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 […]

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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.

===================

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.

===================

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.

===================

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.

===================

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.

===================

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:

===================

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.

===================

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.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Danny Sullivan
Contributor
Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land and MarTech, and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

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