Search Month: January 2008 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 January 2008, then a major story for various search topics along with other stories related to those topics since our last monthly newsletter through today.

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Search Engine Land News
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I’m a bit behind on this issue of Search Month. You can thank Microsoft’s surprise bid to purchase Yahoo for the delay. There’s a special Microhoo section in the recap below assembling all our stories on that topic.

Search Engine Land

Search Engine Land had great news last month. Our Sphinn social news site was named the Best Search Engine Community/Forum of 2007, plus Search Engine Land itself was named both the Best Search Industry News Blog of 2007 and Best Overall Search Marketing Blog of 2007, in the awards held by Search Engine Journal. Our thanks to all those who voted for us, and we’ll work just as hard going forward throughout 2008! Also, our congrats to all the other award winners in the other categories.

Last month, I posted several year-in-review recaps you may find interesting. Search Year 2007: Search News, In Review took what was covered in Search Month throughout last year and categorized stories for all of 2007. Search Engine Land’s Most Popular Stories Of 2007 covers our top stories over the past year, while Search Engine Land Stats: 2007, In Review talks about how Search Engine Land itself grew by leaps and bounds last year.

January also saw the launch of a new column, Video Search, which looks at how search engines index videos and explores optimization techniques that can make them visible in search results. Video Search: New Column From Search Engine Land tells you more about the columnists and topics involved.

SphinnCon

On the conference front, we announced a new series run in association with our sister site Sphinn: SphinnCon. The idea behind SphinnCon is simple. Many readers know about our SMX: Search Marketing Expo conference series. Those aren’t going away, but we also know that we can’t bring a traditional two or three day conference to all the cities in the world that people wish for. SphinnCon is designed to be "low impact," which means low-cost plus a time-friendly half-day format. We expect to do a panel or two at a SphinnCon, followed by ample networking time.

SphinnCon Israel 2008 Recap covers news about the first SphinnCon that was just held. Search Engine Land news editor Barry Schwartz did a great job pulling the event together, with nearly 200 people networking and learning. Next stop is likely North Carolina in May. See SphinnCon North Carolina for more information about that.

SMX West

As for SMX, our SMX West conference happens at the end of this month. 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.

Google has just come on to complete our line-up with networking events. "Google Groove" will happen on the last night of the show, with entertainment, food, games and fun for networking and all-access pass attendees. We’re also in the final voting round to pick two search marketers to take on Ask, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo in our SMX Search Bowl trivia contest happening on the first evening.

If you’re heading to the show, remember that there are a wide variety of ways you can network online before you arrive. An exclusive custom networking tool for conference attendees goes live later today, and there are also these other options:

Sphinn: SMX West 2008 – Members of Sphinn can register that they are going and view others from the Sphinn community who plan to attend.
Facebook: SMX West 2008 – Facebookers can see others who are going to the show by connecting to them through our official events page. Just confirm you’re going and view other attendees that you may wish to friend beforehand. Also keep up on SMX West 208 news through the group. Don’t forget to also join the Facebook SMX Group or the Facebook SMX Fan Page to network with others interested in SMX generally.
LinkedIn: SMX - Member of LinkedIn? Join the SMX group there and connect with others who are interested in our conferences.
Yahoo Upcoming: SMX West 2008 – Register that you are going and see others who plan to attend through our events page on Yahoo’s Upcoming events networking site. Be sure to join the Yahoo Upcoming SMX Group, to network with others interesting in SMX in general.

For more about Google Groove, SMX Search Bowl, our new podcast preview, the keynotes, activities and the extensive show programming itself, see the posts below:

Remember, SMX West will just be the start of our 2008 series. Registration just opened for our SMX Social Media show happening in Southern California in April, and here’s a complete list of all our events this year, for those doing forward planning:

SMX West, Santa Clara, California, February 26-28, 2008
SMX Munich, April 8-9, 2008
SMX Sydney, April 10-11, 2008
SMX China – Xiamen, April 18-19, 2008
SMX Social Media, Long Beach, California, April 22-23, 2008
SMX Madrid, May 20-21, 2008
SMX Advanced, Seattle, June 3-4, 2008
SMX Local & Mobile, San Francisco, July 24-25, 2008
SMX East, New York City, October 6-8, 2008

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Top 10 Most Popular Stories: January 2008
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1) 20 Awesome Images Found In Google Maps – The introduction of satellite images into map search interfaces has excited both virtual sightseers and local app developers. Further innovations like Google’s Street View have caused consternation from privacy advocates while further pumping up the buzz about online mapping. In 2008, we can expect further innovations that stretch the envelope while dynamic map interfaces solidify as basic table-stakes for all local sites. In gearing up for this year in local search, I thought I’d give you a pure entertainment piece—here’s a guide to the top coolest things to see in Google Maps.

