As I've been noticing an increase in forum activity in RSS and blog threads, several people are asking how to promote their blog/RSS feed. There are many options to this as there are with SEO, but one useful resource concerns submissions to Blog and RSS feed search engines and directories:

Here's a list of blog and RSS search engine submit urls that might be useful:

Bloggernity.com
bloghop
Blogarama
Bloghub.com
Blog Search Engine
Blog Catalog
Blawg
Blog Universe
blogdex
Globe of Blogs
BlogMatcher
Technorati
Blogdigger
blogdex
Bloogz
Blogwise
Feedster
Daypop
Postami
About.com
Answers.com
Blog Rankings
RSS - Feeds4all.com
RSS - IceRocket
RSS - Search4RSS
RSS - Chordata
RSS - Nooked
RSS - RSS Network
blogBunch
RSS - Yahoo!

This is NOT a comprehensive list, it's just one of my bookmark categories. There are many others and you can also use paid services like RSS Submit.
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Marketing Sherpa has published their new guides to SEO firms and SEM agencies today.

As in last year's report, TopRank Online Marketing was the only Minnesota based SEO firm included.

If you're considering hiring an SEO firm or Paid Search Ad agency, these guides can help you:

1. Easily compare and contrast 126 SEO firms and 60 Paid Search Ad agencies (in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia & New Zealand) to pick the right one for your needs.
2. Calculate what your budget should be (before you start shopping for a provider).
3. Weed out the wanna-bes and inept firms & agencies that are trying to make a buck on the $4 billion search marketplace but don't really know what they are doing.
4. Understand the basics of how search marketing works.
5. Find out which SEO firms and Paid Search agencies your competitors & peers are using in the Client-name Index listing 1650 clients by name and firm.
   

126 SEO firms and 60 PPC agencies were profiled this year. Last year there was only one report profiling 121 Search Engine Optimization firms. I find it interesting that there are double the number of PPC agencies compared to SEO firms.

Last month I had the opportunity to ask Anne Holland, publisher of Marketing Sherpa, about the decision to split the guides. See: Marketing Sherpa Adds PPC Firm Buyer's Guide

Definitely worth checking these reports out.

Tags: SEO firms, Marketing Sherpa, search engine optimization, SEO blog
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The Multilingual Search blog run by my friend Andy Atkins-Krüger of Web Certain, has just added 4 new contributors.

"With contributors from Russia, Hungary, Denmark, Italy and the UK, and with contributors' with experience of moderating for such organisations as Webmaster World, Multilingual Search is the only place for the latest European and global industry news."

Well done Andy. If your business deals with search engine marketing in Europe, I would highly recommend subscribing to the Multilingual Search Feed.
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Steve Rubel notes that Google now offers a atom format feed of its press releases. His comment says it all: "It's more efficient for journalists when PR professionals post press releases themselves in a timely matter and simultaneously generate opt-in RSS alerts."

Danny Sullivan lists additional notes along with the feeds offered by Yahoo and MSN.

This is one of the most efficient applications of RSS and I think we'll see a lot more on this topic over the rest of the year. In fact, I just posted about using press release RSS feeds last week with a list of applications outside the distribution of the feed itself.

As a distribution format, RSS feeds are perfect for press releases, newsletters and article marketing. Benefits range from unfiltered and near real time updates to subscribers as well as a method of improving link popularity and search engine rankings.
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Aaron of SEO Book has updated his Link Harvester tool. It's a link analysis tool that uses the Yahoo API for conducting link research.

Donna from SEO Scoop offers a great description:

"It shows you unique domains linking to the site, including the IP address and unique C block addresses of the links. It also isolates links from .gov, .mil., .edu and .ac.uk domains as these links are likely to have greater impact. It includes links to archive.org, whois, and Google cache near each link. In addition, it allows importing to .csv (Excel) format. Put your competitor's url in the form and find out just how strong his backlinks really are, or use your own url and discover where your weakness lies."

I would definitely recommend checking this tool out as it makes link opportunity identification and competitive link research a snap.
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I noticed a Webmaster World thread this morning regarding the Google toolbar showing a grayed out PageRank for all sites.

Quite a bit of discussion on various search engine forums as noted by Search Engine Roundtable

- WebmasterWorld
- Search Engine Watch Forums
- DigitalPoint Forums
- Cre8asite Forums
- SEO Chat Forums
- HighRankings Forums
- SEOGuy Forums
- IHelpYou Forums
- WebWorkShop Forums
- SitePoint Forums

Also with some interesting coments by Aaron Wall, of SEO Book:

PageRank is cheap marketing for Google.

PageRank gives the average webmaster very little useful data while giving Google tons of marketing at a cheap cheap price, also inflating link costs for naive webmasters.

My bet is the usual outdated PageRank comes back soon, although they may take time on displaying the data again just to see what sort of chaos it causes.

