google win San Francisco Wi-Fi bid (Thursday, April 06, 11:10 PM EST)
Webmaster World - "EarthLink and Google have been tabbed as the most viable bidders to blanket San Francisco with a Wi-Fi network, based on a review by the city’s Department of Telecommunications and Information Services, or DTIS."...

Google Is Banning Sites That Use Open Directory (DMOZ) Data (Thursday, April 06, 11:09 PM EST)
Webmaster World - "There is a new study that says Google is 'massively' banning sites that use any DMOZ data."...

Newspapers to Become Mostly Online Entities (Monday, April 10, 02:00 PM EST)
Within a decade, newspapers will evolve into mostly online entities, according to Ken Doctor, analyst at research and...

Google Acquires New Search Algorithm (Monday, April 10, 01:00 PM EST)
Google has acquired a new text search algorithm developed by University of New South Wales student Ori Alon...

Dreary Headlines, Too, Are Google's Doing (Monday, April 10, 11:00 AM EST)
At a time when website traffic - readers, that is, and therefore advertisers - can make or break...

Being an SEO - Can We Start SEO 2.0? (Monday, April 10, 04:08 AM EST)
We’ve already discussed SEO generations, how some folks entered the industry at different times and learned from others. Outside of the SEO sphere, however, SEO seems to elicit a much different response from folks based on their different (often negative) experiences with those claiming to be an SEO. To me, SEO has been a very [...]

I am Not a Link Communist (Thursday, April 06, 03:02 PM EST)
It is against my better judgment to stir the pot on this issue, but it’s upsetting to me whenever the topic gets brought up. I don’t understand why engines are resorting to fear, uncertainty, and doubt to retain their relevancy, so I thought I’d bite the bullet and drop my .02, rather than let [...]

How to Write Successful Subject Titles for Link Requests (Wednesday, April 05, 02:32 PM EST)
Unfortunately, not everyone on the web wants to hear from you. As people’s personal filtering systems get better, the odds that your message is received declines. Subject lines are a big part of how I do my personal e-mail filtering. When I say “personal e-mail filtering”, I mean the skimming of e-mail [...]

You’re Only as Smart, Sexy, Funny, and Trusted as the People You Link To (Monday, April 03, 04:39 PM EST)
Your online credibility is only as good as who you link to. Your ‘hood..your peeps, and even your advertisers. If you link to ugly, dorky, sarcastic, mean, condescending, people like me, then you could potentially soil your credibility, lose website traffic, be banned from all current and future indexes, and be accused of [...]

Relative Openness of Mapping APIs (Sunday, April 09, 04:46 PM EST)
some good comments about the varous on-line mapping services

A VC: While Big Companies Deliberate, Small Companies Obliterate (Sunday, April 09, 07:46 AM EST)
"We are still trying to get a consensus internally around the idea and to get support from the key constituents"

How I'm using Amazon S3 to serve media files (Sunday, April 09, 07:23 AM EST)
"S3 is very cheap -- 15 cents a month for each gig of storage (and I have only 936 K of media files) and 20 cents per gig bandwidth. That's peanuts."

Tired of Geek Talk (Friday, April 07, 07:23 PM EST)
'The second kind of conversation is where people try to "outgeek" the others. The responses are less about exchange of ideas and more about proving that you know more than the next person.'

Nelson is leaving Google (Friday, April 07, 07:02 PM EST)
congrats!

SQL on Rails (Friday, April 07, 07:00 PM EST)
watch the screencast. be amused. be very amused.

YouTube - Chevy Tahoe commercial (Friday, April 07, 02:23 AM EST)
god bless the internets...

Podcasts are huge; it's just the audience that's tiny (Friday, April 07, 12:48 AM EST)
heh. well said.

YouTube - Chevy Tahoe SUV God (Friday, April 07, 12:46 AM EST)
"The Earth is Now Your Bitch"

Tales from the Loonybin » Demystifying Mail.app Plugins – A Tutorial (Friday, April 07, 12:23 AM EST)
one can write Mail.app plugins in Python. Who knew?!

What's New in Python 2.5 (Thursday, April 06, 05:23 AM EST)
I really, really, really need to learn me some Py one of these days... or years.