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2) Google Lego Logo: Google Offers Lego 50th Birthday Wishes – Google has a special logo up on the Google home page today. The Google logo is made up of legos, to celebrate Lego’s 50 year birthday. Google’s culture has always had a special place for Lego. Google’s first servers were "modded" up with Legos. The Google founders have admitted to having a special "fondness" towards Legos, and we all know that computer geeks can’t get enough of their legos. Google has Lego art in their offices. Lego fans have built Google logos in Lego, and so have Googlers themselves.

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3) 10 Simple Steps To Social Media Success In 2008 – It’s no secret that social media should be an integral part of your online marketing strategy. Creating viral content and promoting it is only a fraction of the equation. You must also strengthen your online footprint and become part of the network. Trying to figure out where to start can be daunting. Follow these ten simple steps and you will be well on your way to being more connected, more plugged in, and more efficient in 2008.

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4) Real Time US Presidential Primary Results In Google Maps – Political and news junkies take note: Google mapped the results of yesterday’s New Hampshire U.S. presidential primary by candidate and county for both parties. There are also videos from YouTube of candidate victory or concession speeches. According to the Google LatLong blog, the results were presented last night in real time. You can also see the same results in Google Earth (screenshots below).

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5) Google’s User Experience Expert, Kevin Fox, Joins New Start-up Company – Kevin Fox, Google’s user experience designer responsible for helping design Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Reader 2.0, has announced he is leaving Google to join a "very small start-up." Today is his last day at Google, after being with Google for over four years. Kevin did not say the name of the new company he will be working for. He did, however, express his love for Google:

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6) There’s No Such Thing As A Worthless Link – With certain linking strategies under fire and others frowned on by the search engines, I thought I’d focus on what links do count and share how and where I find them. The short answer to the question "what works" is: they all do. All the link building tactics we’re fond of jeering at still work; reciprocal links, using article directories, adding your site to a bazillion general directories, and yes, even paid links. But they don’t tend to work for long or provide the algorithmic insulation you need to weather the update storms. For that you need authority or "quality" links.

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7) Think You’re Successfully Flying Under Google’s Radar? Think Again. – Have you been trying to "fly under the radar," engaging in activities outside of Google’s guidelines but subtly so as not to get caught? More and more SEOs are moving into this dangerous territory as the guidelines continue to broaden (prime examples of which being the expanded definition of doorway pages and the addition of link buying to the list of no-nos). Buying links in "stealth" mode still works, as many SEOs will attest. But what if Google is archiving your efforts for future review, to uncover what it can’t right now due to current limitations? Do you really want to be profiled retroactively as a spammer?

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8) 15 Fundamental Truths About Social Media Marketing – In September 2007, I was offered the role of ‘Social Media Manager’ at a company in Cape Town, South Africa, which I took without much hesitation. I knew my job would focus on the ‘general’ projects such as proposals, running campaigns, and devising social strategies for clients who had something they wanted to generate a buzz about online. Little did I know I would be training up the other team members completely from scratch on the subject, but I can confidently say it was the most enjoyable part of the job. Here are 15 of the most important things about social media marketing I taught to those completely new to the approach.

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9) Google Universal Search: 2008 Edition – It’s just over a half-year since Google launched Universal Search, its method of blending results from its own various topically-focused or "vertical" search engines. Since that time, the system has evolved. In particular, Google Universal Search now fills more than just 10 spots on the page, while shopping and blog search results are among new resources being included. Below, a look at these and related changes.

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10) Spying On Your Paid Search Competitors – Last time around, I wrote about paid search planning and some cool tools to help you understand your customers and your target market (here). This time, I’ll take a look at the competitive landscape and understanding competitors in general—and show you some excellent tools that can help you gain better insight into their specific strategies and tactics.

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AOL
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New AOL Finance Gains Market Share To Become Top Site – TechCrunch is reporting comScore data that shows AOL’s new finance site (which we wrote about here) passing Yahoo Finance and MSN Money to become the internet’s top finance destination. If these traffic numbers are accurate, it would be a very striking development – especially beating out Yahoo, which has held the top finance position seemingly forever. This is not just a question of bragging rights — there are huge ad dollars that flow to finance sites. See also:

Truveo Index Hits 100 Million Videos

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Ask.com: Business Issues
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Byzantine Legal Fight For Control Of Ask.com Parent IAC – The Wall Street Journal covers the "open warfare" between IAC CEO Barry Diller and Liberty Media, one of its largest backers and investors. Liberty Chairman John Malone has grown increasingly frustrated with IAC’s financial and stock performance and Diller himself. Diller has control of the company through a Byzantine procedural agreement that allows him to vote Liberty Media’s shares by proxy. This week Liberty tried an equally arcane legal maneuver to circumvent the agreement and oust Diller. See also:

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Ask.com: Employees
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Jim Safka To Replace Jim Lanzone As CEO Of Ask.com – IAC, Ask.com’s parent company, has announced that Jim Lanzone, the CEO of Ask.com, will be replaced immediately by Jim Safka as the new CEO of Ask.com. Safka was previously the CEO of Match.com, IAC’s online dating company, from 2004 to 2007. He will also retain his job at as CEO of Primal Ventures, an investment arm of Internet conglomerate IAC. Lanzone will leave to work as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Venture Capital firm Redpoint Ventures. He was appointed CEO of Ask on April 24, 2006, to replace Steve Berkowitz, who jumped ship to Microsoft at that time. See also:

A Search Product CEO – Necessary To Win The Search Engine Game?