I think Aaron is right on with this. We'll see if Google Toolbar page rank is dead or is Google just testing?

UPDATE:
Apparently the absence of the Google Toolbar PageRank values was due to a glitch: PageRank Back

Ah, the PageRank myth continues....
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Yahoo has added a new search tool to What's Next called Yahoo! Mindset. As in, "what was your mindset when you performed a search?". It allows you to dynamically filter the top 100 search results according to a scale of commercial to non-commercial sites.

From the Yahoo Search Blog:
"Mindset uses an intuitive slider in the interface, so you can set the bias for commercial vs. non-commercial results."

More info on Mindset from Yahoo Research Labs FAQ. Also, Yahoo has a forum setup for Mindset. (how cool is that?!)
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Earlier this month PRWeb issued a press release about increasing their RSS feeds from a few hundred to over 15,000. What's really interesting is the feature behind the increase in feeds that they've added which allows you to group press releases you've submitted into a RSS feed.

PRWeb has offered RSS versions of the press releases that it distributes for several years now. At a minimum I would consider them pioneers in the technology of press release distribution. With their new RSS service, a single feed for all releases in a group allows a company to benefit from RSS feed distribution without setting up a blog and without manually configuring the feeds. It's automatic.

Press Release RSS Feed Promotion Opportunities:

• The feed can be submitted ala pingomatic, RSS Submit or similar program to many RSS search engines and feed aggregators/directories. PRWeb already syndicates each release, "privately and through third party syndicates".
  
• The feed can be promoted on a blog, or any web page using the standard orange XML icon. Icons with links pre-configured for all the major feed readers could also be applied to the company web site or blog (Bloglines, My Yahoo, My MSN, Feedster, Pluck, NewsGator, etc).
• The feed can be added to an auto discovery tag on the company blog and/or company web site, so any RSS enabled browser (FireFox, Safari) will be able to automatically detect the feed and it can be subscribed to - even if there is no blog.
• It's RSS - the feed can be syndicated and easily published on other web sites or blogs.
  

PRWeb offers instructions on how you can implement RSS feeds for your press releases on their web site and how to discover what the feed url is. As an example, the feed url for my PR firm, Misukanis & Odden is: http://www.rsspad.com/rss2/377.xml.

You can also create a feed based on a search query. Example: http://newspad.prweb.com/rss.php?textQuery=search+engine+optimization. This could be an effective way to track competitor press releases through your feed aggregator.

Offering RSS feeds for groups of press releases creates some interesting opportunities for the distribution of optimized press releases and SEO.

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Rand at SEOmoz has put together a pretty good search engine optimization quiz. Topics cover on-page optimization, link building, SEO industry and search technology with 32 questions overall.

Some questions are basic, some are a bit tricky. A few questions really have nothing to do with SEO per se, just whether or not you've picked up trivia from certain forums and blogs. Most of the questions are pretty good though.

If you're in the SEO business, or work as a corporate SEO, I suggest you try out the SEO quiz.

There's even a leader board showing who scored what. Of course, Danny Sullivan is at #1.

Currently my score is in the top ten as "toprank" which is proof those old test taking strategies learned at University can still pay off. ;)
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I'm very pleased to mention that Online Marketing Blog was included in the "Blogs on Online Marketing" category for MarketingSherpa's 2nd Annual Reader's Choice Blog Awards.

I hold Marketing Sherpa in very high esteem as the single best resource for marketing case studies and practical marketing tips.

Please take a moment to vote for Online Marketing Blog in the Blogs on Online Marketing category.

Overall Categories:

General Marketing/Advertising blogs
Group Weblogs
Blogs on PR
B-to-b marketing blogs
Blogs on small business marketing
Blogs on online marketing
Blogs on niche marketing
Blogs on search marketing
Blogs in other languages

Some of my favorite blogs were also nominated. Please watch for them and vote:
AdRants
Seth Godin
Marketing VOX
PR Machine
B2B Lead Generation Blog
Duct Tape Marketing
Small Business Trends
Search Engine Lowdown
Search Engine Roundtable

Voting ends Wednesday June 8th, so tell your friends and vote today!
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Yahoo Recommends Movies - Press Release

Google Desktop Search now available in multiple languages - Google Blog

Retailers Search Spending Doubles - MediaPost
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If you work in the SEO business long enough, it's inevitable that one or more of your clients will get the bright idea to implement a site re-design or install a new CMS system which throws your previous search engine optimization efforts for a loop. There's a good article from corporate SEO PJ Fusco on this at ClickZ called, the Law of Unintended Consequence.

Common, and AVOIDABLE issues we often see include:

• Changing the url syntax of the site causing 404 not found errors when old page listings are clicked in search engine results
  
• Solution: Plan to keep the same urls or implement 301 permanent redirects from the old pages to the new
• Publishing a completely new design, sans any of the content optimization previously employed
• Solution: Implementing a brand new web design is like undertaking a new SEO project. Consult with your SEO during the web design phase to avoid losing everything previously accomplished

Communication is key with any vendor / client relationship. If you don't communicate, don't be surprised by unexpected results.
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The truth is, not all businesses need to have a blog. Blogevangelists might have you believe otherwise, but there are always enthusiasts that make blanket endorsements for up and coming technologies.