Creating the Search Optimized Press Release (Sunday, April 09, 06:30 PM EST)
The following is an excerpt from an article I wrote recently that's not been published yet. The article's called: "Reach Your PR Search Presence Goals through Optimized Press Releases, Blogger Relations and Social Networks." I excerpted the following section because it's directly related to the SEM and PR info request that got me writing in the first place.

A quick note about the coming article:
It first addresses - briefly - the proper formulation of a Public Relations campaign and outlines how to reach your PR search presence goals through optimized press releases, blogger relations and social network participation. In other words it's the article you've been waiting for that ties together social media, search and PR efforts :)

Without further ado, here's: Creating the Search Optimized Press Release

Because you're a savvy marketer, you've already mapped out your competitive search marketspace and know precisely the terms you should target in order to reach your key publics through the search engines.

Now that you're involved in your company's PR efforts (which is only right, because search engines are the primary PR vehicle of the online space, inasmuch as many aggregate news sites and blogs and typically include links from such sources as key factors in determining relevance), you must ensure that your main keyphrases find prominent places in your press releases.

Tips for Maximizing Your PR Efforts in Search Engines
• Include company name and your most important keyphrase in the title of the press release.
• Include company name and keyphrases in line with your PR and SE presence goals throughout the release, though not conspicuously and not to the detriment of readability or sense
• If you're publicly traded, include your ticker symbol in the title of the press release.
• Link your keyphrase in the body of the press release to the page on your site that's optimized for this keyphrase.
• Include contact info and a paragraph targeted specifically towards bloggers

A quick word on the reasoning behind these techniques:
When search engines collect news items, as opposed to pages they gather from the wild web, they're more likely to determine relevance based on key phrases utilized. Determining how relevant a page REALLY is to a given search term takes quite a bit of time, and news, by its nature, makes standard relevance determination tougher because of its short shelf life.

Google Finance, Google's recent entry into financial news coverage, includes blog entries and recent news stories for every publicly traded company. This fact means that your company must start blogging, or at least cultivating relationships with bloggers in your space. It's fairly certain that Google uses an algorithm for its finance section that's similar to the one in its news section.

This makes the inclusion of your full company name and your ticker symbol in the press release title - plus the title of related blog posts that your company writes - even more important in order to reach the buyers and sellers of your company's stock.

We employe keyphrase linking in the event that automated sites, bloggers or reporters lift that portion of the press release and give it a permanent non-dynamic page.

Though you should typically NOT be sending press releases to bloggers unless you've contacted them before hand, the press release you put on the wire should include links to your blog in addition to a non-directorial contact person, someone who will be seen as more authentically and meaningfully involved in the news relating to the press release than a VP or someone equally trained in spin.

This person should be lightly basted in PR principles and current PR goals, but must be allowed to speak plainly and frankly.

The concept of treating employees as a media-creating public may be difficult for readers steeped in traditional PR. Please familiarize yourself with the Cluetrain Manifesto and the techniques surrounding cultivating your employee generated media.

Also check out John Battelle's recent interview with Gary Flake of MSN for an example of whom should be talking with whom. I see this particular blog interview as a PR masterstroke for MSN. Call me and I will explain: 919-433-3139. Or I'll probably end up blogging about it later this week ;)

Here are a few sites - which I have not personally tested - that distribute press releases on the web. They may or may not actually be press release optimizers that resell distribution across already established PR channels:

www.PRWeb.com
www.PRFree.com
www.sbwire.com
www.ereleases.com
www.corporatenews.com
www.massmediadistribution.com
www.eworldwire.com
www.PR.com
www.marketwire.com
home.businesswire.com/
www.free-press-release.com/
www.24-7pressrelease.com/

Full Frame Film Festival Today in Durham, NC (Saturday, April 08, 03:34 PM EST)
This weekend the Full Frame Film Festival's in town, over in Durham (I live in Raleigh, NC). My girlfriend and I decided, on Wednesday or something, that it would be fun to head over and catch a documentary or two.

This morning we started looking over the schedule and FREAKING THE FLIP OUT because there are so many GREAT MOVIES.

Our whole day's schedule shifted because of our excitement about these films. We may or may not be having dinner with Adam Schultz and his wife later tonight :)

I'm sure there are other folks blogging the festival, and I'm writing this from my house in Raleigh before knowing if there's wifi access in the space or not (I plan to post reactions in SEL, though it's heinously off topic from search).

