A great list of 20+ reasons every blogger should be guest posting.

Step-by-step plan to contact and convince potential high-authority link partners to link back to your website...including the exact words you might want to use.

Finding your perfect affiliate program is tough: more often than not this is done by plenty of testing. However the only problem with that method is lost time: you can't test each and every affiliate program that seems to be related to your niche because this means that you will spend months in testing before you start accumulating income.

The FBI has announced it arrested a man on Thursday for allegedly selling hacked cable modems that provided free Internet access. Matthew Delorey, 26, of New Bedford, Massachusetts, is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of wire fraud. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence on each count of 20 years in...

Update: According to Nick O'Neill at AllFacebook, there is a "slight privacy oversight" (which he also says is "not a minor bug") that lets users view the latest apps that their friends have been using. He notes that Facebook will probably resolve the issue before full launch. Original Article: Facebook will be...

Domain name registrar and web hosting provider GoDaddy appears to be really making a name for itself based on controversial Super Bowl ads. In fact, one could ponder whether or not the general public would have such a distinct idea of what GoDaddy even is, if it were not for its Super Bowl controversies. Something tells me that's just fine with...

A new study commissioned by Microsoft is about, of all things, googling yourself. I guess that if someone had used the phrase “binging yourself” there may be laws about that in many states but the irony of this is not lost on me. At any rate, the study shows that there aren’t as many people keeping an eye on what their personal online...

Is this a case of the pot calling the kettle black, or a heart-warming story of a bad guy that’s now fighting evil? Social network Tagged.com has been the subject of many email spamming complaints in its life. Now the company has been awarded $210,975 in a default judgment against a spammer. In a ruling issued earlier this week, a U.S....

YouTube recently started experimenting with renting video content as a potential new way for content producers to make money, which led to the question: will YouTube be the place to rent movies in the future? YouTube kicked this initiative off by offering a few independent films from Sundance, an experiment which some saw as a failure, but...

Americans who play online games like "World of Warcraft" and "EverQuest" generated $2.8 billion in subscription revenue in 2009, and are on track to pay an annual $5 billion in game subscriptions by 2015, according to a new report by market research firm Pike & Fischer. The number of online gaming paid subscribers, which...

The best ad - from the perspective of both users and advertisers - is often something that will immediately let the two sides connect.  Google's taken an intelligent step forward, then, by allowing businesses to include clickable phone numbers in their mobile ads. This should save people who want to call companies a fair amount of time they...

Google has introduced a new feature for its mobile Image Search offering. The feature is "Popular Images," and lets Android and iPhone users browse popular images (go figure). The Popular Images feature comes in the form of a link just under the search box on the Google Image Search page. When clicked, it brings up a categorized list...

Update: Google has announced that annotations are now available for all accounts after a phased roll-out. Original Articles: Google announced a new set of features for Google Analytics at SES Chicago. New features include annotations, custom variables in advanced segments, custom variables in custom reports, a new analytics tracking code...

eBay announced  that starting March 30, it will be "lowering the cost of selling for sellers of all sizes," a notion that is heavily disputed. The company claims it will introduce its lowest insertion fees ever, and that may be true for the lowest-priced auctions, but many are claiming prices are higher. Just read through the...

After reading Lee’s post earlier this week on how to source content on Twitter, I started to think about the homemade guacamole I made for the football playoff games last weekend. Stick with me here. With my guacamole, I carefully strategize on the right mix of each ingredient to achieve the perfect flavor and consistency. Not enough lemon and...

Award winning BBC comedy personality, Peter Serafinowicz, has released a video in which he shows the “latest revolution from Apple, the iPad”. What did you think of the video? Let us know. I’m sure by now you’ve figured out this isn’t the real iPad… well I guess it could be as this one doesn’t...

On January 27th Steve Jobs unveiled Apples latest “it” product, the iPad. Essentially the iPad “fills the gap” in between smartphones and laptops. One question remains to be answered, is there a need for a device to bridge the gap in between the two technologies? We're not sure yet, but there is one thing we know, the iPad...

If you are aware of SAS, a company located in Cary, NC then you understand or have a need to understand business analytics. As the largest privately-held software company in the world, SAS often flies under the radar because what they do isn’t sexy. Instead, it is necessary. Necessary business functions don’t get the same attention or play...

I'll bet this is one of the best SEO reads you'll see for a long time. Some real great information and ideas on things like algorithm changes, penalties/filters, Google sitelinks and so much more.

Don't be shocked if one or more shrines to Windows 7 are erected in Redmond today.  Microsoft released its quarterly earnings report this afternoon, and thanks in large part to the new operating system, the company's numbers look quite good. Analysts thought Microsoft might report something like $17.84 billion in revenue and earnings per...

We’re sure you’ve either seen or heard about “General” Larry Platt’s American Idol audition, Pants On The Ground. Not sure how you could’ve missed it, as it’s been everywhere… it was even sung by the Minnesota Vikings after they defeated the Dallas Cowboys during the NFL playoffs. Pants On The...

Amazon.com today reported strong fourth quarter profits that beat Wall Street analyst's estimates. The online retailer said its net income increased 71 percent to $384 million in the fourth quarter, or 85 cents per share, compared with $225 million, or 52 cents per share in the fourth quarter of 2008. Net sales increased 42 percent to $9.5...

If you are one of those people still skeptical about the business uses of social media, you may be interested to know that Google's Social Search is no longer just an experiment. Though it does have the beta tag on it, it is now mainstream. This is something we've all known would come sooner or later, but now it's here. Have you established...

Politicians are perhaps not the best people to talk to about privacy; they intentionally thrust themselves into the spotlight, and can be responsible for annoying commercials and phone calls that bother the rest of us at home.  Still, Facebook arguably accomplished something today by discussing privacy with six politicians and the CEO and of...

What do you know? Dynamic Logic’s 2009 Ad Reaction (PDF) survey shows that consumers may not hate social media ads after all. A series of surveys took a look at the popularity of social networking as well as ad reception across various media. The December 2009 survey of 2000 US adults found that 59% were involved in social networking and...

Google's made an announcement regarding Unicode, and believe it or not, there's something for everyone here.  Programmers should be interested to know that Unicode is becoming more popular at a rapid pace.  Normal Google users, meanwhile, will be happy to learn that searches should now turn up additional useful results. Let's start with...

The Federal Communications Commission recently began an inquiry into exorbitant early termination fees in mobile phone carriers’ contracts. The investigation began when Verizon raised its early termination fee to $350 (from $175) for smartphones. Now the FCC is making the inquiry formal and full-blown—they’re asking the four...

Bing said today it has added new features to make it easier for users to search for and find financial information. Bing says it has developed a "stock and funds pages" which covers most U.S. stocks and funds. The Bing Search Blog offers more details. "To see the stocks and funds you are interested in simply enter a ticker in the...

Although Nexus One sales estimates haven't exactly blown everybody's minds so far, it seems that the cell-phone-you-can-only-buy-from-Google experiment is going to continue.  Motorola's co-CEO announced today that his company is working on device for it. According to Scott Moritz, co-CEO Sanjay Jha said while discussing Motorola's Q4...

The latest SEO tool is not an automated submission device or some web page analyzing script.  It’s the thesaurus on your desktop.  No thesaurus?  Better get one soon.  Google has just announcedthat it has made great advancements in reading synonyms.

Search engine firm Startpage, and its E.U. brand, Ixquick, has released a new proxy service that allows Internet users to surf the web in privacy. The proxy lets users browse websites anonymously, without sharing any private, personally identifiable information to the websites they view. When users conduct a search on Startpage they will see a...

Discovery; where SEO starts… Long before you start to worry about actually ranking content, you need to get it into the index. And of course, to do that, your content needs to be found. In the world of information retrieval this is, appropriately enough, known as ‘discovery’. This in itself can be known as a few things including ‘data...

Maktoob may not be a site with which many American search experts are familiar, and similarly, Yahoo's name probably isn't something Arabic-speaking individuals are used to seeing on a daily basis.  But an introduction of sorts has occurred, as Yahoo Search is now powering Maktoob, which is the largest online Arabic-language community. Yahoo...

The iPad announcement took two months to build up, so it's not going away in one day. Today's news is dominated by Monday morning quarterbacking around the device, and so far, the fanboys and tech blogosphere are, by and large, not pleased. The image at left represents a few of the stories I've been reading across the web. I've filed them away in...

If you know Tamar Weinberg, you know, she knows, social media. If you don’t know Tamar Weinberg, then when I tell you she’s the community and marketing manager for Mashable–the #1 social media blog in the world–you’ll believe that she knows social media. So, you’ll probably want to jump on this opportunity to...

Online shoppers experience more website slow downs and other problems completing transactions during popular shopping periods when traffic to retail websites peaks, according to a new survey by Equation Research conducted on behalf of web performance firm Gomez. At stake is the $1,050 that each online shopper spends annually, according to the...

Simply put, there are no shortcuts. If you want to get Wiki links for yourself or your clients you have to put in work. Here are some great examples of how (and how not) to get yourself sniffed out.

Here’s are some metrics that should concern those inside of Twitter: The number of new users per month is down 20% since its peak in July 2009. The average Twitter user has just 27 followers, down from a peak of 42 80% of Twitter users have tweeted fewer than 10 times The percent of active Twitter users is down to just 17% The data comes...

Last year, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada investigated Facebook as a result of several complaints.  Then the Privacy Commissioner made some recommendations, Facebook followed them, and all in all, both sides remained quite friendly.  Only now another probe's been launched, and the privacy advocate sounds less patient...

Barnes & Noble has acknowledged it has received a subpoena from New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo for information concerning an investigation into online retailers who link customers to discount clubs that charge hidden fees. The world's largest bookseller said it wants to stress to customers it is not one of the retailers who...