The back and forth between blog pundits and critics reminds me of all the noise people used to make in the mid nineties about web sites. There were as many critics on the need for a web site then as there are about blogs now. Half of all SMBs still don't have web sites today, but does anyone question the value of a web site?

Blogs are tools. People are keen to criticize things they don't understand. Most people that blog don't understand the potential uses of blogs and RSS, let alone blog critics.

Steve Rubel made some great points about the value of a business blog recently:

• Significant competitive advantage -you could become the loudest voice in a channel where your competitors are absent
• Press and consumers read blogs - either willingly (RSS/bookmarks) or unwillingly (Google); like it or not they influence purchases
  
• Blogging aint going away. The conversation is going to go on without you. Be there or be square
• Blogs are a cost-effective marketing tool that helps smaller and mid-sized companies generate more attention. Just look at Stonyfield Farms.

Applications for blogs as marketing/communication tools:

• Blogs are a great content management systems. With customization of templates, the line between web site and blog is blurred. The end user doesn't care.


• Most blog software automatically offers an additional distribution channel through RSS feeds. The use of blog software for company press release archives, newsletters and articles makes it easy for consumers and media to subscribe.
  


• A blog can gain visibility on both traditional search engines as well as the blogosphere. In fact, blogs are ideal for search engine visibility. Bring together fresh, themed content with proper HTML structure, lots of links and proper keyword usage and you have a search engine traffic magnet.


• Need proof? Search for "marketing blog". This blog is #1 on Google, #2 on Yahoo and #1 on MSN.
  

Does your business need a blog? Maybe, maybe not. IBM thinks so. Blogs are tools. Tools are only as good as the person using them.

The number of blog consultants and blog coaches popping up also reminds me of the number of web designers that appeared after FrontPage and similar WYSIWYG HTML editors became popular. Blogs like web sites, are easy to set up. Generating measurable results with a blog is another matter.

If you need help deciding whether there are worthwhile applications of blog technology for your online communications strategy, pick a blog consultant that can demonstrate experience, not just a collection of self-edifying blog posts.

Tags: blogging, business blogs, blog marketing, blog optimization, blog consultants
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Yahoo! Publisher's Guide to RSS - Includes how to use RSS on Yahoo!, how to submit and promote your RSS feed on Yahoo. There's a tip on how to track RSS feed subscribers and mention of the upcoming Yahoo Publisher Network where publishers will be able to display AdSense style ads. There is also a useful Publisher's RSS Help Center.

I highly recommend the book on RSS by MarketingStudies.net called "Unleash the Publishing and Marketing Power of RSS" if you want to know more advanced RSS marketing information.
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Bloglines CEO, Mark Fletcher, commented in the Business Week blog that they will be launching a better blog search engine this summer. When Bloglines was acquired by Ask Jeeves, a new blog search engine was one of the enhancements mentioned by Jim Lanzone, SVP Search Properties at Ask, so it's no surprise now to hear they're following through.

Blog Search Engines that I like to use:

Technorati
Findory
Feedster
PubSub
IceRocket
BlogPulse

I like various features offered by the current blog search engines, but I'm looking forward to what Ask/Bloglines will come up with.
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Jeremy Zawodny posts on the Yahoo Search Blog that Yahoo is offering a $5,000 incentive to come up with innovative uses of the Y!Q search tool. It's called the Y!Q Challenge.

Check out Yahoo News Tag Soup and other fun Yahoo hacks
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During the Google Factory tour yesterday Marissa Mayer pitched a personalization option for the Google home page. A Google blog post suggests the new portal looking, customization feature was developed as a way to assembled the various features of Google in one place: Gmail, news, weather, etc.

This initial version offers links to various Google services as well as RSS feeds from several major news sites (BBC, the New York Times, Slashdot, Wired). Some nice features include drag and drop editing and dynamic sizing.

Mayer commented, "We've seen that there were users who wanted more on their home page... and this is a way to give them more access to their information. I feel this is different my MyYahoo!. The fact that some people may say it looks like it's aimed at MyYahoo! was not the reason."

Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo makes some interesting observations on the similarity between the new Google personalization features and My Yahoo.

Yahoo and MSN have offered personalization features for quite a while. It looks like Google is following suit and moving more towards a portal.

"Universal RSS" support will be available in 1-2 months" and the initial version will not have ads although they may be added in the future, according to Mayer.
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Well I have to say this is pretty cool. Either Thursday or Friday this week the search engine optimization blog called, "Search Engine Smarts" for AllBusiness.com will go live. (thanks for that name idea Kristina)

I'll be in very good company and I hope I can keep up my end of the bargain with useful, hands on and practical posts on search engine optimization.