Anyways, our top picks so far are (if they haven't sold out yet):

12:15
Beyond Beats and Rhymes (investigation into rap's misogyny, homoeroticism and popularity with white teens)
SAZ (Palestinian Rapper)

2:30
Wrestling with Angels (a portrait of playwright Tony Kushner)

7:15
Hammer and Flame (India shipwrecking yard)
Matthew Barney: No Restraint (documentary of work on Barney's latest project - Barney's Bjork's fella)

10:00
demolition 7 (demolition derby!)
Air Guitar Nation (air guitar competition)

We're heading out shortly to try and get tickets, right after we drive by the coffee shop with free wifi so I can post this cause the wifi I steal at home is unreliable :)

Key Takeaways from Battelle's Interview with MSN Search's Gary Flake (Friday, April 07, 03:52 PM EST)
Battelle's interview with Gary Flake gave me the following take aways:

• Keep an eye on Microsoft Research
• Read more Greg Linden (who asked my favorite questions in the thread following the post)
• When engineers lead a project they may get distracted by "core issues" and ignore stuff like usability (even at MSN ;)
• User Interface at MSN search is now under strong investigation and experimentation: live.com
• 32 bit architecture to 64 bit architecture translates into increasingly sophisticated measurements of relevance at MSN
• This advance is not a sustainable tech advantage (Greg points out in comments)
• MSN Haterade still guzzled freely (via comments) - this is an observation, not a value statement on my part
• Gary driving a sense of MSN innovation, [what's important is that] "we have a platform, framework, and philosophy that are all in support of trying new things so that we can progressively improve and learn."
• Gary driving a sense of MSN passion: "the idea of being able to fully leverage [Microsoft Research] towards web search gave me goose bumps."

What the Engagement Definers Can Learn from Search Relevance Engineers (Friday, April 07, 03:00 PM EST)
...is the title of an article I'd like to read.

So I guess I'll have to write it.

If you didn't know, the marketing world's trying to define engagement, a holistic metric that will make it easier to compare television advertising to radio to print to online.

This metric will, so the Madison Avenue world hopes, enable marketers to make more effective business and marketing decisions.

Bravo!

As I read over John Battelle's interview with MSN's Gary Flake this morning I started thinking about relevance, and how much thought, man hours and money has gone into defining it with algorithms.

I'm going to dig into relevance theory and look for its relationship to the engagement concept. Engagement and relevance both seek to measure the subjective. Relevance engineers have made far more strides thus far in its measurement than have our engagement engineers...

At the very least I'll have some interesting reading this weekend :)

Anyone know any good relevance-related articles? comment or call me 919-433-3139

SEO for Real Estate Template Site (Thursday, April 06, 08:46 PM EST)
In order to set your website apart from all the others that are a quick click away, you need to put your personality into it, and you need to figure out how to make an emotional connection through the words...

This year's Anita Borg Scholarship winners (Friday, April 07, 01:33 PM EST)

Out of the Wi-Fi wilderness (Thursday, April 06, 10:49 PM EST)

Toolbar v2 for Firefox fans (Saturday, April 08, 02:37 AM EST)

More feeds for speed (Monday, April 03, 03:30 PM EST)

Yahoo Launches Local Search BETA (Monday, April 10, 02:25 PM EST)

Lycos Sells to Korean Internet Portal (Monday, April 10, 02:25 PM EST)

Google Launches Bidding Site (Monday, April 10, 02:25 PM EST)

Search Engine Marketing Organization Cops Criticism (Monday, April 10, 02:25 PM EST)

MSN Previews New Search Engine (Monday, April 10, 02:25 PM EST)

Disney on Podcasting (Wednesday, April 05, 10:01 PM EST)
There's an interesting interview over on Clickz - Questions for disney's Director of Synergy - between Zachary Rodgers and Michael Petersen. In it Michael Petersen describes the incredible take up of podcasting - 250,000 have signed up - since it lauched in August of last year much of it driven,...

Free access to for-fee articles with Congoo (Monday, April 10, 07:55 AM EST)
Congoo is a search engine launched this month that gives registered users free access to a selection of online publications that normally requires a subscription or fee to read. Does this sound too good to be true? Well, there are a couple of snags.

Specialized collections from the NewspaperARCHIVE (Wednesday, April 05, 12:29 PM EST)
The NewspaperARCHIVE contains 35 million pages of historic newspapers dating from 1753-2006 online. In the past month it has launched a series of free specialized collections pulled from the archive of digital newspaper images.