Today, January 28th, is variously recognized as the Feast Day of Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Julian's Day.  It's Data Privacy Day, too (or Data Protection Day in Europe), and to celebrate this last occasion, Google has published its Privacy Principles. Google has five Privacy Principles, and does indeed consider them important enough to...

Things might be looking up for Yahoo, which just posted its best quarter since Carol Bartz took the reins a year ago. They earned $153 million (11 cents per share) in Q4—a huge improvement over the same quarter last year, where they saw a loss of $303 million (22 cents per share). And Yahoo might have even done better, if it weren’t for...

It’s rare that Google gets trumped on news but with all the Apple iPad (insert your favorite disgusting nickname here) hoopla from yesterday the announcement that Google’s social search is now in beta for all to use kinda slipped by. After a little reading on the subject there may be a good reason for this. In other words, Google maybe...

All of the talk of paywalls for online content that gets the bulk of the attention by the ‘press’ is focused mainly on large publications like the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. These publications have international readership and have significant influence when it comes to coverage of the major events in the world as well as in...

Welcome to a new BIGLIST review of SEO blogs. While it’s by no means a requirement for blogs to post daily or even every week to provide useful content to readers, it does take at least 1 post every 2 weeks to be included in the BIGLIST. We’re seeing a shift with many blogs to posting less frequently and yet most of those bloggers...

As we discussed before, Internet-ready vehicles were one of the more interesting themes throughout the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. One vehicle in particular that WebProNews got an up-close look at was the 2011 Ford Super Duty, which the company refers to as a "contractor's dream." Checking out the truck, it's...

Twitter claims not to be taking an active role in the dispute, but it's definitely applauding developers who try to make Twitter.com available in China and Iran.  Ev Williams endorsed workarounds and rejected compromises while speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos. According to John Gapper, Williams said, "We are partially...

RDFa, which stands for Resource Description Framework in attributes, is a W3C recommendation, which adds a set of attribute level extensions to XHTML for embedding rich metadata within web documents. While not everyone believes that W3C standards are incredibly necessary to operate a successful site, some see a great deal of potential for search...

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said today his office is investigating 22 online businesses that deceptively link consumers to fee-based membership programs that charge unauthorized fees for discount offers. The investigation found online shoppers are unknowingly directed to a membership program seller's website that is separate from the...

Forget the iPad, today Google is taking another step toward its stated goal of "making search more social." There's a lot of goodness in here, in terms of features and approach, but it's just silly to pretend you can do any of this without directly addressing the 400 million-person elephant in the room called Facebook. Put simply: I can't figure...

Two years ago, Google's Chrome browser didn't exist.  Now, it might be the best browser available.  New test results claim that it beats all competitors by a significant amount, at least in terms of speed. Lifehacker's Kevin Purdy recently put Firefox 3.5.4, Firefox 3.6, Google Chrome 4.0.249.78 (which is considered stable), Google...

Update: Google is now showing suggestions for "Islam is". They can be seen in the screenshot below. Original Article: Every now and then, someone spots an oddity in Google's suggestions. Some are funny. Some are disturbing, and some are just weird. Alex Wilhelm at The Next Web has discovered an interesting behavior in Google...

Thanks to a new deal, Bing's results for local businesses should soon get much better.  A report's indicated that Localeze, which specializes in local search, is going to provide something like 14 million business listings for Bing Local and Bing 411 to use. Leena Rao wrote earlier today, "As part of the deal, Bing will use Localeze's...

People with perfect memories and/or senses of direction are excused from reading this article.  Everybody else may be pleased to know that Google's introduced a version of personalized suggestions on Google Maps. Can't remember exactly what street your father's favorite cigar shop is on?  Forget the last couple digits of a casual...

The value of social media to business and Internet marketing is often hard to determine. But Facebook would like to help. Yesterday at OMMA Social, Facebook’s direct response solutions manager Brian Boland announced a conversion tracker tool from the most popular social network. Designed to complement Facebook Connect, the tool is already in...

Steve Jobs took the stage in San Francisco today to announce what he referred to as a "magical, truly revolutionary product." After talking up Apple's history and how many iPods they've sold and apps they have in the app store, Jobs began talking about the need for a product between the laptop and the smartphone - something that would...

In recent times the Vatican has been open about their perception of how the internet fits into the scheme of things from a religious standpoint. This is not a surprise as the internet has become nearly inseparable from our daily lives, as religion is to a number of us as well. The somewhat “quakeresque” public perception of religious...

(image ) While the world watches the next coming of Jobs, I reflected on my gut feeling as to the iPad, and why that feeling is inherently one of disappointment (see my predictions 2010 (#5) and my post earlier this week).   And I'll admit, this one is not entirely logical. But then again, I don't always base my predictions (or my...

Internet use by both business and leisure guests at hotels increased more than 50 percent in 2009, according to a new report by iBAHN, an Internet service provider for 2,200 hotels globally. Hotel guests spent 60 percent more time online and downloaded 50 percent more data, based on tracked packet and session length information. This confirms...

Social media is an all-encompassing term used to describe any of several online channels that utilize the technology to facilitate social interaction through written, visual, or audible communication.

Twitter is making sure that they are not left out of the year of mobile / local / smart phone etc, etc by announcing a new trending service that helps users figure out what might be the buzz about things in their neck of the woods. More and more we are seeing people getting drawn back to their lives on the move rather than behind the computer...

Rick Spencer of Canonical, which distributes the Ubuntu version of Linux, revealed that Canonical has formed a revenue-sharing deal with Yahoo, which will see Yahoo become the default search engine in the Mozilla Firefox browser in the upcoming 10.04 version (aka "Lucid Lynx") of the operating system. Spencer shared the information via...

A brief Signal today till I can write later in the day, running to an early meeting: 20 Metrics To Effectively Track Social Media Campaigns (SEL) Supreme Court's Devastating Decision | Ronald Dworkin | NYRB | 26 January 2010 (Off topic, but I found this take interesting) Social Is the Top Priority for Marketers in 2010 [STATS] (Mashable) Yahoo CEO...

Yahoo said today it is holding its second annual Key Scientific Challenges Program, which is open globally to any graduate student enrolled in a PhD program at an accredited institution. The Key Scientific Challenges Program focuses on a number of issues, from developing algorithms that make information more personally relevant, to finding...

Most estimates agree that there are almost 7 billion human beings on this planet, and even the biggest misanthropes must admit that a few of them are smart and capable.  Yahoo apparently wasn't able to encounter any keepers, however, as it's stopped searching for someone to lead the company's international division. This position opened up...

Since the widely publicized turbulence between Google and the Chinese government erupted, there has been a lot of speculation about whether or not Google would continue to do business in China in any capacity whatsoever. The company stopped censoring search results in its Chinese search engine, and threatened to pull out of China before it would...

We already know that 84% of marketers plan to shift some of their direct marketing budgets to social media. Now, a new report from the Society of Digital Agencies suggests that 50% of marketers will shift budgets from traditional to online media. Not only that, but the highest priority for this newly allocated budget is social networks: Now,...

Facebook is getting to the level of ubiquity that is only afforded a few things in this life. It seems as if everyone is on the service to one degree or another. If someone is not on it they have heard about it and have likely gotten some ribbing about not being involved. Very few people leave (although a friend of mine recently did because he...

As more companies, marketers and industry professionals flood the web with content, the value of those with a true understanding of content marketing keeps going up. More noise increases the value of signal. If your content marketing defines you as that source of signal, you’ll consistently be found, referenced and chosen ahead of...

Chrome Seo for modern search engine optimizers, search engine marketers and webmasters. Now more than ever seo is tied directly to the live web and real-time actions. Blog farms and scrapers, gave way to mass social spam and vote rigging. Brokering links was safe, then unsafe for Google whitehat seo, and everything in between. Page rank was...

Identifying new search term trends before they get really competitive is an easy way to get traffic. Here are a few ways to spot them: First, you might come across something noteworthy in your day-to-day life.  For example, let’s imagine Kanye West was wearing orange fluorescent high-top sneakers when he stormed the stage at the...

That’s right, folks, you’re all once again about to lose your right to use SEO to refer to . . . well, anything. Back in 2008, one “intrepid” “SEO” decided he’d trademark the term and impose standards on the rest of us. That didn’t pan out, so someone else has taken up the case. Or not. Apparently...

A great visual guide detailing the various apsects of affiliate marketing.

Six months after Google said that Apple rejected a Google Voice app for the iPhone (Apple maintained that the app was merely under review, a process which usually takes about a week), Google has finally decided to circumvent the ban. VP of mobile apps engineering Vic Gundotra told the Crunchies Voice would get on the iPhone “one way or...

A light day in the media and marketing world, as it seems everyone is holding their breath, waiting for Steve Jobs and Apple to drop the next shoe tomorrow with the launch of the iPad (or iTablet or whatever it'll be called). Speculation over the device dominates the news, with the NYT pondering its impact on "old media" business models...

I always love reading what other PR experts are saying, and I think it’s important to get outside opinions and to learn from others. With that in mind, I present you with 25 tips from 25 PR experts. Enjoy.

Excellent post by a 12 year old wiz-kid. 17 important things to do after starting your wordpress blog!

Guest posting is one of the most effective ways to promote your blog, meet new audience and build valuable contacts. Therefore most A-list bloggers guest post and that’s why if you are a blogger, you should too. This post will help you to start: it lists some useful, yet lesser-known Google search tips that will let you find valuable guest...

Great article written by Alan Bleiweiss. These methods that can be applied to any site that involves drill-down navigation.