AllBusiness.com has recently signed agreements to provide content resources for About.com (a division of The NY Times) as well as entered into a deal with Yahoo! as the major content provider for the Yahoo! Small Business Center.

Another deal has been struck to provide content for SFGate.com the fourth most trafficked news site on the web.

Needless to say, these are exciting promotion opportunities for AllBusiness.com as well as the bloggers and subject matter experts providing content. More content syndication deals are sure to come.
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Google is making a download available today of it's desktop search tool for companies called: "Google Desktop Search for the Enterprise"

Google Desktop Search for the Enterprise has additional features including a series of installation, distribution, management, and security features that can be implemented according the specific needs of an organization.

Other features include the ability to index e-mail messages from IBM's Lotus Notes and integration with Google Search Appliance and Google Mini.

"Google will compete against established players such as X1 Technologies and Autonomy. It will also compete against Microsoft, who this week announced its intention to develop an enterprise desktop search tool, which should be available in beta form by the end of the year." via PCWorld.com

The consumer version of Google Desktop Search was launched about 8 months ago.
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I just received an email from the long dormant Google Friends group.

"We didn't plan on having such a long hiatus from this newsletter, and for that we apologize. Aside from other projects we've worked on lately, we've revamped this newsletter. Each month from now on you'll see an insider's roundup of Google tips, insights into our products, plus stuff that inspires us."

This discussion group was previously hosted with Yahoo Groups but moved last year. Now it's hosted with Google Groups (beta). If you want to keep up to date with happenings at Google you can subscribe to Google Friends here.
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Google Blog has announced their AdSense for Feeds (aff) program.

Best practices include:
Syndicate the full text of your articles.
Don’t include more than one ad unit per article.
Place the ad unit at the end of articles.
Include terms and conditions on the use of your feeds.

If you publish a feed with more than 100 subscribers, you can apply. I did.

Tag: Google AdSense
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There is speculation that Google is making some ranking changes. Some claim that it's nothing, while others are seeing big changes in their search engine placement. Over at Webmasterworld there is already a 10 page post talking about the movement.

Keep an eye on your rankings. There is talk that Google has re-categorized it's own directory and that is what is causing all the movement. Robho claims that they've seen a loss in the number of pages indexed by Google and Zygoot has seen a spike in traffic from Google.

It's too soon to say if it's anything major, however there are spotty reports of odd behavior.
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Yahoo today posted in their blog about Tag Soup du Jour From YSDN. It's a creation from the Yahoo! Search Developer Network (YSDN). What this shows you is how popular a tag is. The more it's being used, the bigger the font size. It's a quick overview of the most popular news stories on Yahoo News currently. Unfortunately it just grabs tags from Yahoo news at the moment, however these tag maps are popping up all over the internet. I was hoping that this was a Yahoo creation as the main search engines have pretty much ignored tagging. I'm hoping that Yahoo or Google can create a better, more relevant, searching system with tags someday.

What's a tag? A tag is a simple category name that is embedded into a link. Most popular in blogging as bloggers categorize their posts, photos, and links with any tag they want. Popular tagging site are Technorati, Del.icio.us, Flickr and Furl.
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Recent surveys of companies involved in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) by Jupiter Research imply there are changes in store for client/SEM agencyrelationships. Gary Stein posts a very good article pointing out reasons why - along with suggestions for agencies on what they can do.

I think this can apply to SEO firms and clients as well, although the timeframe for an appropriate implementation for a SEO project is much longer for SEM. Setting clear expectations at the outset of a client/agency relationship is key for productive engagements.

However, clients often change direction anyway. The most often cited reason for change in the Jupiter study was that the agencies were not proactive enough and cost.

Changing agencies is common and those that do not pay attention to clients will lose them. Another common occurrence is an agency change as a result of staff changes within the client company.

We've learned that it is essential to be very proactive in those situations. As soon as there is an inkling that your contact on the client side might be moving on or that they've left, schedule an account review with theirsuperior ASAP. Your work must hold up under scrutiny at any time.

It's critical for clients to have a relationship with someone on the agency side that can serve as a client advocate and is empowered to handle issues from routine reporting to putting out fires. Account managers are accountable and can develop a rapport with the client that reinforces long
term relationships.

Another good point from the article mentions strategy. Bring more to the table than implementation. Provide strategic direction for the client and be proactive about improvements. Demonstrate to your client the value your agency brings on a regular basis through active communication of results inalignment with the client's overall strategy.

A recent article by Phoenix at Search Engine Roundtable points out issues with Big SEO and True SEO firms. There are several large SEO firms with a "churn and burn" mentality, signing up as many clients as they can with aggressive sales teams. The way these larger SEO firms treat clients on an ongoing basis by over promising on the sales side and under delivering on the implementation is certainly cause for dissatisfaction and churn.