RocketNews now indexes sound and video (Monday, April 03, 10:46 AM EST)
RocketNews is among the best independent news search services, along with NewsNow and Topix.net. Now they index sound and video in addition to news and blogs.

Banging down the doors (Sunday, April 09, 08:43 PM EST)
Finally, a sunny day. Did some errands, walked around the West Village and realized what a phenomenal cue queues provide. In other words, there must be a reason for that line. Stew Leonard's, a mere shell of its former glory...

Moxabustion (Saturday, April 08, 11:56 PM EST)
For thousands of years, practioners of acupuncture would burn mugwort on a patient's skin, believing that the heat would penetrate and help heal the patient. Superstition is a funny thing. Often expensive, time-consuming and even dangerous, a superstition can stick...

Purple Cows in Seoul (Saturday, April 08, 12:01 AM EST)
Denis Papathanasiou points out that a leading candidate in the race to be mayor of Seoul calls herself a Purple Cow. Digital Chosunilbo (English Edition) : Daily News in English About Korea. I had no idea it might lead to...

Trial and error (Friday, April 07, 08:53 PM EST)
Most learning, especially most organizational learning, occurs through trial and error. Error occurs whether you want it to or not. Error is difficult to avoid. It's not clear that research or preparation have an enormous impact on error, especially marketing...

The Personal MBA (Thursday, April 06, 08:53 PM EST)
Josh Kaufman, who needs a new haircut, may just be on to something: The Personal MBA. Worth a look....

Does BoingBoing matter? (Thursday, April 06, 08:52 PM EST)
Boingboing is one of the most popular blogs in the world... it's read by more people than most magazines. Day to day, though, it's easy to assume that most of the posts are not particularly earthshattering--particular the ones about earwax....

But don't measure THIS (Thursday, April 06, 05:02 PM EST)
John Dodds responded to my post about measurement. So here's some more: There's no doubt that you should measure things that are both important and measurable. When you do, it's inevitable that what you measure improves. Caveat #1 is not...

New direct marketing tactic (Thursday, April 06, 04:50 PM EST)
Jim Logan, who I've never had the privilege of meeting, lives in California. Capital One just sent him a piece of junk mail, soliciting credit card sign up... with my name on it. This could be a trend... putting the...

Flipping the funnel, teenage edition (Thursday, April 06, 12:29 PM EST)
Miel has a post about Melody: Coolz0r - Marketing Thoughts � Logitech’s 17 Year Old Brand Ambassador. The first thing a jaundiced marketer would wonder is if this is just a special case. After all, the product that Melody is...

Only on the web (Thursday, April 06, 11:11 AM EST)
an entire site of music for (and from) tv newscasts: News Music Now V.2 -- [In The Spirit of Texas]....

Measure THAT (Wednesday, April 05, 08:34 PM EST)
One of the secrets of the Yellow Pages was that the phone company would give you a second line when you bought a big ad. Within days of the book coming out, you'd see and hear the phone ring. And...

Preview: Google testing new site design (Monday, April 10, 02:25 PM EST)

James Yu has a screenshot of a new design Google has been testing lately.

Launch: Google Pages, new Geocities-style site-building software (Monday, April 10, 02:25 PM EST)

Google has released a new program that gives users 100MB of web space to make simple HTML pages in.

Launch: Google running AdWords in newspapers (Monday, April 10, 02:25 PM EST)

Google is buying the leftover ad space in the _Chicago Sun-Times_ and filling it with AdWords ads related to the rest of the content. I wonder how they're going to charge advertisers. The domains posted are the real domains, so it can't exactly be pay-per-click.

Launch: Google Music, search for bands and albums (Monday, April 10, 02:25 PM EST)

Story: Xooglers, Google's former Marketing Director tells his story (Monday, April 10, 02:25 PM EST)

Some great stories about Google's early days, with more to come.

Launch: Click-to-Call AdWords, Google will let you call advertisers (Monday, April 10, 02:25 PM EST)

(screenshot)

Update: Blind test reveals Google offers best results (Monday, April 10, 02:25 PM EST)

The Search Engine Experiment gives you the results from Yahoo, MSN, and Google without saying which is which. Currently, 41% of those who have taken the test picked Google (33% Yahoo, 26% MSN).