So you are the new unencumbered AOL that has pushed its ship away from the Time Warner dock back in January. You are underway on a new journey that is supposed to reposition the company and put new life in the once iconic running man’s engine. In order for that to happen one would suspect that having the right people on the ship who plan to...

Attend any of my presentations on the topic of competitive intelligence and you’ll hear me recommend various tools for keeping tabs on changes your competitors make to their web pages. Now, Google Reader has entered the page monitoring business: For example, if you wanted to follow Google.org’s latest products, just type...

Now he’s an interesting discovery by Ben Edelman: disabling the Google Toolbar doesn’t actually prevent it from sending data back to Big Brother Google. He ran some tests, with the Google Toolbar disabled and closed from view, and sure enough, the toolbar still transmitted URL information back to the search giant. In his example,...

As more and more layers of the Google v China spy activity and accusations continue to get peeled back this onion really is starting to stink a bit. It appears as if the victims of “Googlegate” (you like that one?) were not just those labeled as human rights activists. In fact, it has been discovered that friends of employees of many of the...

With the increasing emphasis on content marketing for both SEO and Social Media, I thought I’d offer some specific tips on dealing with one of the most prevalent issues companies face in this area:  long term sourcing of content.  While we’ve written about content sourcing for corporate blogs in the past, but this post will...

If you are wanting to learn about SEO & SEM then the following resources collected by Sam Tilston may come in useful.

It appears we are all not quite seeing the light at the end of the tunnel with the latest economic slump. It has hit everyone hard regardless of business size or industry and in many cases marketing dollars are the first to disappear. Truth be known, many companies that do succeed during tougher economic times are the ones who actually increase...

Quite a weekend in marketing land, with a blast from Jason C. directed at Comscore. Sunday's feeds were alive with responses (I think this summary from TheNextWeb is a good place to start), but it boils down to this: Jason fired off an angry shot at a easy target, but with a bit more nuance, one can see that this is not a simple issue. If it were...

As most of you already know, StumbleUpon made some significant changes to the interface last year that weren’t received very well by the SU community. Besides changing the look and feel of SU, they made other major changes, including taking away the ability to share en mass to all of your StumbleUpon friends with only a couple of clicks...

Minimalism seems to be a hot topic these days and rightly so. People like clutter-free living and getting things done. After listening to a recent podcast between minimalist Leo Babauta and problogger, Darren Rowse, I started thinking about how I could apply minimalism to my internet marketing operations.

Everyone in the SEO industry knows and understands that most websites cannot live by on-site optimizations alone. After you perform your keyword research, complete your analysis of competitors who rank well for the terms and phrases you want to rank for, and highly optimize your site for optimal search engine placement, you are left with the...

Danny Sullivan provides some free advice for Microsoft's Bill Gate regarding his blog and it's less than stellar rankings in the search engines (including Bing).

While we all like to believe the mantra "build great content" there's no denying that content farms are playing an increasingly important role in content of the web. Here's a nice overview of how it's being used.

Recently I posted a series of informal poll questions about blog SEO on Twitter to gain insights and feedback which were leveraged to construct a more in-depth survey.  I used the longer survey to collect information on how companies are using blogs for search engine optimization purposes and what kind of impact those efforts have. Essentially,...

"Michael "Graywolf" will use #lavalamps and #beanbags in half of his Google related tweets. Sugarrae might curse, possibly.""Matt Cutts still won’t be talking for Google.""the essence of things will stay the same"Just some quotes from an absolutely fabulous post by Ruud Hein. Must read!

...for its core property, search. And it's pretty good (it's a series of well produced ads, on YouTube, natch). I've predicted for some time that Google would have to start brand marketing itself, but so far I've only seen product marketing for Adwords or Android. This is the first time I've seen a real ad for Google.com search. See it below. (I...

Originally when launching Mahalo, Jason Calacanas claimed that it would be spam free and that SEOs would have to pay.

Social Media and conversion is one of those questions I think about all the time. The foundation for my analysis lies within the presentation I held at Searchmeet in 2009. It is all about baby steps, looking for small conversions leading to the final goal of a financial transaction.

Why Do People Follow (or Fan) Brands? (eMarketer) This link has been passed around a lot this morning in marketing circles, despite the fact that the insights are pretty thin (people follow brands to learn about deals and "learn about new products, features or services.") We're all eager to understand what it is that might lead a person into...

A 400% increase was obtained from a total of eleven experiments, which were carried out at five different stages of the conversion funnel. Some of the changes made were very specific to Voices.com’s business, but others tend to work for most businesses.

If you haven’t already integrated Facebook into your online marketing mix by creating a fan page, consider the most recent staggering Facebook statistics: More than 350 million users are active on Facebook 50% of active users log in on any given day The average user spends 55 minutes a day on Facebook More than 1.6 million active Facebook fan...

Twitter today killed its "suggested users" feature (which Ev said he'd do way back at Web 2 in October), and replaced it with a more sophisticated approach. In a blog post explaining the move, the company elaborates: We've found that the power of suggestion can be a great thing to help people get started, but it's important that we suggest things...

How to create snowball effect with your Tweet and get plenty of Retweets

Did you realize that search engines have gone full circle on URLs in variables? It used to be considered something to avoid, now search engines are saying variables in URLs are good, as long as you use the canonical meta tag. Google is pushing them with FeedBurner and if webmasters aren’t careful, they could fall victim to a new onslaught of...

Media and Marketing stories that interest me today: Kindle Will Get App Store (NYT) - I've been on about this for a while now, and finally, it seems Amazon is getting a clue. I'm guessing the impending launch of the iTablet, which certainly will have an app store (like the iPhone does), is pushing Amazon to open its doors to developers. About...

If you’re a web designer who thinks that “good CSS = SEO”, a writer who thinks that “good content = SEO” or a developer who just thinks “SEO = bullshit” then here are a few pitfalls to bear in mind if you’re considering using SEO as a way to bring your products to market.

My article so I think it's great!  :)  How To Write A Killer Blog Post.  I welcome feedback!

Last week Erik Qualmann posted a list of “All Star Social Media” players in his ClickZ column. Being included in such a list with the likes of Chris Brogan and Scott Monty was humbling to say the least.  Erik qualified the list by saying they were mostly people he knew and he welcomed suggestions.  I noticed few women were mentioned...

As I was working on a client’s social media build the other day, it occurred to me that suddenly,  we as people, have voluntarily surrendered most all of our privacy and anonymity. This idea took hold as I was watching a 1980’s era film, and I was observing how the executives in the go-go 80’s had a brick cell phone,...

One of my predictions this year (#2) focused on Google becoming a software brand. To my mind, every interaction with a brand strengthens a consumer's understanding of what the brand means. And with that in mind, this dialog box, which has been popping up every so often on my desktop, certainly screams "Google is a software brand" to me. In the...

Every year closes with summaries of the top stories as well the predictions for the year ahead. Heading into Twenty-Ten, I contributed to several prediction roundups including Junta42, ContactCenterWorld, ZDNet, among others. What I didn’t do however, is write about the endless predictions for the future of marketing, media, business, et al....

(CC) Randy Stewart, blog.stewtopia.com Vanessa Fox works as Entrepreneur-in-residence with Ignition Partners but is especially well known in the Search Marketing world because of her past work as Google’s search engine strategy spokesperson and creator of Google Webmaster Central. I’ve interviewed Vanessa several times on video in the...

The majority (82%) of parents and children (75%) who play video games are familiar with the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) ratings system, according to a new survey by The Harrison Group conducted on behalf of Activision. Additionally, 63% of parents with children who play games consider themselves gamers with the number increasing...

During the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Boxee made the beta version of its free software publicly available for download. Boxee's software brings together video content (and photos, music, etc.) from various web sources as well as your hard drive and circle of friends from social networks all into one interface that you can use to...

In college I got a minor in Art History, a topic that I wish I could study more. At the time I had no idea that I would one day work in the marketing industry. Now, I see tons of overlapping concepts of art and marketing. I think I will discuss some of these ideas every now and then in this weekly column. In marketing we use artists and designers...

Fair warning: this is not a report upon which you should rearrange your stock portfolio.  Please don't even bet anyone a significant amount of money.  Just the same, Carol Bartz appears to have given a hint that she's interested in acquiring Yelp. Brian Womack recently interviewed Bartz, and at one point, asked her about buying the site...

Real-time search engine OneRiot announced a new "real-time ad network" today. It's called RiotWise, and the company says its designed to help developers monetize their apps. "2009 witnessed an explosion of apps and services catering to users of the realtime web," says Tobias Peggs, GM of OneRiot. "RiotWise is the way to...

. ..at the expense of Yahoo, AOL. Google also up, though less so. Release.

I've said before that search interfaces, stuck in the command line interface of DOS, will at some point evolve into applications on top of a commodity search index. I further opined that Bing, in particular Bing's limited but compelling visual search, was just such an example: search as an interactive, rich application, as opposed to search as a...

Publishers could be losing between $2.75- 3 billion due to online book piracy, according to a new report from Attributor. Attributor's FairShare Guardian service monitored 913 popular books in 14 categories in the fourth quarter of 2009.  FairShare tracked the number of successful downloads completed for each of the 913 titles on four file...

We are always looking for new applications for social media outlets right? How can we get our message out to more people? How can we create community amongst customers? How we can get 40,000 people to follow us as we escape from the law? Whoa, wait a minute. That last one doesn’t seem very ‘marketing’ oriented does it? Well,...

Rumors of MySpace integrating Facebook Connect have circulated since October. And now it looks like they’re coming true: MySpace’s Fan Video site allows users to login with either MySpace or Facebook accounts. The Fan Video site itself takes professional music videos and inserts your profile picture prominently. The site also features...