Setting clear expectations starts with the sales process through the proposal and continues with the account manager, ongoing reporting and proactively demonstrating value. Clients, agencies and the industry as awhole is better served.

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Gary Price from Search Engine Watch posted a nice collection of search related papers from the WWW 2005 Conference in Japan. It's not my belief that you need to read all of this to be great at SEO, but good information is priceless with algorithmic search. Gary had previously posted this collection of papers regarding search engine spam, or at least some theories about identification of it.

I am sure there will be some review and analysis within the search marketing community on some of these. I know I'll be taking a look and posting here what I find useful for organic SEO. Of particular interest to me outside of implications for SEO, are news search papers. Here's an interesting news search site created for testing and implementing improved news search methodology: ComeToMyHead

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MSN blog posted an entry with links to the start.com/1 RSS aggregator and start.com/2 bookmarking tools. I first noticed these earlier in the year and it was interesting to see what would come out of it. The urls have been dead for a while but are now back online.

As a web based RSS feed aggregator, start.com/1 actually works pretty well - allowing you to add individual RSS feeds or import an OPML file easily or you can click on the preselected feeds on the left that are organized according to tabbed categories along the top.

However, to "start" using it, you need to click the "show" link. I don't know why that is, the options should display first.

This version works a lot better than the first time I used it - it's fast and easy to use, but there's nothing particularly special about it. Light years behind bloglines.com as far as web based feed aggregators go.

The start.com/2 bookmark or favorites tool is significantly improved since the last time I viewed it. It will save any feeds you added in the RSS aggregator too. You can add favorites from IE and you can also use a favlet to add as you browse. It's sort of a bookmarks meets RSS aggregator type of tool.
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Barry at Search Engine Roundtable has been running a search engine relevancy challenge through a new search site he's set up called RustySearch. Search results come anonymously from the major search engines and you can rate each on relevancy. Over 5,000 searches have been rated so far. Here's the official results page. You might be surprised at the results so far. I'm not.

Visit RustySearch now and help out by rating searches to see which search engine provides the most relevant results.
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eMarketer has issued a new report on blogging for businesses: "The Business of Blogging"

The report "looks at the implications of the blogging phenomenon for businesses, scans the corporate world's blogging activity, and offers recommendations for business users."

Interestingly, "just 4% of major US corporations have blogs available to the public — and even fewer produce active sites with the link and feedback features that most readers associate with true blogs."

The rate of blog readership in general is not growing as fast as it was during the political race last year, but as a business communication tool, business blog creation and readership is definitely growing. Read Anita Campbell's post, 10% of Small Business Marketing Plans Include Blogs where she describes a study by HP on small business owners.

The number of business blog consulting services is also increasing. My company, TopRank Online Marketing offers a full range of blog marketing services from blog optimization to content linking programs to RSS marketing.

Several other excellent business blog consultants include John Jantsch and Paul Chaney who I will be blogging with over at Allbusiness.com.

Tags: business blogs, blog consulting, blog marketing
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There has been a lot of talk in the web world about RSS lately and there are lots of web sites that tell you what it is, however I'm going to try and explain it in an easy to understand way.

RSS means "Really Simple Syndication" which is basically a way for a web site or blog to provide content in a standard format that you can subscribe to using a RSS reader. There are hundreds of RSS readers out there for Mac and PC. Some are based online, like Bloglines, others are programs you run from your computer. [Mac Readers] [PC Readers] [More Readers] Some free, some cost a little. I use Sage RSS reader as part of my FireFox web browser. It's free and works on both Mac and PC.

Once you have picked a RSS reader, now you can add feeds. I'm going to stick with Sage for the rest of this article, so if you have a different reader, read their instructions on how to add and read feeds. It's also good to note that I customized the look and feel of Sage with some help from hicksdesign.

With Firefox and Sage it's easy to add feeds. While you are navigating around the web, Firefox will automatically detect feeds associated with a web site or blog. When it finds one, an orange icon will appear in the lower right side of your browser. This icon shows up because Firefox comes with a built in RSS reader. I don't use it because it's not as handy as Sage. When you see that icon, you have the ability to subscribe to the site. Subscribing is like bookmarking. You are saving a link in your browser for easy access later. You may also see a 'syndicate this site' link on the page or 'RSS Feed' link. Maybe an orange XML button appears. Those are all good indicators that a site has a feed you can subscribe to.

To add a feed to the Sage RSS reader you just open the reader by going to the Tools menu and selecting Sage. Then, you hit the magnifying glass icon (or + icon in my screen shot) to discover the feeds on this site. A window will pop up with probably 2 or more feed choices. Pick one, it doesn't matter, and hit the 'add feed' button. You are now subscribed.



Once subscribed. Just click on the feed in the sidebar and you'll see a slimed down version of the site's content. Want to read more about the article? Just click on it's title to visit that information on the site. Want to visit the site? Just click on the site's name while viewing the feed and you'll be taken there.