Launch: Google Analytics, see the statistics on your website (Monday, April 10, 02:25 PM EST)

A free version of Urchin, a company Google bought. (official blog post)

Announce: Google to unwire Mountain View, WiFi on street lamps (Monday, April 10, 02:25 PM EST)

You could also buy equipment to extend it into your house. (proposal)

Launch: Google adds Creative Commons support (Monday, April 10, 02:25 PM EST)

The Google advanced search page now lets you limit your search to CC-licensed results.

Launch: Google Local Mobile, get Google Maps and more on your mobile phone (Monday, April 10, 02:25 PM EST)

Satellites, drag and drop, and more.

Create Your Own Dummies Book Cover (Monday, April 10, 02:15 PM EST)
You can generate your own cover... [Via Generator Blog.]

Google Sliding Puzzle (Monday, April 10, 02:14 PM EST)
Now you can play the Google homepage as a sliding puzzle (note the "make your own" link to the right). [Slider via Generator Blog.]

Harassment Blog (Monday, April 10, 02:01 PM EST)
Kinda cool... Holla Back New York City exposes exhibitionist or sexist men (NY and elsewhere) by publishing phone snapshots of them, blog-style. [Via Boing Boing.]

Google Your Race (Monday, April 10, 01:14 PM EST)
This guy assembled some racial prejudices using Google (he might have seen the prejudice map).

Saving Bandwidth with CSS (Monday, April 10, 12:50 PM EST)
ESPN.com apparently saves 730 terabytes per year. How much could Google save? Even when there's CSS around on Google.com, they're using some of the most depreciated HTML on their web search. [Via Digg.]

NYT: Tweak Titles for Searchbots (Monday, April 10, 12:40 PM EST)
This article by the New York Times doesn't seem to get microcontent. It insists that it's necessary these days to come up with headlines for search engine bots. It's true that puns or irony, or not getting to the gist, don't fare well with online but titles (Google itself was one of the worst offenders in the beginning of their blog). But it's not just about search engines. Understanding microcontent means you as a writer understand a headline can appear in a great variety of contexts; a bookmark, a title within the browser, a title in the search results, an automated link from another website, a ...

Google Alerts Hebrew (Monday, April 10, 12:09 PM EST)
Google Alerts are now available in Hebrew, Hanan Cohen reports.

Orion? (Monday, April 10, 11:45 AM EST)
Orion is a search algorithm that's apparently hot. So hot in fact that Google grabbed its Australian Israeli inventor Ori Allon, who's now working at Mountain View. Previous discussion is in the forum. [Thanks Or.]

Google Circles C&D'd (Saturday, April 08, 08:07 AM EST)
Before the take-down, Google Circles resembled Gmail/ Google Groups. Looks like GoogleCircles.com, an April Fool's joke site, was Cease & Desisted by Google. The site owner says: I actually got two letters from Google today. The second one was a little more severe and demands that I transfer the domain to Google and claims that because the domain contains the letters "google" in their entirety that it is a trademark infringement. [Via Valleywag, which also reports of a strange takeover.]

AdSense Revenue Went From $10 to $1,700 (Saturday, April 08, 07:55 AM EST)
The official Google AdSense blog interviews AdSense optimizer Ivan Heneghan from Dublin. Ivan tells of one client for which he could increase the daily ad revenue from $10 to $1,700 simply by changing ad layout and positioning. (What's missing in this story are the potential downsides of approaches like "embed the ad in your content, and use more blended colors.")

YPNBlog Launches : Yahoo Publisher Network Blog Community (Monday, April 10, 01:24 PM EST)
YPNBlog Launches : Yahoo Publisher Network Blog Community Even though Yahoo Publisher Network remains in an invite only Beta offering, it is growing larger by the day. Yahoo, in an effort to ad more of a sense of community and communication between its YPN publishers, has launched the Yahoo Publisher Network’s Blog at YPNblog.com. Yahoo! Publisher Network [...]

Google’s New Popularity Rank; Traffic Versus Links (Monday, April 10, 12:56 PM EST)
Google’s New Popularity Rank; Traffic Versus Links There is a fresh thread at WebmasterWorld named Google algo moves away from links, towards traffic patterns. This reinforces what many have been saying for the past year or so. Google’s popularity came from using linkage data and PageRank to score how popular a Web page is. Times are [...]