Google filed a submission on its own and one jointly with Verizon to the FCC for its proposed rulemaking docket. Google says its goal is "to keep the Internet awesome for everybody." "There's a lot of awesome stuff on the Internet: Cats talking LOLspeak. Iranian dissidents tweeting. Live traffic updates. Science experiments,"...

In case you’ve forgotten, 2009 was the year the FTC decided to go after mom bloggers (and other bloggers) with $11,000 fines for not disclosing reviewed freebies, sponsored posts or other relationships with companies—or not. Despite the fervor over the FTC’s new guidelines, the fact is that they were designed to target a specific...

Twitter is flooded with the same content from the same two dozen blogs.  There's a lot of great info on the web waiting to be discovered.  So, I chal­lenge you to find 10–15 blogs that are not ranked in the top 150 on AdAge's Power 150 List, or within Technorati's Top 100.  Read more to see the additional rules for the challenge.

The last eBay-centric article to appear on WebProNews concerned mobile transactions during the holiday season; the company was quite proud of its stats and had made some noise about them.  Now, there's essentially been outside confirmation of its impressive performance, as eBay was declared the 2009 Mobile Retailer of the Year. Mobile...

Rumors of MySpace integrating Facebook Connect have circulated since October. And now it looks like they’re coming true: MySpace’s Fan Video site allows users to login with either MySpace or Facebook accounts. The Fan Video site itself takes professional music videos and inserts your profile picture prominently. The site also features...

Nielsen, Hitwise, and comScore are all in agreement, so onlookers can perhaps declare it official now: Google had a good December.  comScore, the member of the trio that most recently released its search market data, didn't put Google up by a whole lot, though, and unlike the other firms, saw Bing gain ground. Here are the facts related to...

Google recently announced that it was launching a new feature for Google Docs, which would allow users to upload and store any kind of file. What may not have been clear, however, is that this new storage from Google isn't limited to just Google Docs. The company is saying that Gmail and Picasa storage can also be used. Google Docs Product...

U.S. sales of video games, which includes portable and console hardware, software and accessories, generated revenues of close to $19.6 billion, an 8 percent decrease over the $21.4 billion generated in 2008, according to The NPD Group. Retail sales in the PC game software industry also saw declines, with revenues down 23 percent, reaching $538...

Popular press release distribution site BusinessWire, which is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, is offering its services for free to companies and organizations who are contributing to the aid of victims of the earthquake in Haiti. Such companies can push out free news releases with offers pertaining to supporting services, information, operations,...

....driven by the need to kick Google off the iPhone? An interesting idea. Worth thinking about.... From a Businessweek article: Some analysts believe the Apple-Google battle is likely to get much rougher in the months ahead. Ovum's Yarmis thinks Apple may soon decide to dump Google as the default search engine on its devices, primarily to cut...

According to Mike Arrington of TechCrunch, "multiple sources have confirmed" that Twitter is readying the launch of a new set of tools to let third-party sites easily integrate with Twitter. He calls this the company's response to Facebook Connect. This wouldn't be the first offering from Twitter that provides functionality similar to...

Yahoo has made some improvements to its Finance Search interface. Yahoo Finance Search is now including results from the web, and can uncover details on companies and executives, find info on private companies, and help determine what companies are associated with topics, Yahoo says. Every page of Yahoo Finance has a link that says "Finance...

I was one of 10 that got interviewed by Arnie Kuenn (Vertical Measures) including Rand Fishkin (SEOMoz), Dave Wallace (SearchRank), Jeramie McPeek (head of social media for the Phoenix Suns) - along with MANY OTHER amazing marketing minds.  The interviews are insightful, and I feel this is worth a Sphinn. Here is the whole set that Arnie did over...

Procter & Gamble said today it would begin piloting an online store this month in an effort to improve brand loyalty and sales. P&G has tapped ecommerce firm PFSweb to manage the online shopping site called the "eStore." P&G said PFSweb will own and operate the eStore and exclusively feature P&G products to consumers in...

Yahoo's board of directors has gained another member.  Sue James, who's spent most of the past 35 years working for and with Ernst & Young, joined it earlier this week, and became Chair of the Board's Audit Committee at the same time. James's resume is rather impressive, indicating a deep understanding of tech organizations'...

Google has launched search suggestions based on geographical location for iPhone and Android devices. This is currently only available in the United States. "Typing a query into the search box on a phone can often be slow and difficult," says Google's Mobile Engineering Team. "For this reason, relevant search suggestions that...

More than ever, it’s essential for hospitals and health providers to rethink their healthcare marketing mix to include social media. The proof is in the numbers: 34% of consumers use social media to search for health information, according to research data from How America Searches: Health and Wellness. While it’s easy to identify demand,...

Nielsen watches just how much time people spend on the sites of the top web brands in the world. It makes for some interesting viewing. Just seeing the numbers from the chart below makes it obvious why some sites have the success they do and raises questions about some others. Here is one of the Nielsen charts (there are a few others not...

I just scanned the last six posts here at MP and they all have the Google logo attached to them. What’s strange about this story is that while Yahoo is announcing an improvement in their paid search offering it still relates to Google. As for bing? Where are you? The company that is having their search platform replaced by you is making more...

Despite the early rough sledding for the Nexus One device, Google is moving on and making improvements to local search on your mobile device. Recently the “Near me now” feature was added which helps users learn what kind of products and services are within striking distance of their current location. While not as sexy yesterday Google...

It's my sincere hope that this blows up, not over. With reports coming in that the Chinese government was most certainly behind the attack on Google and 20 other companies (and has done this before), and that the White House is now supporting Google's position, it's about time that we call a spade a spade here. What China is doing is wrong,...

I was stunned to learn, via Danny, that our collective tweets seem lost to eternity (or at least, to search). While the data exists, tweets can't be found via search, which means they can't be found via the search API, which means...well, they can't be found. I hope this situation is rectified, if only for history's sake. (Danny notes that they...

Ad Hoc Keyword Research is Dead Determining an optimal keyword list can be a very involved process and is always considered the lynchpin of any successful search marketing campaign. Gone are the days of focusing your search marketing efforts on a phrase list consisting of one or two keyword terms. These “short-tail” phrases might prove to be...

The first Matt Cutts Answers Questions About Google video of the year has been posted, and in it Matt addresses links from Twitter and Facebook, after talking about his shaved head again. Specifically, the submitted question he answers is: Links from relevant and important sites have always been a great way to get traffic & acceptance for a...

Due to a new development, you may be able to either thank Google for getting China to censor less information, or blame the company for starting World War III.  The reason: the White House has sided with Google in the free speech and hacking conflict that cropped up this week. According to John Letzing, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs...

U.S. software retail sales fell slightly by just over 1 percent for the 2009 holiday season, according to The NPD Group. Sales for the 5-week holiday period totaled $278 million dollars, up from the 13 percent decline during the 2008 holiday season. The operating systems category showed the strongest improvement during the holiday season,...

Google has introduced some new features for its recently launched Place Pages for local businesses. Most notably, businesses can now instantly (close anyway) post data to their Place Pages from Google's Local Business Center dashboard. If you log in, you can post updates, coupons, announcements, etc. that will go live in minutes. It isn't hard...

Did you get the sarcasm in that one? If a picture is worth a thousand words then Yahoo, bing and Ask.com must be saying “Oh crap, not again!” 250 times right now. Experian’s Hitwise shows why. As we talk about often it’s not even that Google is on top anymore. That’s a given. In fact, its dominance is what makes the uninformed cry...

Google Local Business is getting some pretty heavy attention these days. Why wouldn’t it? With 2010 being the “official” year of mobile and with Google having its own phone (although they would like to see other people have it as well) there is much to celebrate. Of course this isn’t without its issues such as listings being hijacked...

Yesterday, comScore reported that Google performed well in December, and today, Hitwise seconded the assessment.  In fact, the two firms also agreed that both Yahoo and Bing lost market share, which has made Google's lead all the more impressive. Hitwise determined that Google controlled 71.57 percent of the search market in November. ...

comScore has released the top 15 ad networks based on their reach among U.S. Internet users in December 2009. The ranking found AOL Advertising remains the top ad network, reaching 187 million U.S. Internet users, or 91 percent of the total audience, followed by the Yahoo Network (180.9 million) and the Google Ad Network (178.1 million). The...

Next week Yahoo will update its Sponsored Search product with two new features, which the company says will provide advertisers with more transparency into and control over their accounts. Yahoo's Network Distribution feature will let advertisers run ads on Yahoo search pages, partners' sites, or both. Those who run ads on Yahoo's entire network,...

In a financial sense, Google's acquisition of YouTube has never made a lot of sense; the site, which sold for $1.65 billion, hasn't even turned a profit on a quarter-to-quarter basis yet.  But according to a prominent analyst, that's about to change. Doug Anmuth, who works for Barclays Capital, said today in a note, "[I]n 2010 we...

Perpetrators of click fraud are getting sneakier and sneakier. Harvard Business School professor Ben Edelman has uncovered one of the more diabolical click fraud schemes known to be hatched. As he summarizes it: Here, spyware on a user's PC monitors the user's browsing to determine the user's likely purchase intent. Then the spyware fakes a click...

By now, you’re undoubtedly familiar with the reasons to use Twitter for your business. However, most conversations on the subject rarely offer specific strategies for using Twitter for your business, and instead they consist of vague statements like connect with and engage your audience or build your brand.Today, we’re going to take a look at...

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas wrapped up this past weekend, but the experience will be felt throughout the year as the companies that demonstrated upcoming products release those products to the world. One of the companies presenting at the event was Verbatim, and they have some new portable data devices on the way. WebProNews...