Now we are getting to the good stuff. Lets say you add 12 feeds to your Sage RSS reader. If you want to check and see what sites have new content, just open the Sage sidebar and hit the refresh icon. It'll then cycle though all your feeds and bold which ones have new content since you last visited them. You no longer have to visit a site to see what's new. In just seconds Sage looks at all the feeds and tells you what has new and updated content. This is a major time saving tool and one I can no longer live without.

That's the basic intro to RSS feeds. Hopefully you understand more than when we started.

Tags: rss, syndication, rss reader, sage,

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http://www.golexa.com
Offers an impressive array of data on each search result including: Google PR, Alexa and Yahoo rank, link popularity on 6 engines, keyword density, spider view, and lots more. Via threadwatch.

Tags: SEO Tools, search engine optimization
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I'll be honest, I had not heard of Dodgeball.com before and they offer the service here in Minneapolis/St. Paul. Google has acquired Dodgeball as of today. Basically, it's a mobile social networking service using your text-messaging-enabled cell phone/pda/whatever.

Here's a description of Dodgeball from New York Magazine:

"When Dodgeball users "check in" at a given locale by sending out a text message, it goes to all their preselected friends, as well as any friends of friends within a ten-block radius. A photo is sent along with the alert-which helps with identifying near strangers. Introductions are made, beer is poured, and then hookups can occur-casually, and in a low-pressure environment, all under the guise of knowing someone in common. It's Friendster, except in real time and in the real world."

Now what is Google going to do with them?

Tags: Google, Dodgeball
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A recent article in InfoWorld references an interview with Blogger's Biz Stone regarding enhancements to the Blogger service.

Updates may include:

• Enterprise blogging
• Create private groups
  
• Image uploading directly to blogger.com
• Integration with Gmail

The article also mentions efforts made to improve the performance of blogger as well as the recent moblogging enhancement.

There are a lot of enhancements I'd love to see in blogger. Fortunately, I've been able to use 3rd party tools to compensate including Haloscan for trackback, Bloglet for email subscriptions, Feedburner for an RSS feed and Hitslink for site visitor statistics. Another welcome improvement would be the ability to associated posts with one or more topical categories.

With enhancements like these, I would be a lot more inclined to recommend Blogger as a blogging platform.

Tags: Google, Blogger, Gmail, Blogs, Blogging
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Yahoo is the latest company to create their own music store. Yahoo's music store offers unlimited downloads of 1 million songs for $6.99 per month or $60 for an annual subscription. However, you don't own the songs. You can't burn them to a CD or even play them if you cancel your subscription. If you want to own your songs, it's an extra 79 cents per song.

The Yahoo music service will be directly challenging iTunes, Rhapsody and Napster with thier subscription based music store. It sounds like a better, cheaper, deal than Napster, however I don't believe it can compare to iTunes, non-subscription, non-restrictive service.
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The New York Times is changing with the times and updating their Business Day section.

"On Mondays, Business Day will focus on media and marketing news, with technology included as it relates to those industries. David Carr will write a column on new media; the world of blogs will be covered as a regular feature."
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Search Engine Relevancy Challenge - Search RustySearch and rate to see which search engine is most relevant. Early results show a dead heat.

DNS issues bring Google.com down via SEW - Only 15 minutes, but not the 15 minutes of fame Google was probably looking for.

Yahoo! case study indicates display ads influence search behavior via ClickZ - Results imply positive effect on both natural and PPC listing clickthrough rates.

Tags: RustySearch, Google, Yahoo
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Rocketboom Vlog. Most recent entry includes an interview with Microsoft blogrockstar, Robert Scoble right here in Minneapolis. Nice interview talking about video blogging.
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ScrappyGoo via Google Blogscoped - Lets you search Google News and generate a unique RSS feed of your results.

Tags: Google News RSS, ScrappyGoo
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Search Engine Spam Workshop via dirson - Reps from Google, Yahoo!, MSN Search, Ask.com and IBM will discuss topics ranging from TrustRank to SpamRank. Post links to some very interesting reading.

Web Spam Taxonomy, by the same researchers as 'TrustRank'
An Analysis of Factors Used in Search Engine Ranking
Web Spam, Propaganda and Trust
Pagerank Increase under Different Collusion Topologies
Cloaking and Redirection: A Preliminary Study
Optimal Link Bombs are Uncoordinated
Blocking Blog Spam with Language Model Disagreement
SpamRank -- Fully Automatic Link Spam Detection

To be held in Japan at WWW2005

Tag: Search Engine Spam
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Google's Blogger.com now offers a feature called Blogger Mobile that allows you to create and update a blog with photos and text from your mobile phone, PDA, etc. More details on the Google Blog

Tags: Blogger Mobile, Moblogging, Google
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I just read an article on Wired about Zabasearch. It's pretty much a comprehensive public records search engine that draws from over 29 thousand public databases.