Yahoo Video Search Browsing by Source (Monday, April 10, 05:05 AM EST)
Yahoo Video Search Browsing by Source Christopher Akhavan, Yahoo! Video Search Editor, has made a post on the Yahoo Search Blog about an alternative form of searching Yahoo Video - by source. In order to view videos by source (eg. iFilm, vsocial, grouper.com), just perform a site specific search using the “site:domain.com” command with Yahoo Video Search. This [...]

Google Buys Student’s Search Algorithm (Monday, April 10, 04:52 AM EST)
Google Buys Student’s Search Algorithm The Haaretz Daily reports that Google recently acquired the text search algorithm of student Ori Alon, an Israeli student studying at Australia’s University of New South Wales. According to Haaretz, Microsoft and Yahoo were in the bidding for the search technology and now Alon works for Google. Google, Alon and the university [...]

Google Toolbar Turning Homepage into Google’s My Yahoo (Sunday, April 09, 11:56 AM EST)
Google Toolbar Turning Homepage into Google’s My Yahoo The Google (RSS) Reader, which I like, has met with mixed reviews and limited adoption (so far). Far more successful as a personalized home page and RSS reader is MyYahoo. (My belief, however, is that Yahoo! has yet to fully leverage the potential of MyYahoo!.) Google’s IE Toolbar has [...]

Yahoo Search Marketing Testing New Ad Ranking System (Friday, April 07, 02:58 PM EST)
Yahoo Search Marketing Testing New Ad Ranking System Yahoo is testing a new search advertising monetization model in Scandinavia with possible expansion into the UK this summer dubbed “Project Panama.” Panama will be Yahoo’s new answer to serving more relevant sponsored links to searchers by taking into account the relevancy of the ad to the search [...]

Yahoo, eBay and MSN Recruiting SEO Experts (Friday, April 07, 12:08 PM EST)
Yahoo, eBay and MSN Recruiting SEO Experts UK based Search Engine War has the goods on SEO recruitment efforts by MSN, eBay and Yahoo; which Martin Dinham feels is a sure sign that the perception of SEO is on the definite incline. You know something has changed in the perception enterprise search engine optimisation (SEO) when you [...]

Giant Eva Longoria Attacks Google Earth (Friday, April 07, 11:55 AM EST)
Giant Eva Longoria Attacks Google Earth Maxim Magazine and Google have pulled off one mammoth publicity stunt with a 75 x 110 foot Maxim cover featuring a bikini clad Eva Longoria spread out in the Nevada desert. The aim of the stunt is to get Eva’s body and Maxim’s 100th issue included in Google Earth satellite [...]

Search Engine Journal Booted From Yahoo Search!? (Friday, April 07, 10:49 AM EST)
Search Engine Journal Booted From Yahoo Search!? Last weekend Priyank Garg, the Product Manager of Yahoo Search, made a post to the Yahoo Search Blog about a new update in which he revealed, and I quote; “As a result, you may see some changes in ranking as well as some shuffling of the pages that are [...]

Google Autos : Local Car Shopping on Google (Friday, April 07, 03:31 AM EST)
Google Autos : Local Car Shopping on Google First real estate, now Google cars. This is Base based and very much like Real Estate. You get a “one box” tease on the Google.com SERP and then a click through to a Google Local-like map-based UI with refinement fields. (Content appears to be from a broader array [...]

Amazon cuts electronics commission by 50% (Monday, April 10, 11:58 AM EST)
Though times for the few remaining big guys that advertise with Amazon... With 1st of April (no Joke) the commission for electronics is now a flat 4% (before it was tiered and up to 9%) add the one day cookie and you see why people in the internal Amazon Forum are ...

MSN loves Google Calendar (Friday, April 07, 10:05 PM EST)
...or why else would MS suck up to those non existing pages...

New sports site gets broken PR (Saturday, April 08, 07:07 AM EST)
Reports of broken Google PageRank have been coming in from all over the web. My new site is a great example. With 49 weak backlinks listed in Yahoo, My NFL officiating site is PR 6. It should be a 2,...

Travel site's crazy PageRank? (Wednesday, April 05, 07:23 AM EST)
I have according to Yahoo, 738 links coming into my travel Amazon bookstore. The home page is PR3. However, my travel sites page is PR 4. That's so weird because I have so few links from other sites pointing at...