With all of the press in the gadget and Internet marketing world last week around the introduction of the Google Nexus One smart phone you would think that there would be a rush to buy them. Appears that is not the case, at least not initially. My theory is that while there was all kind of chatter amongst the industry, they would be the most...

Google has decided to stop censoring its search results in China as mandated by the Chinese government—even if that means shuttering their search business there. The Chinese government has responded, reminding us all that they’re in control of the Internet in China, and nobody else should get any ideas from Google’s...

There has been a lot of confusion and mixed reporting going on around this whole Google China situation. Verisign, whose iDefense team who has researched the attacks took note of this and put up a blog post trying to clear the air. Read that to get a clear summarization of what the firm knows. Within that, Verisign says: The attack bears...

Unless you live under a rock, you are probably at least somewhat familiar with the current controversy regarding NBC's shifting of late night television talk show programming that appears to be leading to an uncertain future for current Tonight Show host Conan O'Brien. I'm not going to get into that whole story here. While he is not the only one...

Google seldom comments on click through rates on its flagship AdWords product. It is, after all, where they get most of their income. With millions of searches performed every day, however, the rate doesn’t have to be very high for them to clean up. And, as it turns out, it’s not. In a thread on the Google AdWords Help forum, Google...

Haiti earthquake Twitter updates are helping people keep informed about what is going on in the country as well as providing information on ways to make donations. The American Red Cross said on Twitter that it had already received nearly $3 million for earthquake relief in Haiti. People can help by texting "Haiti" to 90999 and making...

American Idol may be only two episodes into its ninth season, but the show already has a big online hit on its hands.  63-year-old Larry Platt performed a self-written song called "Pants on the Ground" last night, and hundreds of thousands of people are talking about his energetic routine today. Platt's song pretty much defies...

Love any articles giving solid advice about marketing/analytics/data on Facebook.  This is one of them, especially if you have, or are attempting to build and market a Facebook Fan page.

The most powerful marketing campaigns are often the ones that we as consumers can identify with or connect to in some way. One way that businesses invoke such a feeling from potential customers is by telling a story with their marketing. This is called (appropriately) storyteller marketing. Dana Todd of Newsforce recently sat down with...

When Google made its big announcement about an attack originating from China, the company also mentioned that "at least twenty other large companies" had been affected.  Now, it's become almost certain that one of them was Adobe, and there are signs that Yahoo was another target. Adobe's status as a victim became more or less...

The global PC market saw double-digit growth in the fourth quarter, led by strong U.S. holiday sales of low-cost netbooks, according to the latest report by IDC. The U.S. PC market reached a new record of nearly 20.7 million units shipped in the fourth quarter of 2009 (4Q09), resulting in year-on-year growth of 24 percent. Other regions also...

Survivors of the earthquake in Haiti are going to receive help from Google in a big way.  On a new Support Disaster Relief site, Google's released satellite imagery of the destruction to spread awareness, created a list of relevant charities to encourage donations, and promised to contribute $1 million of its own money, as well. Let's...

Google Analytics and Server-Side Analytics programs tend to update daily, leaving you behind the curve on social media promotions that can fizz out in the first few hours of launch without close attention. Here are 3 examples of solutions using free real-time analytics services like Clicky to get extra mileage out of your campaign.

Time after time, when I discuss the search and social media based opportunities for companies to reach new customers and achieve other online communications goals, it comes down to content.  Most companies understand the need to have a web presence and publish some kind of web site. For many, the creation of a web site is a one time event with...

Matt Siltala lays out the key reasons why business owners need to get on board with the Yelp bandwagon in 2010 once and for all...

Surely Google should not be changing my search results based on how it thinks folk in the US spell a word? Especially when it impacts the serps to favour US companies.

A proposed amendment to a UK bill would give Google and other search engines immunity from copyright claims, basically giving Google permission to copy anything it pleases.

Cyber Attacks May Mean the End of Google China Search engine giant Google announced yesterday that they have been targeted by cyber attacks of “varying degrees on a regular basis”. Google’s Chief legal Officer David Drummond also mentioned that Google was not the sole recipient of these attacks and that it included at least 20 other...

Reactions to Google's announcement about a possible withdrawal from China have been mixed so far; there have been objections from individuals who think its absence will deprive the Chinese people of information, while others approve of what they consider a moral stand.  But Baidu's investors probably aren't too conflicted, as the company's...

Online music video service, Vevo, was the most visited U.S. website in the entertainment-music category in December with more than 35 million unique visitors, according to comScore. Partners in Vevo include Universal Music Group, Sony Entertainment and investor Abu Dhabi Media Company. The site is powered by YouTube. Vevo says its top ranking is...

Google announced today that AdSense for Domains is now using optional keyword hints more often. Keyword hints are provided by the user, who enters keywords into a field to assist Google in the targeting of ads for potentially ambiguous domains. Google's Randy Heath explains: These keywords are suggestions supplied to Google by domain owners about...

Google has long complied with the government-mandated censorship required to operate in China, despite criticism from human rights and freedom of speech advocates. However, Google may be changing their tune, based on a blog post yesterday. Google’s new approach to China is far more open—and at least partially because a Chinese cyber...

December's supposed to be a month of miracles, and - at least in terms of gaining market share - Google seems to have pulled off a minor one.  New Nielsen stats show that the search giant increased the distance between itself and competitors by a considerable amount. Nielsen put Google's share of the U.S. search market in November at 65.4...

It's ok to say "no" to Twitter if that's your thing. There's a chance that it just doesn't fit into your strategy or help you achieve your goals. That's cool. However, if it is your thing, you may be interested in how Google ranks tweets. That is if search marketing is your thing. Do you see Twitter as important to an effective search...

Realtor.com, the website for the National Association of Realtors, has launched a Real Estate Search iPhone app. Users can search for every property listed on Realtor.com by price, location, property type, MLS ID number, square foot, lot size, open house events, distance from a user's current location and age. The real estate iPhone app allows...

Back in October, Google was second to the punch, falling behind Bing as they both announced real-time search deals to include Twitter results. (And it didn’t help that Bing was already testing live results and Google was months away from the integration.) But now Google’s real-time results are live—and they’re talking about...

Some people use their Facebook account like another email address, logging in, checking their messages, and logging out.  Others just add a couple of friends, skim a few status updates, and call it a day.  But data from Pingdom proves that Facebook does a far better job of engaging people than other social networks. Pingdom recently...

At the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Sony introduced a new "personal Internet Viewer", called the Dash. This is a device that you can put on your nightstand or your kitchen counter, and access web content via Flash-based applications. While attending the show, WebProNews stopped by Sony's exhibit to get a closer look at the...

We are always looking for new applications for social media outlets right? How can we get our message out to more people? How can we create community amongst customers? How we can get 40,000 people to follow us as we escape from the law? Whoa, wait a minute. That last one doesn’t seem very ‘marketing’ oriented does it? Well, that’s because...

Less than half (43%) of Americans say they read a daily newspaper, either online or in print almost everyday, according to a new report from Adweek Media and Harris Interactive. Nearly three-quarters (72%) of Americans say they read one at least once a week while 81 percent read a daily newspaper at least once a month. Ten percent say they never...

It looks like Harvard may turn out to be the epicenter of all things from the social web. Urban legend has it that it was there that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg borrowed discussed developed the true beginnings of today’s social networking giant. Now foursquare has struck a deal with the school to have a ‘branded’ version of the...

Google has made an adjustment to the way it handles display URLs for AdWords ads. This is the URL that appears within the ad itself, that users see before they click on it. The adjustment is for sites that sit on shared or hosted domains. The idea is to make it more clear to users exactly what they will be clicking on. On the Inside AdWords...

Google yesterday surprised Wall St. and its partners with the announcement that it may pull out of China (most expect it will, given the politics of making such a statement, the move is most likely assured). Google said that "hackers" had leveraged its infrastructure to target Chinese dissidents. To my mind, that means Google has discovered that...

Google made big waves in the mobile industry early in the year, and the effects of those waves are being felt quite hard by some users. The Nexus One's release has gotten off to kind of a rocky start. The issues plaguing customers of the much-anticipated Google phone have been widely publicized. Most of the gripes have dealt with Google's...

Google's situation in China appears to be the biggest story to hit the tech industry in some time, at least in terms of discussion. If you're not up to speed, we covered Google's announcement here. What it boils down to is that Google may shut down its operations in China, where it has been censoring search results. Google is now taking the stance...

Over the past year or more, you have probably heard your fair share of people telling you that you need to use Twitter if you hope to have business success. It's true that there are a great many opportunities and potential benefits to using the service, but do you have to use it? Well, that depends. Is Twitter Necessary? Tell us what you think....

Win-win-win situations don't crop up too often, but Facebook and McAfee seem to have orchestrated one on a very large scale.  The two companies announced this morning that they've partnered to provide Facebook's users with free security software. Any or all of Facebook's 350 million users can now visit the "Protect Your PC" tab on...

Netflix said today it has reached an agreement with Nintendo that will allow Netflix members who own a Wii to instantly stream movies and TV shows directly to their TVs. Netflix is scheduled to go live on the Wii this spring in the United States at no additional cost to Netflix members who have a plan starting at $8.99 a month, a Wii console and...

As news of Google's China situation dominates headlines, the company has also announced that it is turning on https access for Gmail as the default (Gmail accounts were hacked in China, in case you haven't read about that yet). Https, which stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure is used to provide encryption and secure ID. Back in 2008...

Google has again shaken the Internet tree in a way that will raise more than a few eyebrows. In a nutshell, Google is reassessing its working relationship with the world’s largest potential market, China, as a result of recent security breaches. How this plays out over time could have significant impact on how China and the world get along...