One the one hand, it's useful for those rare times when you have to recall where you've lived in the past 10 years or if you need to do a background check on a prospective employee.

On the other hand, it makes information easily available that you might not have wanted others to see. An example from the Wired article brought up scenarios involving stalkers and abusive domestic situations, etc.

Zabasearch does not maintain any of the data, they access it and display results through their search engine. If there are inaccuracies, they need to be corrected through the source, usually government records. There are many other people search services out there but Zabasearch seems to have a lot more data.

Tag: People Search
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These folks are doing some great work for non-profits. Check them out:

The Taproot Foundation is a volunteer organization that builds teams of marketing and creative services professionals, human resources professionals, and information technology professionals to work on projects for local nonprofits. Taproot let's you "give what you know" so that you can make the strongest impact on your local community while networking and growing professionally.

Taproot Foundation has new volunteer projects – called Service Grants – launching in the next several months in New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area. We are seeking experienced Web professionals to volunteer their skills on our upcoming Website volunteer projects - called Service Grants. Talented Project Managers, Marketing Managers and Designers can apply with us to use their skills to help local nonprofits in the New York City and San Francisco Bay Area to develop websites to support their initiatives.

Visit the Taproot Foundation web site for more information.

Tags: Taproot Foundation, Volunteer
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Yahoo is apparently developing an audio search engine which is to be launched in a few months.

"The specialty engine will let people search on an artist's name, for example, and retrieve all the available songs from other music services, as well as album reviews and band information from Yahoo Music." via CNET News.com

Sounds like good news for Yahoo as they look for more ways to generate ad sales revenue.

Tag: Yahoo Audio Search
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Maybe a little off topic, but very interesting. Apple has announced Bonjour, formerly called Rendezvous, for Windows.

"With Bonjour for Windows, you can easily network your Windows computer to an existing network or create instant networks of multiple devices without any additional network configuration."

You can get more information and download Bonjour from Apple's site.

Tags: apple, bonjour, network, rendezvous
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The Google blog switched to a blogspot address today. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/

Everything is being redirected and they've added a blogroll. Interestingly, Google switched to the blogspot.com url but there are no blogspot.com blogs in the blogroll.
(I think I set a new record for using "blog" in a sentence).

Tag: Google Blog
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Yahoo is taking Yahoo video out of beta and also announced alliances with CBS News, MTV, Reuters and others today.

Earlier this week, Google announced partnerships with the Discovery Channel and CNN and adding 14 new channels.

Why does Yahoo seem to be playing catchup with Google on new feature/service announcements lately?

Broadband acceptance is driving the push towards video search. The question is, how to monetize it?

More coverage at SearchEngineJournal, News.com and BetaNews

Tags: Video Search, Yahoo Video, Google Video
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Anita Campbell at Small Business Trends posted recently about a recent survey conducted by HP. Some interesting findings include:

"Ten percent of small business owners in a recent study reported that they have included blogs in their marketing plans. And 16% plan to invest in blogs over the next 2 to 3 years."

Which is pretty interesting considering less than half of all businesses have web sites. Additional comments from Anita on Blogs and SEO:

"SEO firms also figure in this mix. As the number of business blogs grows, it becomes harder to stand out. Search engine optimization (SEO) for blogs will become important just as it is for websites."

In fact, SEO is important for blogs right now. This blog ranks #1 on Google and #2 on Yahoo for "marketing blog" in part, because of SEO. To be on the same search results page as Dana VanDen Heuvel, Seth Godin and John Jantsch is pretty amazing.

Not only are small businesses considering blogs in their marketing strategy, but BtoB publishers are pondering it over at American Business Media's Spring Meeting. BtoB Magazine posted an article that basically says publishers acknowledge the potential value of blogging but are taking a cautious approach.

The folks over at BusinessWeek are not cautious about blogging at all with articles like, "Blogs Will Change Your Business" that offers a pretty thorough overview of where blogs fit in.

Love 'em or hate 'em, blogs aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

Tags: blogs, blogging, blog marketing, marketing blogs, business blogs
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Google launched Google Web Accelerator today. It's an add-on to Internet Explorer or Firefox on a PC and supposedly speeds up the rendering time of web pages. It even comes with a built in timer to tell you how much time you've saved over all. It shaves just seconds or even milliseconds off rendering time, but it adds up after a while.

How does Google Web Accelerator work? According to Google...

Google Web Accelerator uses various strategies to make your web pages load faster, including:

* Sending your page requests through Google machines dedicated to handling Google Web Accelerator traffic.
* Storing copies of frequently looked at pages to make them quickly accessible.
* Downloading only the updates if a web page has changed slightly since you last viewed it.
* Prefetching certain pages onto your computer in advance.
* Managing your Internet connection to reduce delays.
* Compressing data before sending it to your computer.

You can try out Google Web Accelerator for yourself, and get more information about it from the Google Web Accelerator page.

