Search Month: December 2007 Search News, In Review

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Dec. 31, 2007 at 2:18pm Eastern by Danny Sullivan

Search Month: December 2007 Search News, In Review

Search Month is a monthly newsletter that recaps stories covered on Search Engine Land over the past month. It's also available by feed here. Below, news about Search Engine Land itself, then our 10 most popular stories from December 2007, then a major story for various search topics along with other stories related to those topics since our last monthly newsletter through today. By the way, for those wondering -- yes, there is a Search Year 2007 you can read, to see all stories over the past year organized by topic and on one page.

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Search Engine Land News
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Are you a Facebook addict? If so, we've got an application for you. Search News Headlines gives you the top headlines from Search Engine Land and Search Engine Roundtable combined, showing on your Facebook profile page. You can also add your own feed or any feeds you like using the applications settings. You'll notice there's also a thermometer that runs alongside the headlines, designed to show you what we predict the day's temperature in terms of search news will be.

Our Sphinn forums and social media site has long had its own Sphinn Facebook application created by Patrick Sexton of SEOish, letting you see the latest stories from Sphinn. Now Patrick's made a similar gadget for iGoogle. You'll find it here and described more here.

Don't forget -- you can also add headlines from Search Engine Land and other top search news sources to iGoogle and other start pages using the special "tabs" and "pages" below:

On Search Engine Land, December saw the launch of our new Back To Basics column. Back To Basics focuses on the core elements of search engine marketing, from keyword research to understanding web logs, basic search advertising techniques, and more.

Like the work we do on Search Engine Land? Then we'd love your vote in the 2007 Search Blog Awards that Search Engine Journal is having. We're nominated in several categories, as are some of our people here at SEL. Here's a rundown on the awards overall.

On the conference front, our SMX West event is less than two months away. This is our must-attend three day search marketing conference especially designed for beginning and intermediate search marketers, though there's plenty for experts to learn, as well.

We've now got our keynotes in place for the show. I'll be kicking off SMX West with "Search 3.0, Search 4.0 and Beyond." I'll cover the implications of blended search (Search 3.0), personalized and social search (Search 4.0), and what's next for search and search marketing technologies.

SMX West attendees will also get some hints about new search technologies in the works at Cuill, a stealth search start-up with some former Googlers as founders. Vice President of products Louis Monier will describe efforts at Cuill to set new standards in search, in addition to providing perspective on developments in the field. Monier is a search technology pioneer, having founded Alta Vista in 1995 and later leading teams at both eBay and Google.

The third day keynote will be "Generation Next: Search In The Coming Decade," a panel discussion with luminaries from the major search engines predicting where they see search headed. This session will be moderated by Search Engine Land's Chris Sherman and SEMPO Chairperson Gord Hotchkiss.

The first networking and extracurricular activities for SMX West have also been announced. There's the SMX Bash on the day before the show, so that people can meet and network. On February 26, the first SMX Search Bowl will be held, pitting teams from the major search engines as well as a search marketer team in a trivia contest.

For more about the keynotes, activities and the show itself, see the posts below:

Remember, SMX West will just be the start of our 2008 series. Here's a complete list, for those doing forward planning:

SMX West, Santa Clara, February 26-28, 2008
SMX Munich, April 8-9, 2008
SMX Sydney, April 10-11, 2008
SMX Madrid, May 20-21, 2008
SMX Advanced, Seattle, June 3-4, 2008
SMX East, New York City, October 6-8, 2008
SMX Local & Mobile, October, 2008

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Top 10 Most Popular Stories: December 2007
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1) Instructions On Tracking Santa With NORAD & Google: The 2007 Edition - I'm a serious Santa Claus tracker. When I was a kid, I used to get Santa updates from NORAD (the US missile tracking people) via the radio. As an adult, I've long used the NORAD Tracks Santa web site to keep up with St. Nick, Father Christmas, or whatever your local name is for the jolly red suited man. This year, Google officially partnered with NORAD, bringing the NORAD Santa tracking site some of its most substantial changes in years. Some of the changes I like, and some make me think I wish Google had stayed out of it. Here's how to use the site, what's different, and what's cool.