Some recent articles credit “APP”s for mobile phones and devices as the death of websites, and that may or may not be true. However, if registry behavior is any indication, there may be something to that theory. If we look at “.UK” for example and its domain name registration and web hosting company, LCN.com they will be...

Google released a stunning blog post that details a "sophisticated and targeted attack" on Gmail that "resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google". Google notes that the attack was not just on Google infrastructure but also on more than twenty other companies from various industries. Google states that they are...

For example Twitter, where gazillions of bots [type A] follow other equally superfluous but nevertheless very busy bots [type B] that automatically generate 27% valuable content (links to p-nis enlargement tools) and 73% not exactly exciting girly chatter (breeding demand for cheap viag-a).

The rumors about Yahoo selling Zimbra have finally become fact.  Today, VMware announced that it's acquired the open source email and collaboration specialist, and although the financial details weren't disclosed, corporate representatives on all sides of the transaction seem pleased. Let's start with someone who works for the buyer. ...

The search engine landscape is ever changing. We covered that. However, while there are multiple players involved in facilitating that change, there is one that drives it far more than the rest of the competition. Obviously, we're talking about Google. Is there a point where adapting to Google's changes becomes impossible? Share your...

Consumers want online retailers to be more interactive and offer more personalization features according to a new a survey from IBM. The changing economy has led to a smarter consumer who uses technology to make more informed buying decisions, exchange information with others, make purchases on-the-go and shop multiple channels. More than...

The online space is certainly trying hard to cut the apron strings associated with traditional media techniques and practices. It can be hard though, to completely separate from something that may still have value. Think about how nice it was (or still is) to go back “home” and get that meal that you just can’t make on your own. While you...

Microsoft is not the only one with some new offerings in the way of health search today. Google has added a slew of new cities to its Flu Trends product. The move is timed well, as the company acknowledges that it is National Influenza Vaccination Week. "Since the strain of influenza that is active (H1N1) is novel, no one knows exactly what...

Today, the Apache Software Foundation gained a new sponsor: Facebook.  Facebook is a gold sponsor, too, which means that the social network expressed its support for open source software by volunteering to donate $40,000 per year to the ASF. Cynics shouldn't waste their time looking for an ulterior motive.  Facebook won't get much out...

Today Microsoft announced some new health search capabilities for its Bing search engine. The "decision engine" is now providing more content from new partners and instant answers with "hard-to-discover data", the company says. Users can find instant, specialized information about illnesses, treatments, medical facilities,...

Usually it’s with some of the most popular social communities like Digg, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, etc. How many social media enthusiasts and search marketers actually stop to consider their Google profiles though?

U.S Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and National Safety Council President Janet Froetscher today announced the creation of FocusDriven, a national nonprofit organization designed to raise awareness about the dangers of distracted driving. The group will be led by Jennifer Smith, who has been an advocate against distracted driving since her...

How can we create a better name for ourselves.

Today Facebook launched a feature that some would consider long overdue. They now let you reply to comments via email. In other words, when you get an email notification alerting you that someone has left a comment on one of your status updates, you can simply type your reply in the email and hit send, rather than having to leave your inbox, go to...

Two weeks ago, it looked like Google might have been . . . well, fibbing. Back in June, the search engine announced that they would no longer redistribute “link juice” around nofollowed links, effectively deprecating the practice of PageRank sculpting. But late last month, it looked like the technique was still effective when SEOmoz...

An announcement related to data storage and the cloud has come out of Mountain View today, and people who've never heard the word "GDrive" may be very impressed by it.  It's possible that consumers who are familiar with the term will be extremely disappointed, however. Here are the facts: Google Docs has received a significant...

Each month we've been looking at Twitter's growth in terms of new user registration and number of Tweets. Last month we saw a decline in the number of new Twitterers in November continuing a trend that began in July. In December, however, new Twitter user registrations leveled out. Number of tweets grew significantly, and the number of tweets...

After a challenging 2009, the technology sector will see a recovery in 2010 as businesses and governments in the U.S. and around the globe begin spending again on information technology, according to a new report by Forrester Research. After declining 8.2 percent in 2009, U.S. IT spending will grow 6.6 percent in 2010 to $568 billion. Global IT...

Give people what they really want - Answers. Jennifer's guide on how to research and execute question-based content for link building.

Google has been granted a quite interesting patent for "Claiming Real Estate in Panoramic or 3D Mapping Environments for Advertising". The company filed the patent back in the summer of 2008. The abstract reads: Techniques for identifying groups of features in an online geographic view of a real property and replacing and/or augmenting...

It looks like Deutschland has a bee in its bonnet about Google. Apparently it is using the dreaded M word “monopol” which, according to Google’s own translation tool is the German form of the English word monopoly. The Germans are concerned that Google is looking like Microsoft and they are not happy. Somebody needs to get in their Mercedes...

Late yesterday, Yahoo Southeast Asia got what may be a big leg up in the social networking arena.  Yahoo Southeast Asia established a partnership with Friendster that will see the two entities doing a great deal of cross-promotion in the near future. Friendster has over 90 million registered users, and about 90 percent of its daily traffic...

Google announced that Google Friend Connect features are now available for the Drupal and Joomla content management systems. This means that content publishers using these platforms can integrate Google's product, which basically turns your site into a mini social network. "Now that Friend Connect is integrated with these popular open...

"So much gets said about SEO and its relevance or even legitamacy. Most of this is purely linkbait, and the SEO crowd is all to quick to fall into the trap. The arguements fall into three basic camps."

Someone with a very interesting political background will soon be in charge of Google's corporate communications.  The company's hired Jill Hazelbaker, who's worked with both John McCain and Michael Bloomberg in the past, to replace Matt Furman. A quick note about Furman's departure: according to Jessica E. Vascellaro, he's leaving on his...

PubMatic said today it would extend its ad network optimization technology to include mobile advertising. The company said it would use its real-time optimization technology to help publishers maximize revenue from their mobile ad inventory. PubMatic's technology helps online publishers get the most revenue from their advertising space by...

Maybe you can have too much of a good thing. As the Internet allows advertisers to slice and dice large segments of desirable markets into thinner, more defined slices it also creates something that is much less desirable: smaller profits. How is that you say? How is it possible to make less on my advertising spend when I am advertising directly...

Google gives you plenty of really good tools at the moment to predict the traffic to your website from Google rankings. In this post I will show you how you can make a guestimation of the %age of traffic that a particular rank will give you

As the use of cell phones and smart phones expands, so do the number of options for consumers to discover and interact with brands. From web browsing to email to social networking and even shopping, more people are using their cell phones as portable computers. However, most sites are not optimized for hand-held devices such as cell...

DaveN: "This to me is one of the worst things in the industry at the moment, and I really hate it with a passion". Very shady tactic, indeed.

Find out how to add value to your blank review pages and ultimately make each page useful.

If you ever set out to collect personal email addresses at a tech gathering, here's a tip: generally speaking, you can save time by typing or writing out the "@gmail" part before approaching people.  But Compete provided a bit of a reality check today by showing that Hotmail remains in the top spot overall. Andrew Pearlman - who is...

More than half (51%) of holiday shoppers across 11 countries used their mobile phones for in-store activities such as comparison shopping, getting peer feedback, product information and coupons, according to a new study by Motorola. The survey found 64 percent of GenY (age 18 to 34) shoppers used their mobile phones for in-store shopping-related...

Back in 2008, Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear announced that he wanted to shut down 141 Internet gambling sites in the state in an effort to stop unregulated online gaming. He filed a civil suit against the domain names and asked the court to force the sites to block access to Kentucky users or give up control of their domain names....

Starting in mid-March, Yahoo Shopping will no longer be a solo act.  Yahoo announced today that it's arranged to have PriceGrabber take care of some of the technical details, and it'll be able to make one more cutback thanks to the adjustment. A post on the Yahoo Developer Blog explained, "[W]e have decided to enter into a strategic...

In an attempt to give our readers some real world application of all this social media theory swirling about we will be occasionally speaking with some real people who do the real work. How about that? Today we look at social media and the sports world. Regular readers of this blog know that I am a bit of a sports fan. I say a bit because I am no...

The Marketing Executives Networking Group is a group of 2000 marketing executives (10 points if you already guessed that ) at the VP level and higher. Recently, the group’s leadership asked members to name their favorite blogs by non-MENG members—and guess who was part of the top 20? Oh, I guess the title kind of gave it away,...

We in the online world take every opportunity to turn our nose up at traditional media like newspapers because they are so 1900’s. Just take a look over the past year of posts that I have done and I at times can lead that charge. For the record, I do not relish in the fact that newspapers are going by the way side in many ways. I see that...

For many in the online space these days the words “Facebook privacy” would be called an oxymoron. Then of course there would be the usual calling others at Facebook morons and then it would get worse from there but I digress. Michael Arrington recently interviewed the poster child for the “Privacy? What privacy?” movement,...

Google has never had a great reputation for customer support - back in the "hair on fire" days of 2003-2006 the lack of a human response to search engine marketers' questions was a huge complaint. Now the company is going direct to consumers with a major phone launch. As I wrote about a year ago (about Google Voice): ...the concept of Google...

Back in November we talked about AOL’s need to trim their headcount by some 2,500 people. At the time the hope was that enough would walk away from their positions to avert the need for playing the bad guy and actually firing anyone. Well, according to All Things Digital the numbers didn’t quite add up with that plan and now AOL needs to start...

As marketing professionals, we usually have to justify ourselves to our bosses, our clients and everyone in between—especially in the less-tested, sometimes-hit-or-miss arena of social media. But now Ad Age wants accountability, too, as they ask “if you’re getting enough out of all the volunteer work you do for Biz & Ev and...