Tags: Google, IE, Firefox, Web Accelerator
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Barry from Search Engine Roundtable is covering the Search Engine Strategies Conference in Toronto. Be sure to visit his SEO blog for posts about the sessions he's attending.

So far he's posted on the Organic Listings Forum and Cleaning Up Spam & Other Messes.

Update: Here's a link to a summary of all the SES Toronto sessions Barry attended

Tags: SEO, SES, search engine optimization
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Urchin On Demand Price Drop - Price reduction from $495 to $199/mo.

Specific benefits of Urchin On Demand:

• Better Intelligence: Urchin helps site owners and advertisers understand how visitors find, navigate and convert on their websites.
• Higher Conversions: Urchin tracks visitors from all online sources including search engines, natural links, and any variety of paid advertising campaigns such as paid banners, keywords, emails, etc.
• Actionable Data: The service provides many reports designed to help users visualize their data and take quick action including: Funnel Analysis, Website Overlays, GeoTargeting, Ecommerce Reporting, Campaign Comparisons, Keywords Suggestion Tools, etc. - via
SERoundtable

Interestingly I had just traded emails last week with Barry from SERoundtable and Brett Crosby of Urchin about Urchin's conversion tracking abilities. We're looking forward to implementation, particularly with the new pricing model.

Tags: Google, Urchin, web analytics software
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I've signed on to write for Lockergnome's new Internet Marketing channel recently.

"Read this channel for the latest information on internet marketing strategies and processes, search engine marketing, e-mail marketing, online public relations and blog marketing. Search engine industry news, resources and tactics will be posted daily from some of the top experts in the industry."

There are just a few posts so far, but definitely check it out. My posts will concentrate on search engine marketing /optimization and blog marketing drawing on 7+ years of marketing on the Internet. There are other contributors that will cover the gamut of internet marketing strategies as well. Go ahead and subscribe to the Internet Marketing feed.

Tags: Internet Marketing, Lockergnome
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Several good articles have been posted recently on the pros and cons of PPC versus natural search engine optimization. One from SearchViews blog, "SEM vs. SEO: Strengths & Synergies" and another from Internet Retailer, "Search Engine Marketing: Paid Or Natural?" caught my attention. What emerges from these articles jivves with my own experience - a combined strategy yields the most impressive results.

However many companies and agencies rely almost exclusively on paid search or PPC. While there are pros and cons for SEO and SEM, and one might be more appropriate for some businesses than others, such a strategy is questionable. A disparity exists between budgets allocated for paid search marketing and consumer search behavior. Consider these facts:

• In 2004 $4.087 billion was spent on search marketing
• 81.8% went to paid placement (PPC, CPC) programs
• 12.0% went to organic search engine optimization
• 4.4% went to paid inclusion
  

• Studies by Enquiro and iProspect reveal:
• 60.5% to 70.0% of users trust organic results
• 30% to 39.5% of users trust paid results
  

• Six out of seven search engine referrals to commercial web sites come from organic search, according to research by Jupiter’s Eric T. Peterson.

Despite user's preference for organic or natural search results, the majority of budgets have been allocated to paid search. I would invite companies to consider a combined approach using the advantages of each tactic for both short and long term benefit rather than dedicating budgets and resources based solely on one tactic.

One thing is certain, search marketing is hot right now for online advertising and organic search engine marketing is a powerful compliment to a paid search strategy.

Tags: SEO, SEM, PPC, Paid Search, Search Marketing, Search Engine Optimization
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An iMediaConnection article this morning points out research from JupiterResearch overviews how increasing numbers of young adults use the Internet for news.

Here's a distribution of top news web sites from comScore for March 2005:

Total Internet Population 164,263

General News 93,449
MSNBC 26,953
Yahoo! News 26,099
AOL News 24,009
CNN 23,317
IBS Network 10,467
New York Times Digital 8,744
Knight Ridder Digital 8,372
USATODAY Sites 7,234
ABCNEWS DIGITAL 6,996
Tribune Newspapers 6,890
BBC Sites 6,747
Google News 6,700
CBS News 4,723
FOXNEWS.COM 4,692
Advance Publications, Inc 4,456

Looks like a good case for Online PR to me. There's a huge opportunity within News Search. In my experience most public relations firms are not incorporating Internet News Search into their clients PR and media relations programs. Of course I am biased, since my public relations firm does provide clients with online and offline PR and media relations services. However, time and time again when we meet with our clients' interactive shops, ad agencies or PR firms, they provide a blank look when we explain News Search as part of a marketing and brand building strategy. When we provide case studies and data the tune changes.

What I'm curious about is how many mobile devices are used for reading news and what the trends are there.

Tags: News, Internet News, Online PR
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Here's a cool tool for visually comparing Yahoo and Google search results: yahoo! vs. google

Lots of other fun Yahoo hacks here

Tags: Yahoo hacks, Yahoo, Google
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