November 2007: Search Engine Land’s Most Popular Stories

Below are Search Engine Land’s 10 most popular stories from November 2007:

1) Google Maps Adds Terrain View, Replaces Hybrid View – If you load up Google Maps, you may notice that they have removed the "Hybrid" button and replaced it with "Terrain" and a simulated view of cities or terrain. Here is a live frame of the Google Terrain view of New York City 10010.

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2) It’s The (Other) Algorithm, Stupid! Understanding DiggRank – Have you ever wondered what it really takes for a story submitted to Digg to get to the home page? Or why a certain story—even a really good, social media friendly story—never got to the home page? I’m frequently asked the question, "Hey, my story has [number] of Diggs but it still hasn’t been promoted to the home page. Any idea what’s wrong?" And, relatively less frequently, I hear someone saying in amazement, "Wow, all it took was 29 Diggs and that story rocketed to the home page!" I’m always tempted to reply "It’s the algorithm, stupid!" Digg has an algorithm? Yes, just as PageRank and other algorithms are used to rank web pages by search engines, some social sites use algorithms to determine which stories become popular. Call it DiggRank, if you will. Let’s take a deeper look at what the Digg algorithm is and venture a few guesses about how it works.

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3) The Social Media Manual: Read Before You Play – I get so many questions from people about Digg, Propeller, Reddit, Stumbleupon, and other social news sites every day that I decided to write this little "manual" as something to read before you jump in head first into any social site, and to keep by your side as you progress through the ranks. It should not only help you succeed with your social media marketing efforts, but also help you avoid some of the mistakes I’ve made.

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4) Wife Googles Husband, Discovers He Kept Lottery Win A Secret – Miami woman sues missing husband for share of lottery win from the AP reports a husband was keeping a huge secret from his wife. The secret? He won $19 million in the Florida lottery jackpot! Donna Campbell is now suing her husband for half of his winnings, which turned out to be $600,000 after he had to split his winning with the group he bought the ticket with, who opted for the lump-sum payment of $10.2 million.

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5) How To (Kind Of) Buy A #1 Organic Search Ranking On Google – Google adamantly denies that payment influences organic search engine rankings. In an ideal world that might be true, but exposure begets exposure. Here are some of the cheapest and fastest ways to get your message to the top of the search results without paying for every click.

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6) Forget Black Friday! Are You Ready For Holiday Season’s Cyber Mondays? – "Black Friday," the day after Thanksgiving, is the biggest shopping day of the year for U.S. brick-and-mortar retailers. But, for each Monday after Black Friday, consumer searches spike up on the internet and online retail websites enjoy their highest traffic and associated sales of the year. Search engine use is directly impacting businesses during this period, and companies which haven’t optimized their internet presence stand to lose out on some of the sales they could be getting if consumers could find them. This is true for online businesses as well as for brick-and-mortar stores. While savvy companies planned for this season all the way back in the summer, and already have their internet storefronts in order, it’s not too late to do a few more things to insure a business can squeeze out more from gift shoppers on the "Cyber Mondays" following Black Friday.

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7) Google’s Larry Page To Marry Lucy Southworth On December 8th – Now the other Google founder is planning a secret wedding from SFGate.com reports Google’s co-founder, Larry Page, is going to marry his long time girlfriend, Lucy Southworth. The wedding is scheduled for the weekend of December 8th. The location is unknown at this moment, since Page is keeping the wedding details secretive. Expected to attend the wedding include both former and current Googlers, plus famous names like Richard Branson of Virgin, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, and Al Gore is expected to do a live video conference during the wedding.

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8) How To Maximize Your Exposure In Google – It’s been a while since I’ve looked at Google’s page titled How to submit your content to Google. On first glance, it would be easy to assume this page represents all your options for submission and link seeking. The page includes the sections:

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9) San Francisco Oil Spill Maps & Wishing For Better Community Map Search Tools – Trying to figure out the impact of last week’s oil spill in San Francisco Bay, which happened after the container ship Cosco Busan hit the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge? There are maps to the rescue! Links to them below, along with some observations on the difficulty in finding community-built maps like these in Google Maps.

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10) Effective Tagging For Both Usability & SEO – In this era of Web 2.0, it seems that blogs, mash-ups, RSS feeds, and wikis have been the buzzwords occupying most of the limelight. But personally, tagging is the Web 2.0 technology that excites me the most, because of its versatility and wide applicability. A tag, according to Wikipedia, is "a (relevant) keyword or term associated with or assigned to a piece of information (e.g. a picture, article, or video clip), thus describing the item and enabling keyword-based classification of information." More simply put (with due credit to Flickr.com): tags are like keyword or category labels, and they can help visitors find items which have something in common.

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