Keyword Research is an obvious first step in researching a niche for yourself or for a client. Keywords, and their results, make up the terrain of search marketing – and knowing the terrain (and who else is playing in it) helps us navigate up the mountain (and determine when the mountain is maybe too crowded to climb).

Social Bookmarking sites aren’t a huge mystery.  If you think there’s some “special formula” to the Digg and Reddit algorithms, for the most part: you’d be wrong.  Sure, there’s an algorithm at work there, but before you make that attempt at the front page, you need to work on the 2 major pieces necessary for success: great content,...

A dangerous notion from Zuckerberg. From the Guardian "Talking at the Crunchie awards in San Francisco this weekend, the 25-year-old chief executive of the world's most popular social network said that privacy was no longer a "social norm".   "People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but...

This is a great review of Backupify.com which I've never used but am jumping on today - so much info outhtere and its scary to think a wrong click could make it all go away....also scary how much info is out there :)

Social media news aggregation sites help people find great content from their favorite sources without having to weed through all the other sub-par content to find it. This is done by a democratic system of voting and homepage promotion for these stories.

Be sure to check these Twitter streams out.

With SEOMoz releasing their top 500 link-receiving domains, I thought it would be interesting to compile a list of ways you can acquire links from the top 50 or so of those domains. Tread lightly though, as there are some pretty black-hat strategies uncovered for getting links from the likes of Flickr and AOL.com

A guest post on the Trail from Mark Thompson that looks at issues, tools and methods for dealing with duplicate content/scraping and plagerism. A great job, and I especially like the tool round up. Give it a read and a Sphinn if ye please

For many in the online space these days the words “Facebook privacy” would be called an oxymoron. Then of course there would be the usual calling others at Facebook morons and then it would get worse from there but I digress. Michael Arrington recently interviewed the poster child for the “Privacy? What privacy?” movement, Facebook founder...

We in the online world take every opportunity to turn our nose up at traditional media like newspapers because they are so 1900’s. Just take a look over the past year of posts that I have done and I at times can lead that charge. For the record, I do not relish in the fact that newspapers are going by the way side in many ways. I see that they...

The list is here: the 100  Most Influential Online Marketers of 2009. Discover the movers and the shakers of SEM in 2009.

Infomation about the new Search, Analytics and Social Media conference thats taking place in Manchester, UK in April with key note speakers including Joost de Valk, Richard Gregory and Jon Myers.

Crafting unmissable headlines which resonate with social web users is something which appears deceptively simple. Yet it’s an art form requiring writers, bloggers and marketers to craft thousands of headlines to perfect. As someone who has been successful with creating content that goes hot across social channels I’ve come to...

You can make a beautiful, well-structured site that contains excellent content, but it isn’t going to make any money unless it starts getting visitors.

It seems Google Local Business listings have a hole bigger than the Grand Canyon, last week I exprienced one of my clients listings being hijacked and the loss of thousands of visits. In this blogpost I explain what happened, how they did it and how to fix it! In the desperate hope that Google will close this spam hole..

And while it ain't pretty, it's pretty important. Recall my prediction way back ten days ago about a new interface? Here's the glimmerings...

Reading coverage of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's recent commentary on his company's newly changed privacy policies, I was struck with the urge to ask all of you a question: Do you think this is a big deal? Or is this simply the evolution of our society's ongoing contract with the individual, an evolution that Facebook is reflecting? In...

So the other day I logged into LinkedIn and went to my Inbox to view some messages. There I saw a connection request that I had obviously rejected back in November. I don’t like accepting request on LinkedIn unless I have met the said person face to face. So it’s not unusual that I would have rejected someone’s request. However,...

It’s been more than two years since Google’s last big big to enter a government-regulated offline business. They offered some $4.6B for wireless spectrum in an auction in 2008, but it seemed that the multi-billion bid was merely a ploy to get some of their demands for the spectrum met. But that’s not quite the case with...

And I don’t mean job security for Carol Bartz. Yahoo’s BOSS (Build your Own Search Service) is a popular, free way for developers to access the Yahoo index and to implement Yahoo search for your site. With the pending Microsoft-Yahoo deal outsourcing the search business, there has been some concern over whether BOSS will be...

It’s hard to believe that it’s already been almost one year that Carol Bartz has taken the top position at Yahoo! She officially celebrates the one-year mark next week but is taking a look back at what was probably a whirlwind event no matter how much experience she brought to the table. Bloomberg reports that Bartz recently gave herself an...

What’s with Google and their constant upgrades and innovations? What is it with these guys? You would think that they are trying to improve and stuff. The latest, and personally I think one of the coolest, service introductions is the “Near You Now” feature on Google.com for mobile. It’s pretty simple. Your location is known by Google...

If you are easily the number 3 horse in a three horse race does it do you any good to start saying negative things about how you race? Probably not. In fact, it’s probably better for you to act a little more confident, train a little harder and do something that will move you out of the basement. This horse I am referring to is Microsoft’s...

We may already be a week into 2010, but that doesn’t mean it’s too late to starting making resolutions. Resolve to give your online marketing efforts a boost this year by recognizing areas for improvement and putting in place a plan to make positive changes. To help you get started, TopRank Online Marketing has come up with New Year’s...

Welcome to the first BIGLIST review of SEM and SEO blogs for 2010!  What a year it will be. We reviewed hundreds of marketing blogs in 2009 and well over a thousand since we started the original list. Today’s BIGLIST update focuses on a few local search marketing blogs we’ve recently discovered. <a...

Google’s Nexus One product hit the market this week which marked Google’s surprising entry into the smartphone market. More surprising however, is the apparent lack of a proactive domain strategy. NexusOne.com appears to have been around since 1998 and does not appear to be owned by Google nor any Google service provider or...

As a free open source option for beginners, advanced webmasters and SEO’s alike, Wordpress has become one of the most popular platforms in which to build a web property. Although Wordpress is rounding the corner towards version 3.0 there is still a lot of useful SEO tools that are not and will not be built-in to the blogging software. Once...

(Excerpted from a longer post on BingTweets, part of a series I've been writing, underwritten by Bing). In my predictions this week I seemed unusually glum about the state of search, writing: Traditional search results will deteriorate to the point that folks begin to question search's validity as a service. This statement did not go unnoticed by...

I've got a fairly long "decade of SEO in review" article for you today. I thought about splitting it into 2 parts, but decided it would lose a lot by doing so. I hope you'll make it all the way through because I tried to make it as interesting and humorous (at times) as possible.

Heads up, Sphinn users: We've just posted an updated set of Sphinn Guidelines. Sphinn began by operating under what Danny Sullivan called his Common Sense Law. In the beginning, the approach was "to have as few rules as possible and build them up organically as they seem to be needed." As the Sphinn community has grown, we've built up those...

I remember the time when Sergey and Larry swore they'd never have ads on the homepage of Google. Last month I noted a big one for Chrome. Today there's an additional one. Now that's TWO ads! Google has its own products to market now, and it's using it's biggest firehose of attention to tell folks about them. Both are major new fronts in very...

What I really like about that post is that Alisa is talking from experience – this is priceless. Therefore I recommend all (especially new) bloggers to give this post some serious thought.

The Best Pint of Abbot Ale, Ever Blogs have been touted as effective tools for companies to publish content and demonstrate the conversational side of their corporate personality. Blogs have also long been promoted as a SEO tool. Despite plenty of optimism about blogging, there’s still a lot of mis-information, mis-perceptions and lack of...

Rebecca Kelley at 10e20 outlines different exceptions where she feels deleting comments, reviews or feedback is justified, then asks "What do you guys think? When do you think it’s okay to remove user-generated content, and when should you leave it be? Share your thoughts below!" Great followup to the article about Domino's Pizza possibly...

While 2009 is fresh in our minds, here are our thoughts, observations and recommendations for link building success in 2010 from your four Link Week writers

Congratulations! You’re hired… It’s a huge step in your SEO career to be hired for an in-house SEO department. Now it’s time to plan your in-house SEO strategy carefully, so you can secure your position and give your company what they’re looking for: tangible results from your SEO expertise...

On December 30th, 2009, Selena Gomez (better known for her role as Alex Russo on the TV show "Wizards of Waverly Place"), visited Daireds Salon and Spa Pangea for a haircut. Later, she tweeted about the positive experience to her 1.3 million followers.

Interesting how Google is spinning the Nexus One. From the release: Google Offers New Model for Consumers to Buy a Mobile Phone Launches Nexus One, contributing further innovation to the Android ecosystem MOUNTAIN VIEW (January 5, 2010) - Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today unveiled a new way for consumers to purchase an Android mobile phone, a web...

As 2009 came to a close, Google managed to get SEOs riled up for one last controversial topic. For some time, SEOs and web designers have been noticing that Google has not been showing local listings in search results for queries related to their businesses - even location-specific ones. Should SEOs and designers be worried about local listings?...

Social media is gaining greater acceptance across all levels of business from the SMB to the multi-national enterprise. No surprise there. What is beginning to play out though is the fact that the space is new and evolving. As a result, some of the techniques or tactics that seem to be the ‘norm’ are now being seen a bit differently. Why?...

The past year set a new record for malware creation with 25 million new strains, according to a new report by PandaLabs. The latest surge of activity included new examples of banker Trojans, which accounted for 66 percent of all new samples, as well as a number of fake antivirus programs. During 2009, spam was also highly active, accounting for...

Last night, Google announced that it filed a submission to the FCC, asking it to designate Google as one of potentially several administrators of a "white spaces" geolocation database. Back in November of 2008, the FCC approved the use of these White Spaces, or unused airwaves between broadcast TV channels, for public wireless broadband...