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2) Google Knol - Google's Play To Aggregate Knowledge Pages - Move over Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers, Mahalo, and Squidoo. Maybe. That's because Google's testing its own service to let people build a repository of knowledge. In fact, knowledge forms the core of the service's name: Google Knol. Screenshot of Google Knol page (feel free to use this and those below, just link to this story, please) Google Knol is designed to allow anyone to create a page on any topic, which others can comment on, rate, and contribute to if the primary author allows. The service is in a private test beta.

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3) Keeping It Private On Google Reader - Almost two weeks ago, I wrote my Google Reader Gets Social With Friends Shared Items post detailing how disturbing it was that Google Reader was now sharing items with people it considered my friends, on an opt-out basis. Privacy concerns over this finally exploded this week, with Google Reader itself now reacting mainly to highlight how friend sharing can be enabled or disabled. Lost in the outcry seems to be the point that it's always been the case that sharing any item would share it with the ENTIRE WORLD, and that hasn't changed. But the change was significant in making more public a list of items that generally was hidden. Below, a revisit on sharing for the privacy concerned.

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4) Tracking Santa: NORAD & Google Team Up For Christmas - Every year, I enjoy helping my kids track the approach of Santa Claus through the NORAD site, as I've written about before. This year, Google's getting in on the action. You'll be able to track Santa in Google Earth on Christmas Eve with the help of a special file. You can also download a countdown for your iGoogle home page that Google offers here.

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5) Deconstructing Google: Chapter 4, After The Google Breakup - Previous chapters have covered how the growth of Google and fears of how it was reshaping the communication landscape led to the application of existing anti-trust laws along with new ones to force a Google breakup in 2010. This chapter looks at the immediate aftermath: the "Baby Googles" or "Googlets" that were formed in the name of greater competition and consumer choice.

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6) Sub Domains To Be Treated As Folders By Google - Matt Cutts of Google said at PubCon that Google will be treating sub domains similar to how they treat folders on a site.

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7) Ask.com Launches AskEraser Giving Searches Ability To Search Anonymously - Ask.com has launched AskEraser, giving searchers the ability to search anonymously. Ask.com told us about this tool back in July, and six months later, it's now live for all searchers to use. When a searcher activates AskEraser, Ask will stop recording the searcher's search queries and cookie information. This information includes IP address, User ID, Session ID, and the complete query text. AskEraser is available across many of Ask.com's properties, including Web search, image search, AskCity, news search, blog search, video search, and Maps & Directions.

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8) How Changes To The Way Google Handles Subdomains Impact SEO - At Pubcon last week, Matt Cutts mentioned a change in the way Google handles subdomains. To better understand this change and what this means for search marketers, let’s revisit common site structure choices, how they’re handled by Google, and how that impacts SEO.

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9) Searcharazzi Saturday Spectacular: The Larry Page Wedding Details - Now that the “who attended which conference this week" gossip chatter is over, we have a bigger question: Who is attending Larry Page’s wedding today? As previously reported, Larry is getting married today, and Searcharazzi is reporting to you live from an undisclosed location at the island location, if only in our minds. In any case, Searcharazzi has spent the better half of the month gathering the details of Larry’s and Lucy Southworth's pending nuptials, to be hosted by Richard Branson on Necker Island.

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10) Google Launches New iPhone Interface - I went to Google on my iPhone, and I saw a new interface. I then did some searches and saw that TechCrunch has a piece on it named Google Pre-Launches New iPhone Interface. Here are some pictures of the new interface from my iPhone.