Cheap sports site (Tuesday, April 04, 11:04 AM EST)
Another new site. I bought this one cheap, 40 bucks. But since it had been made with yahoo sitebuilder I had to spend a good hour or so cleaning up the html. I wanted to cry when I saw that...

Flickr falling behind? (Saturday, April 08, 08:42 AM EST)

Yahoo! makes the FORTUNE 500 (Friday, April 07, 04:31 PM EST)

Yahoo! ranked as top search engine (Friday, April 07, 11:06 AM EST)

Yahoo! shows up at the top of the chart for search engines and Yahoo Mail grabs the top telecom/internet services site on a Weekly NetView and AdRelevance data study from Nielsen/NetRatings.

It's interesting to note that even with half the volume, the time spent on AOL is more than all others. Slow users? ;-)

This ranking is in sharp contrast to Yahoo!'s meager 21% share a year ago as measured by the same folks.

Yahoo! Mail Beta gets a new build - v0.3.1 Build 209.24 (Thursday, April 06, 09:18 AM EST)

Yesterday, Y! Mail Beta users started to see a new build of the mail client. This one has a version number of v0.3.1 Build 209.24 and is on server us.f308 at least.

No word yet on the changes (come on Mail Team - you did post to your blog yesterday), but so far it doesn't look to be a big difference - no new Calendar \ Notepad; no extra Views; no Spellcheck in Firefox.

If the members of the Y! Mail group find anything new (or Ryan Kennedy can get us a Build Change list), I'll update here.

My Web 2.0 rolls out new features (Thursday, April 06, 01:49 AM EST)

UPDATED 4/6/06 (see end of post)

My Web 2.0 is a fantastic tool for quickly and easily capturing web sites as you encounter them so you can just as easily relocate them and/or retrieve a cached (saved) version of the page (much more than just bookmarking). As an added benefit you can share these saved pages with "contacts" and they with you. You can also make your selections public so they can be shared with the world. The end result is a pool of pages of specific interest to you and your contacts which are easily searchable and retrievable using detailed descriptions and tagging.

The newest rollout adds new levels of control to My Web 2.0 which simplify and enhance the sharing opportunities while also introducing a new messaging system (think Y! 360 mail). According to a message sent from the My Web Team, "You can now add any My Web user as a contact without requiring them to accept your invitation. " "... just add them to your list of contacts. Once you add a contact, they'll receive a notification in our new messaging system."

New Yahoo! Mail beta being made available world-wide (Wednesday, April 05, 08:08 PM EST)

Market analyst sees through Yahoo! mudslinging fest (Wednesday, April 05, 02:55 PM EST)

Keep your eye on Yahoo!7 (Wednesday, April 05, 11:59 AM EST)

Yahoo!7 is a months-old partnership between Yahoo! and Australian media company, Seven. Seven has been known for its nationally popular print and television properties in Australia. The partnership with Yahoo! debuted in January and was quite obvious with the appearance of the Yahoo!7 logo in place of Yahoo!'s on the Yahoo! Home page for Australians and New Zealanders.

Once into the Yahoo!7 realm, it is nearly impossible to click to a page absent of Seven's presence - it's everywhere. It seems this is an equal partnership of print/television and Internet portal. Seven has moved in to the Australian portal (toothbrush and all) with links to all its other media sites. And it's own sites carry the Yahoo!7 logo predominately and amble links back to the Yahoo!7 properties. Seven's television programming also includes references to related pages inside of Yahoo!7.

According to this story, it's working. If it continues to be successful, don't be surprised to see more of the same in other countries. Yahoo! has built incredible infrastructure for media companies to hook their properties to as Yahoo!7 proves.

Yet another way for for Yahoo! to succeed. This furthers my belief that search ain't all there is to being successful on the Internet.

Yahoo! and RIM conspire to hurt your thumbs (Wednesday, April 05, 07:15 AM EST)

Yahoo! Answers giving away tickets to the World Cup (Tuesday, April 04, 07:41 PM EST)

The Yahoo! Answers team are running a sweepstakes where folks can 'score' (sorry - couldn't resist the bad pun) one of 16 pairs of tickets to the FIFA World Cup in Germany this year.

The contest runs through May 12th and you need to register first.

This is a fine way to encourage people to answer those questions. The contest is for US residents only, but the post mentions UK and Canada will be getting their own sweepstakes next week.

Yahoo! My Web 2.0 upgrade tomorrow (Tuesday, April 04, 07:13 AM EST)