It appears that not just the Year of Mobile is being christened this January but new competitive lines are being drawn as well between Internet giants Google and Apple. Yes, it’s time to officially deem Apple an Internet company in my opinion but you are always free to disagree. According to All Things Digital Apple is preparing to announce a...

Spring Design, the makers of the Alex eReader device, announced it has entered into an agreement with Google, which will see it gaining access to over a million Google Books. Alex users will be able to read these books online or download them using the Android-integrated browser and search applications. "We are pleased to work with Spring...

Jon von Tetzchner has stepped down as CEO of Opera, though he will remain with the company full-time in a "strategic and independent" capacity. Opera has appointed Lars Boilesen to take his place as CEO. Jon von Tetzchner co-founded the company fifteen years ago. Boilesen has held executive positions at Alcatel-Lucent where he was CEO...

Real estate website Zillow.com said today it broke multiple records for site traffic and user activity in 2009. An average of 8.2 million unique users visited Zillow each month during 2009, which is an increase of 57 percent year-over-year. "2009 was a wild year for real estate, with continued home value declines, government intervention,...

An investment group with significant ties to Hulu may now be ready to help a similar site launch in China.  A report's connected Providence Equity Partners to both Baidu and a new online video destination. Let's start with a little history.  Once upon a time (or in mid-2007, to be more exact), Providence Equity Partners invested $100...

Apple is reportedly set to acquire Quattro Wireless for $275 million. This is according to the generally reliable Kara Swisher of BoomTown, who claims to have the information confirmed by several sources. Quattro Wireless is a mobile ad network similar to AdMob, which is in the process of being acquired by Google. Reports suggest that Apple was...

A great story by Glen Allsopp sharing how guest blogging earned him money and reputation.

Like many bloggers, I have already started reading some “predictions” for 2010 - which often take lessons learned for 2009 and project them into the next year. For my own part, I have done these sorts of blog posts before and the tough thing is to highlight things which will be relevant not just on the first of the year, but...

If you’re “on Twitter”, no doubt you’ve noticed different Tweeple running polls from time to time. We ran our first poll on Twitter over 3 years ago which resulted in the post, “Guide to Twitter as a Tool for Marketing and PR“, offering insights from other marketing and PR professionals experienced with the...

Ever since my last year’s post on the differences between the Facebook fan page and Facebook group (which needs an update by the way), people are contacting me with various questions related to the topic. One of the most frequent questions is about the most effective ways to promote a Facebook fan page. So here you go: the most effective, not...

As Facebook employees went back to work this week, they may have been smiling more (or at least less frowning less) than most other people returning from vacation.  Their site performed admirably over the holidays, actually attracting record-breaking amounts of traffic. On Tuesday, we documented the fact that Facebook received more traffic...

Free Press and a number of other consumer groups are calling on federal antitrust authorities and Congress to investigate agreements among large media companies to stifle competition for online television programming. In a report, Free Press details how giant cable, satellite and phone companies and many programming networks, led by Comcast and...

At the moment, the Zimbra homepage bears a "BUY ZIMBRA" button and a stamp reading "a Yahoo division."  But according to a new report, a sale of Zimbra (and not just a Zimbra product) may soon take place, making "a VMware division" a more accurate statement. Kara Swisher wrote earlier today, "Yahoo is close...

Answers service ChaCha announced today that it has closed a $7 million E round of funding. The service lets users go online, call, or text questions on mobile phones and receive answers "within minutes" for free. The service has an iPhone app and lets people ask questions via Twitter as well. This round of funding might be particularly...

Movie social networking site, Flixster, said today it has acquired movie review site Rotten Tomatoes from IGN Entertainment, a division of News Corp. News Corp will receive a minority equity stake in Flixster as part of the deal, financial terms were not disclosed. Both Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes will continue to be available to Internet users...

Tomorrow is the big day: the invite-only Google Android event. While we’ve all pretty much assumed they’re going to tout Android and reveal the Google-sold Nexus One phone, there’s always the possibility that Google will surprise us all. Google’s Nexus phone was first “leaked” in December after they distributed...

Seesmic announced today that it has acquired Ping.fm. This is a service that has half a million active users posting daily from various devices by sending email, text messages, and chat. "Ping.fm is compatible with every single Internet device in the world, which why it has become so successful among thousands of users," says Seesmic....

Update: Some Facebook users are reportedly now seeing a new Facebook design that looks like the screenshots here. The design is similiar to the one below, with some slight differences. Original Article: Reports and screenshots have surfaced indicating possible further design changes to the Facebook home page. These changes would include an...

The founders of Infegy have used their Social Radar, a social analytics and research platform, to take a look at brands in 2009. They call their report the Top 50 Social Brands of 2009—but I’m not convinced. On their blog, Infegy says the Social Radar analyze[d] millions of blog posts, news feeds, forums, social networks and Twitter...

A while back, Google launched an extensions gallery for its Chrome web browser. Ad-blocking add-ons are among the most popular for Mozilla's Firefox, so it stands to reason that they will be for Chrome as well. With Google's primary source of revenue being its ads, a lot of talk has surfaced about Google letting people block its own ads with its...

Smartphone owners are more comfortable making purchases from their handsets, but poor mobile site functionality is still a frustration for many, according to a new survey by Compete.  While m-commerce is set for strong growth in 2010, consumers are still more likely to abandon mobile purchasing on sites that are not optimized for the...

Last month, Google acknowledged Apple's importance by releasing a beta version of Chrome for Mac.  New statistics show that Google sort of put Apple to shame, too, however, as Chrome passed Safari in terms of market share. The stats come courtesy of Net Applications, and according to the organization, Internet Explorer remained very much on...

Even if you haven't used Spotify, there's a good chance you've heard of it. The service's description goes: "A world of music. Millions of songs on your computer, on your mobile and available offline. Brought to you ad free." People in the US have been unable to use the service so far. There has been talk that this may soon change upon...

Vermont residents may want to start giving a little extra thought to whether or not they like the way Google does things.  It seems that Matt Dunne, the Manager of Community Affairs at Google, is trying to become the state's governor. An important note: Dunne hasn't sworn to turn Vermont into one giant Googleplex.  There's been no...

Customers of the largest online retailers are more satisfied than ever according to ForeSee Results' annual report on holiday shoppers. The ForeSee Results E-Retail Satisfaction Index (U.S. Holiday Edition) jumped 7 percent to 79 on the Index's 100-point scale, a new all-time high. Websites for Macys, SonyStyle, The Gap, The Home Shopping Network...

Just as many of us get back to work after the holidays, Twitter has some new people starting work with the company altogether. Twitter reportedly has ten new people (most starting today), and some of them have interesting backgrounds, which could have interesting implications for the company's future. The one new hiring that is drawing the most...

Google must know something that we don’t. Why else would they be SO open in their new move toward transparency as to allow for extensions on Chrome that, gulp, block the very lifeblood of their money printing operation? Well, considering the market share that Chrome currently has (around 40 million users) and the mindset of someone likely to use...

It looks like Twitter is gearing up for a big year as they announce several (as in around 10) new hires to start the new year. While official numbers of total employees are tough to come by (last I saw put it in the range of 150 but I will not stand by the accuracy of that number) it is obvious that Twitter is looking to have a big year. Let’s...

Ready or not, 2010 is here. And according to eMarketer, 2010 is going to be a good year for email marketing. A December survey revealed that 69% of respondents plan to increase spending on email marketing efforts – more than any other marketing strategy. To ring in the New Year, we’ve compiled 5 email marketing tactics that are likely to gain...

Google has put together a one-minute guide to using its Search-based Keyword tool. The tool was launched just over a year ago in beta. It lets paid search advertisers see what keywords they may be missing out on based on searches on their site. "Millions of people use Google each day to find products and services by searching on various...

From Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis January 3, 2010. Well, hopefully no one out there is this bad off but one never knows. Here’s to a good 2010 to all regardless of what happens with da Google.

Related: 2009 Predictions 2009 How I Did 2008 Predictions 2008 How I Did 2007 Predictions 2007 How I Did 2006 Predictions 2006 How I Did 2005 Predictions 2005 How I Did 2004 Predictions 2004 How I Did A new decade. I like the sound of that. I'm a bit late on these, but for some reason these predictions refused to be rushed. I haven't had the...

The cat has at least started to come out of the bag with regards to the long-rumored "Google phone"; details about the Nexus One have been leaking for weeks.  It looks like the rest of the figurative feline will soon appear, too, as a T-Mobile announcement and invitation to a Google event were issued today. Let's start with the...

Today is, for better or for worse, the last day many people will have off before heading back to work or school and resuming normal life.  And if you have lots of stuff to do, good luck.  But if you're a bit bored - maybe still stuck at a relative's house or just out of books to read - here are some of the "Most Stumbled Sites of...

I have to admit that I spend way to much time at this site. Some may think that I have some sick, twisted obsession with complete losers. But I like to think that it’s my way of appreciating humanity’s potential, by witnessing their lack of success. You see, whenever we fail, we are given a golden opportunity to then rebound and...

Google's empire hasn't exactly crumbled, and to be honest, the average person will probably never even realize what's happened.  But what's happened is this: for just the second time in its history, Google's lost a domain name dispute. Google submitted a complaint about a site called Groovle to the National Arbitration Forum (which ICANN...

In a recent article, we looked at some predictions from Nielsen for advertising trends in 2010. These included optimizing media convergence being a top priority, new models emerging to take advantage of smartphones, more cross-media ad campaigns, an increase in commercialization of social networking hubs, and more interesting and interactive...

Rush Limbaugh was released from the hospital today and says doctors found nothing wrong. It makes you wonder if the thousands of hysterical people wishing Rush Limbaugh death on Twitter are feeling a little foolish. Probably not. :) Below is the video of Rush speaking to the press about his good health:    Taking a look at...