June 2008: Search Engine Land’s Most Popular Stories

Below are Search Engine Land’s 10 most popular stories from June 2008:

1) June 2008 California Fire Maps – Wildfires, again, in my home state of California. People are looking for maps of where they are at, so here are some resources.

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2) Yahoo The Failure: Myth Versus Reality – As SS Yahoo appears to be sinking, let me be the contrarian about her future. I admit, I find it as hard to believe as anyone that Yahoo has much life left in it after all the executive departures this week, plus the latest news of Delicious founder Joshua Schacter going. But since Yahoo’s leadership has done a piss-poor job making people believe there’s hope, I’ll step up and give it a swing. Buck Up Little Yahoos! First of all, WTF? Seriously, what the hell is going on? How did Yahoo become such a loser company in anyone’s mind other than the idiotic investors who usually don’t seem to know what they’ve bought? Let’s have a little reality check about that big fat failure Yahoo supposedly is.

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3) Google Trends Comes To Web Sites: Trends For Web Sites – Google has launched a major addition to Google Trends named Trends for Web Sites. Trends for Web Sites extends Google Trends by enabling you to search for web site addresses, as opposed to just searching for trends by keyword. R.J. Pittman, Google’s Director of Product Management, told me that by entering a domain name into Google Trends, Google will return traffic, search, and geographic visitation data for that site. Trends for Web Sites will show sites related to the domain name you entered. It will also show searches that are correlated to the domain name, and if you are logged into Google, it will show the estimated traffic for that site. In addition, you can enter in up to five domain names and Google will plot line graphs for all the domains you entered in.

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4) George Carlin’s Death Spikes Searches For His Seven Words You Can Never Say On TV – I was saddened to hear one of my favorite comedians, George Carlin, passed away Sunday. Clearly he touched many people. A quick look at Google Trends shows searches related to him have spiked up as well as for his famous “seven words you can’t say on TV.” Among the things people are seeking.

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5) Mr. Google, Tear Down This Google Trends Wall! – About two seconds after Google Trends For Websites came out, people started noticing that one company’s websites oddly had no data available — Google’s own. Google will tell you all about the traffic to competitors like Yahoo and Microsoft but gives away nothing about itself. The same is true for the newly-released Google Ad Planner tool. It’s not right, despite Google’s weak excuse of not wanting to provide “financial guidance” about itself via the tool. Google either needs to post its own information pronto or allow any company to opt out.

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6) Google Logo Meets Hooters – People are always interested in the Google logo, especially as they often change it. But anyone searching now for google logo might get a surprise, as noted by Ari. Out of all the relevant images Google could have shown in the top three, Google picked this one as the second most relevant image result for a search on [google logo].

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7) Hey Firefox – Let Us Pick Our Own Search Engine! – So Firefox 3 has a new release candidate making news, suggesting that the browser is nearly done. May I suggest that the browser is nowhere near being done until the Mozilla Foundation drops its favoritism to Google and allow users to pick their own default search engine? And that Microsoft ought to be among those choices?

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8) Google Ad Planner Launches, Offers Site Demographic Profiles – Google has launched Google Ad Planner as an invite-only beta. It’s designed to allow advertisers to identify sites with demographics they’re interested in — even sites that aren’t part of Google’s advertising network.

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9) No, Advanced SEO Does Not Mean Spamming – Coming back from our SMX Advanced conference last week, I found myself doing some soul searching. How was it that some people could wonder if advanced SEO means spamming search engines? And have I been contributing to this confusion? For the record — no, advanced SEO doesn’t mean you have to spam. Not in my book. But as SEO has matured, I find myself wondering if the importance of good site architecture — search engine friendly design — has become lost as an advanced technique itself. And has the battle for links caused us to segment too much into different halves of an SEO “house?” Is SEO splitting apart?

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10) Facebook Group Using Google Maps To Go “Dipping” At Strangers’ Pools – Facebook ‘dipping’ craze irks pool owners from the Telegraph reports that teenagers on Facebook are using Google Maps to locate pools in their neighborhoods and then hold pool parties as uninvited guests. The new phenomenon is called “dipping” and has caused concern in the Bournemouth, UK area. These “dippers” have been inviting others via Facebook to join the parties. The teenagers are instructed to “wear fancy dress costumes” and bring a bicycle as a way to make an escape for when the cops come. These dipping events seem to run between midnight and 3am and only have 16 confirmed participants.

To see all of our most popular stories over time, visit our Most Popular Stories page.