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AOL
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AOL Creates "Platform-A Marketing Solutions" Unit - Trying to realize the promise of its "Platform A" integrated display advertising initiative, AOL has created "Platform-A Marketing Solutions." The new unit combines the formerly separate sales teams of AOL and Tacoda. AOL acquired behavioral targeting firm Tacoda in July of this year. The effort is focused chiefly on traditional brand advertisers and the top online advertisers. See also:

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Ask.com
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Privacy Group Finds Flaws In AskEraser's Privacy Tool - Group says Ask's privacy feature is flawed from News.com reports that the Electronic Privacy Information Center has found a few flaws in AskEraser, Ask.com's new privacy searching feature. The three problems are: AskEraser uses an opt-out cookie instead of an opt-in cookie. Ask stores the time that the user enables AskEraser, which can potentially be used to figure out searches done while using AskEraser. Ask's FAQs says that if a court order requires them to turn over search data, even with AskEraser on, they will. See also:

Ask.com Launches AskEraser Giving Searches Ability To Search Anonymously

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Ask.com: Bloglines
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Bloglines Beta Adds Features: Save, Photo Widget, & Blog View - Bloglines announced a few new features you can find in the Bloglines Beta RSS reader. These include a new save feature, a photo widget enhancement, and a blog view option for the 3-Pane view. Here is a more detailed look at all three.

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B2B
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B2B Search Marketing: Measuring Success Beyond Conversions - Today, the majority of b2b search marketing programs are focused on lead generation. Prospects are driven to landing pages where they register for white papers, demos, webinars, and other informational assets. A certain percentage of these registrants become sales leads, and ultimately customers. While lead gen programs do produce inquiries, this type of campaign may be short-sighted in the long run. See also:

B2B Web Analytics: The Search For High-Value Prospects

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Back To Basics
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If Paid Search Isn't Working Then You're Doing Something Wrong - The Nielsen Company recently completed a survey asking consumers their opinions on advertising, including offline and online. When asked “To What Extent Do You Trust the Following Forms of Advertising?”, paid search ads were ranked near the bottom compared to other forms of advertising. This should not come to a surprise to any paid search marketer, but it’s also not bad news, either. Paid search marketing, when done correctly, fills consumer needs. And if your ads aren't attracting clicks and conversions, you're simply not recognizing or filling those needs. Here are a few things to consider if your paid search campaign isn't delivering the kinds of results you'd like. See also:

Think Beyond The Click: How To Build Landing Pages That Convert

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Business & Revenues
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Travel Search Sites Kayak And SideStep To Merge In Nearly $200 Million Deal - TechCrunch reported last night that travel meta-search site Kayak had closed a whopping $196 million round and then turned around and bought competitor SideStep for almost that same amount. The press release officially describes the transaction as a merger and both brands will apparently be preserved, but Kayak is clearly the dominant party and acquirer. See also:

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Conferences
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Search Conference Coverage 2007: SES Chicago Day Four & PubCon Vegas Day Three - Today is the fourth and final day of SES Chicago and the third and last day of PubCon Vegas sessions. Here's a recap of session coverage out of both shows, from across the web. See also:

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Digg
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Digg Adds Images Tab, New Taxonomy, & More - The Digg Blog announced several additions and changes that went live on Digg last night. The first is the addition of an image tab to the top of Digg's main categories. See also:

Report: Digg Wants To Sell For $300 Million (Or More)

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Facebook
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The Facebook Privacy Fallout Continues - For those just joining us, Facebook was overly aggressive with its Beacon tracking program, one of several new ad programs launched in early November. Beacon required users to opt-out or have their activity and transactions on Facebook partner sites broadcast to their networks back on Facebook. Discovering this, many people were frustrated and upset by what they felt was a lack of disclosure regarding the implications of the tracking. See also:

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Google: AdSense
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Google AdSense To Give Publishers Access To Review Placement Targeted Ads Prior To Ad Placement - The Google AdSense blog announced they will be rolling out the "Ad Review Center" to publishers over the course of the next few months. The Ad Review Center will give publishers the ability to review placement targeted ads before they are displayed on publisher sites. Plus, it will give publishers the ability to review current placement targeted ads and have them blocked from their sites. See also:

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Google: AdWords
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Google Releases Updated AdWords Editor 5.0 - The Inside AdWords Blog announced the release of AdWords Editor 5.0, an upgrade from the 4.0 version. The new version has support for local business ads, a more advanced export filter, a save your searches feature, share your draft accounts with a draft account feature, a new splats section to show you errors and warnings, and more. There are dozens of new features and updates to the AdWords Editor. See also:

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Google: Apps
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If You Know About Google Docs, You're In The Minority - According to a new survey of 600 "PC users" (and see here) by the NPD Group, 73 percent of Americans have "never heard of, never tried" web-based productivity software replacements for Microsoft Office. Roughly 21 percent have heard of but still never tried these alternatives, which include Google Docs and Zoho. See also:

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Google: Business Issues
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FTC's Xmas Gift To Google: Approval Of DoubleClick Acquisition - The US Federal Trade Commission has granted its approval for Google to purchase DoubleClick. Google has a press release up with the news (and see also here), and the FTC announcement is here. The many parties have raised privacy issues with the deal, and the FTC noted this was not germane to its approval. See also:

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Google: Employees
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Will Google Have Trouble Finding A New CFO? - In August, Google CFO George Reyes announced that he was retiring. Reyes joined Google in 2002 and was the executive who helped the company through its IPO and subsequent growth. Forbes now estimates his stock is worth more than $200 million. The same article in Forbes also speculates that Google may have some trouble replacing Reyes because the same financial incentives to join the company don't exist today as they did during the pre-IPO era, and Google's corporate culture may not be as CFO-friendly as more traditional companies. Reyes will reportedly stay on until a successor has been found. See also:

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Google: FeedBurner & Reader
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Google Reader Gets Social With Friends Shared Items - Google's made a significant move toward trying to have a Facebook-like news feed and beef up its social networking aspirations by integrating Google Talk / Gmail contacts with Google Reader. I'd seen the discussion earlier, but after now experiencing it first-hand, it's kind of scary that it isn't more opt-in rather than opt-out. See also:

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Google: Knol
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Google Knol: Competitors Respond & Time To Limit The Aggregators? - Last week, our Google Knol - Google's Play To Aggregate Knowledge Pages article covered the Wikipedia-like Google Knol product that Google is testing and may release in a few months. In that article, I noted how Knol was aimed squarely at services like Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers, Mahalo, and Squidoo. Since them, some of those players have responded to the Google challenge. Below, a look at what they are saying, as well as the complicated issues when everyone wants a web site that ranks for everything -- including Google. See also:

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Google: Maps & Local
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Google Street View Continues March, Introduces Embedded Version - According to Boston.com, Google's Street View images are rolling out to more US cities today, including Boston, Providence, Dallas, Fort Worth, Indianapolis, Detroit, Minneapolis, and St. Paul. Google Operating System counts the total number of US cities with StreetView now as 23. StreetView is also actively in development in Canada, Europe, and Australia. See also:

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Google: Mobile
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FCC Accepts Google Airwaves, Inc's 700MHz Application; AT&T's Deemed Incomplete - When the applications were submitted to the FCC to bid in the forthcoming 700MHz wireless spectrum auction, it appeared that there were going to be a handful of major bidders: Verizon, AT&T, Cox Communications, Frontier Wireless, MetroPCS, and Google. In fact, there were 266 would-be bidders that submitted applications, although the FCC accepted only 96 of them. The rest were deemed incomplete. See also:

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Google: News
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Google News Updates Algorithm: Sourcing Story Updates & Local Context To News - The Google News Blog announced they have updated their algorithms to become more relevant and fresh with news. See also:

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Google: Privacy
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New Google Privacy Videos Offer Advice On Product Settings - If US Congressman Joe Barton never got an answer to his many questions about Google Privacy (which I thought wasted time asking for stuff an intern could locate), perhaps he'll be happy watching some of Google's latest videos released that cover some very specific privacy issues on a product-by-product basis. They join some other video content to help grow the Google Privacy Channel on YouTube that was created last month. See also:

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Google: SEO Issues
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Google Improves Results For Supplemental Pages - According to a new post on the Google Webmaster Central blog, the supplemental index is no longer, well, supplemental. Google has long had a two-tiered index and webmasters have generally feared the second, supplemental tier. A Forbes article earlier this year called it "Google Hell", as historically, those pages weren't crawled as often as those in the main index, weren't returned in search results unless the main index didn't contain enough matching pages, and were labeled "supplemental," which implied they were inferior to the other results. In July, Google removed the supplemental label, saying that they had overhauled the supplemental crawling and index system and therefore the label was no longer needed. Now, they say that the next set of improvements are complete and that they now search both the main and supplemental index for all queries, not just the long tail queries that the main index can't satisfy. See also:

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Google: Searching
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Google 2D? Google Tests Vertical Results In Right-Hand Column - Ask 3D was the name Ask gave to the "three pane" user interface rolled out earlier this year. Now Google seems to be copying Ask, at least to the second degree, with the right-most column being used to show vertical results similar to how Ask does it. Google Blogoscoped and Valleywag both have pictures of Google trying out the right-hand column as a location for Google's OneBox results. It would be interesting to see if this test turns out to be more than a test. Google has adopted Universal Search, but by placing these vertical results outside of the main web results, they no longer seem to fit the blended Search 3.0 Universal Search-style but instead are more like Google's traditional OneBox results. See also:

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Google: Social Moves
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Google The Stealth Social Network? - Google's plan to socialize its various applications continues. Google Operating System has spotted code in Gmail that may lead to a Facebook-style news feed of status updates from your Gmail contacts. More about this and Google's continued "stealth social network" moves below. See also:

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In House SEM
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Yes, Mom, Search Marketing IS A Valid Career Choice - If you're an in-house search marketer, you may have had the experience of awakening one morning and realizing that you have a legitimate career. Wow! Your high school guidance counselor never mentioned this gig, I'll bet. Only a handful of years ago, in fact, this career path never existed. Most folks would have simply labeled you a computer nerd—today they know better. You are not a nerd. You are a geek—a search geek, in fact. See also:

Making the Most Of In-House SEO Project Delays

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Link Building
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Introduction To Trusted Source Link Streams - Whenever I begin a link building and content publicity project, I start with research. One of the areas I research is trusted sources. The type of trusted sources I am referring to are those people that have already shown an interest in the topic of the site I'm building links for and have created a link resource list, located on an already trustworthy site. I always look to see if any professional researchers or librarians have compiled link guides in that same topic already, given that if they have, they likely have identified some of the most useful target sites for link seeking, and by pointing at them from their own already trusted sites, they are in a sense creating a stream of trust. And here's how you can follow that stream. See also:

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Local Search & Maps
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Local Online Ads Will Reach $12.6 Billion In 2008, Local Search Will Bring In $5 Billion Of That Total - Using an expansive definition of the marketplace, Borrell Associates says that "local online advertising" is worth $8.5 billion today. That number consists of local search, "local banners," and local video. Banners is the biggest spending category and video the smallest. But Borrell expects local search to grow substantially to become almost 50% of the total local online spend next year, which is projected to reach $12.6 billion. See also:

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Local SEM
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Anatomy & Optimization Of A Local Business Profile - Many local companies depend upon their information's presence in various directories in order to advertise themselves, and the basic instrument of these marketing efforts is the Business Profile. The majority of businesses out there pay little attention to these beyond wanting their name, address, and phone numbers to be correct. However, there are far more components of business profiles beyond the bare basics, and this article will outline many of them and how they should be handled for best effect. Optimizing business listings and profiles can make all the difference in enabling potential customers to find you and in selecting you from your pack of competitors. See also:

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Microsoft: adCenter
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Microsoft Launches adCenter Accreditation: adExcellence - Microsoft has announced the launch of adExcellence, their accreditation program to qualify companies and individuals as certified adCenter experts. Microsoft promised to launch this program in 2007, and they did so with a month to spare. See also:

adCenter Add-in Beta for Excel 2007

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Microsoft: Business Issues
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Viacom & Microsoft Announce Major Content, Ads Deal - Today Microsoft and Viacom announced a wide-ranging content and advertising deal that involves Viacom content distribution on Microsoft-owned sites, ad serving by Microsoft on Viacom properties, mutual distribution of game-related content and ads, as well as collaboration in other areas. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the announcement are apparent guarantees of Microsoft advertising on Viacom TV properties and online. The release lays out the full scope of the partnership, said to be worth $500 million over five years. See also:

Microsoft To Be Exclusive Ad Provider To CNBC.com

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Microsoft: Maps & Local
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Live Search Maps Go To China - According to the Windows Live Blog, Live Search Maps have launched in China. It's probably more accurate to say "in Chinese," because you can search the entire world rather than just China. (Screenshots below.) See also:

Microsoft Acquires UK-Based MultiMap Mapping Provider

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Microsoft: Mobile
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Microsoft Builds A Better Mobile Search Experience - Yesterday Microsoft announced a number of content upgrades and changes to its local search for mobile devices, which include reviews, one-click directions, interactive maps, photos, and so on. There's more specific detail on the Virtual Earth blog. All the major search engines are now offering blended search results on their mobile-friendly sites. (As an aside, these mobile search results are not unlike "universal search" on the desktop.) See also:

MSN Introduces Advertising On Mobile Portal

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Microsoft: SEO Issues
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Microsoft Reports That Issues With Their Live Search Cloaking Detection System Have Been Fixed - Today, Microsoft has posted to the Live Search Webmaster Center blog that the cloaking detection system they have been running for the past few months has, for some sites, skewed site statistics and ads reporting, as well as caused a high traffic load, and they have made some adjustments to the process to correct these errors. Below, details on the problems this process caused, what Live Search is doing about them, and a brief look at how the engines have historically dealt with cloaking. See also:

Microsoft Live Search Fixes Issue With Listing Google AdWords Ads

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Microsoft: Searching
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Microsoft Does Sitelinks On Live Search - The SEOCO blog reports that a search at Live.com now may return extra links under the first results. This is known as Sitelinks over at Google. For example, a search on dmoz at Live Search returns this:

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Mobile Search
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SEL Mobile User Survey: 47 Percent Access Mobile Internet "More Than Once A Week" - Several weeks ago, I asked readers to take a quick mobile user survey to get a snapshot of mobile search usage among Search Engine Land readers. It was a brief survey that sought only high-level information. See also:

CallGenie Buys Mobile "Ad Exchange" PhoneSpots

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Paid Search & Contextual
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Paid Search Planning: Do You Really Know Your Customers & Your Market? - The season is upon us when marketers near and far are thinking about paid search planning, strategy, and implementation for the upcoming year. It's important to take some time out to plan your strategy for 2008 so you're not just reactive in your marketing efforts. So, in this article, I'll review useful tools advertisers can use to put together kick-butt campaigns. As the PPC game gets more competitive, it makes sense to not only have good campaign fundamentals but also thorough understanding your online advertising landscape. In my experience, it's particularly helpful to understand several areas. See also:

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Popularity
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Comparing Search Popularity Ratings Services: June To Nov. 2007 - I've now compiled the latest search popularity stats from Nielsen, comScore, Hitwise and Compete. That means it's time to put them all together, to see what a "panel" of ratings services agree on -- and don't agree on -- in terms of search engine popularity. See also:

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Searching
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Pew/Internet Study Finds Most Americans Get Their Answers From the Internet - A PEW/Internet and American Life study out today finds that the place Americans turn to most for answers is the internet. The study, which surveyed 2,796 Americans, found that 76% have internet access and that 58% turn to the internet when they have questions about things like health, school, careers, and government issues. The project focused on how people use the internet, libraries, and government resources when they need to solve problems and found that those without high-speed internet access (no access or dial-up only) were less satisfied with their ability to get the answers they were seeking. See also:

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Search Marketing Industry
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Search & Interactive Marketing Associations List - Lee Odden is compiling a list of regional search and interactive marketing associations and is asking for your help. He currently has over 25 on the list, but I am sure there are a lot more. If you know of any he is missing, comment at his blog and let's help him compile the ultimate list! See also:

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Search Marketing Tactics
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Search Illustrated: SEM Strategy Matrix - With so many tactical options available to today's search marketer, it can sometimes be difficult to determine which approaches are best for achieving specific goals. Should press releases be optimized for increased brand awareness? Or, will a PPC campaign achieve better results? This week's infographic matches common marketing goals with a range of search-related tactics in order to craft a successful SEM plan. See also:

A Holiday Post Mortem For Online Retailers

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SEO / Natural / Unpaid Search
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Sculpting Your PageRank For Maximum SEO Impact - If you are a large online retailer, you're looking at thousands upon thousands of pages that have the opportunity to get crawled and indexed in the SERPs (search engine results pages). Out of all those permutations, there is one configuration that is the most optimal from an SEO perspective. That's because it maximizes the flow of link juice (e.g., PageRank if you're speaking purely in Google terms) to your most important pages and minimizes (or cuts off completely) the flow of link juice to your least important pages. The most important pages are the ones that have the most potential to rank highly for the targeted keyword themes, to compel the searcher to click, and to drive that visitor toward a "conversion event" such as completing a purchase of one or more high-margin products. To achieve that search engine optimal configuration of your internal linking structure, you need to think strategically about how you "spend" the link juice that has been bestowed on your site through inbound links. See also:

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Security & Privacy
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Report: Hacked Pages Remain In Search Engines' Caches - Search Engine Journal reports that online security firm Aladdin Knowledge Systems identified a potential "flaw, which allows the search engines to deliver malicious pages that have already been removed from the web." What that means as a practical matter is that hacked pages, which have already been taken down or otherwise cleaned up, may still be visible to end users through Web search via caching, which generally speeds up delivery of search results. See also:

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Small Business
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A Small Business Year-End Web Site Checklist - The time of year when we make resolutions is fast approaching. I'm not much of a resolution-maker myself, but I'm going to suggest that small business owners make one. Namely, it's a suggestion that you resolve to fix up your web site and pay attention to things you might've ignored for too long. I know you're busy and time is at a premium, so chances are good that you've missed a few minor issues that are making your web site look old and outdated. Think about this way: Your car needs a tune-up every 15,000 miles or so to keep it running at its best. Your teeth need a checkup at least once or twice a year. I bet your doctor would also like to see you regularly, too. Well, a regular checkup will also keep your web site running in peak condition. See also:

SEO Is Not An Option, It's A Requirement!

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Social Search
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Mahalo Adds The Social Graph To Search - Everyone's been talking about how the social graph is the next evolution of search. Search 4.0. The next step forward after Search 3.0's blended and personalized search. Today, Mahalo is taking that next step and adding a social layer to their search results. Jason Calacanis, Mahalo founder, says that the problem of search will be solved by a combination of machines, human curation, and social interaction, and with today's launch of Mahalo Social, Mahalo adds the beginning of that elusive social interaction. The new features include profiles and the ability to recommend links for search terms. Much like Digg or Delicious, users can add friends and see what those friends are recommending. Below, more information on how Mahalo plans to deal with spam, work with webmasters, and if this approach will scale. See also:

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Social Media
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Blog Search Engine Technorati Reinvents Itself Again - Blog search engine and news site Technorati has suffered various identity crises over the past couple of years as it seeks to fend off competition and angle toward an eventual acquisition. TechCrunch provides useful context and history for the latest re-imagining of the site as a hybrid blog and traditional news aggregator. With the latest version of the homepage and site, Technorati returns to a degree to its blog-search oriented roots. The site had morphed into a more mainstream news aggregator most recently before this redesign. See also:

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Video Search
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Nielsen Seeks To Become Video Copyright Arbiter - Nielsen has partnered with Digimarc to digitally "watermark" or fingerprint video clips from media companies circulating on the Internet. Clips would have a unique ID and specific rules could be assigned to govern their uploading and distribution accordingly, to prevent copyright infringement. See also:

In Parallel Universe, Porn Producer Sues YouTube Clone

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Yahoo: Business Issues
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Susan Decker, Yahoo's President, Gets Raise - Salary jumps for Decker with Yahoo promotion from News.com reports that Yahoo president Susan Decker will be getting a pretty nice raise. As Yahoo's CFO, she made $500,000. Now, as Yahoo's president, she will be making $815,000. In addition to the $315,000 raise, Decker will also be eligible for a bonus of 150% of her base salary, which comes out to $1.2 million. See also:

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Yahoo: Flickr
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Flickr Launches Stats: Detailed Overview - Flickr just announced the launch of Flickr Stats for Flickr Pro accounts. Who doesn't love stats? Now having them on my Flickr account makes me incredibly happy. Here is a detailed look at what Flickr Stats has to offer on the day it launched. See also:

Flickr Adds Picnik Web Based Image Editing Features

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Yahoo: Local & Maps
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Yahoo Maps Adds Drag And Drop Routing - Yahoo Maps added drag and drop customizable routing, among several other improvements to the site. There's more discussion and explanation on the Yahoo Local & Maps blog. Google has a similar feature. Below are some screenshots of the new capability on Yahoo. Additional feature upgrades on Yahoo Maps include photos and reviews in Ajax pop-ups that appear when you mouse over individual business pushpins on the map. See also:

Yahoo Local (Re)introduces Search Refinement, RSS

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Yahoo: Mobile
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Yahoo oneSearch To Power Wireless Carrier Portals In Latin America - Even as attention has been focused on Google's 700 MHz spectrum bid and its Android mobile platform, Yahoo has been aggressively doing business development with mobile operators and handset makers around the world, in Asia, Europe, and now Latin America. This morning Yahoo announced that it had inked another major wireless distribution deal with America Movil. Under the deal, which spans 16 countries and roughly 143 million mobile subscribers in Latin America and the Caribbean, Yahoo's oneSearch "will be the default mobile search service on America Movil's wireless carriers' portals."

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Yahoo: SEO
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Yahoo Search Weather Update & Support For X-Robots Tag - The Yahoo Blog issued a weather report for changes to rankings in Yahoo Search, along with news that they are now supporting the X-Robots-Tag directive -- a way to control indexing of content that cannot accept meta robots tags.

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Yahoo: Other
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Yahoo Adds Integrated Shortcuts For WordPress Blogs - The Yahoo Search Blog announced a new WordPress plugin that automatically creates Yahoo Shortcuts for the words you write in a blog post. If you mention a stock ticker, that word on your blog will typically contain a mouse-over effect that will display a Yahoo Finance chart. Or if you have an address, they might show you a Yahoo Map. Yahoo integrated the plugin with web search, maps, finance, product search, Flickr, Yahoo Autos, news search, and more. See also:

TechTicker, Yahoo's New Tech Focused Investor Portal

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Fun, Weird Stuff & Other Things
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Google Search Finds Wife With "Dead Husband" In Panama City - The wife of a man believed to be dead found her story fall apart after a picture of the two of them together recently was found through the help of a Google Images search. See also:

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