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Ask.com: Searching
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PC World Picks Ask3D As One Of "The 25 Most Innovative Products Of The Year" – At number 23, Ask3D was named one of PC World’s "25 Most Innovative Products of the Year." The site opined that Ask "melds comprehensive search results more coherently than competing universal searches do." Ask saw the largest gains in consumer satisfaction in the annual University of Michigan American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) vs. its search competitors. And there are some indications that Ask has also seen a bump in traffic from its 3D redesign, though reports from various metrics firms conflict on this point. Other PC World innovative products included Google Gears, the iPhone, and Amazon Kindle. See also:

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Ask.com: Paid Search
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Ask Sponsored Listings Gives Click Fraud Reimbursements – Scott Hendison received an email about a click fraud settlement by Ask Sponsored Listings. If you purchased online advertising from IAC Search & Media and/or ASK Jeeves from August 2005 to now, you are entitled to some form of reimbursement for click fraud or other invalid or improper clicks. The details can be found at AskSettlement.com, which contains a PDF of the settlement notice, the online claim form, a method to contact someone, and frequently asked questions.

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B2B
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The Big B2B PPC Mistake – It’s been said that the three rules of marketing are brand recognition, brand recognition, and brand recognition. Given that, marketers spend considerable funds and resources to ensure that people recognize their brands and connect with them. In other words, brand matters. Yet, when it comes to PPC marketing, the importance of brand gets a little fuzzy—especially for B2B marketers. From my experience, branded keywords tend to play a relatively small role in the PPC efforts of many B2B marketers. In fact, the number of B2B companies actually leveraging their brands in PPC appears to be quite low. The reason? Many B2B marketers feel that their customers and prospects already know their brand and/or how to find them; or that their sales force is already speaking with anyone they could envision as a client. Ultimately, they feel that spending money on branded PPC search ads would be a waste. Unfortunately, they are mistaken.

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Back To Basics
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Building Smarter Landing Pages For Stronger Leads – My December article, Think Beyond The Click: How To Build Landing Pages That Convert, received some great feedback, and raised some questions, so I’ve decided to address a few more important topics about landing pages. Readers commented that the success of a landing page depends on its audience and how many different landing pages are used to educate possible conversions. Many also brought up the issue of tracking the results of a landing page and any promotional campaign you’re running to drive traffic to that page. I’ve decided to dig a little deeper into these issues. By sharing some insights from a recent marketing campaign that was designed to build awareness and generate leads for our ad sales team, we’ll aim to give you some tips on how developing smarter landing pages can give online marketing a boost.

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Business & Revenues
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Day 2: Search Stocks & Is Search Recession Proof? – Let’s do the stock thing again. As with yesterday, the chart above shows Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO), and Microsoft (MSFT) against the NASDAQ, over the past month. The key difference is that while the latter three stabilized, Google kept dropping. That leads some to wonder if search is going to be in trouble. A closer look on that, below. See also:

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Google: AdSense
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Confirmed: Google Domain Park To Cease Ads On Domain Kiting Sites – Google will be preventing "domain kiting" sites — those that register domains continually without paying for them — participating in the AdSense for Domains (aka Domain Park) program. See also:

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Google: AdWords
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Google AdWords Won’t Allow Personal Attacks On Politicians – The Google Public Policy blog announced new policies for how you can use AdWords in the political debate space. Google AdWords requires politicians to comply with the editorial guidelines that (1) you can campaign for any political view, (2) you can ask for donations if you are a non-tax-deductible organization, and (3) you cannot mislead the searcher. In addition to these guidelines, Google has an additional guideline that restricts ads that attack an individual’s personal life. Political campaigns can get pretty nasty and personal. Google makes it clear that they want no part of that. Google said: Political ads must not include accusations or attacks relating to an individual’s personal life, nor can they advocate against a protected group. So, "Crime rates are up under Police Commissioner Gordon" is okay, but "Police Commissioner Gordon had an affair" is not. See also:

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Google: Apps
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Google Docs Releases New Presentation Features – The Google Docs blog has announced new features for the Google Docs suite of tools. You can now create subfolders to more easily organize your documents and can rename documents and folders from the toolbar (previously, you could only do this from the File menu). The toolbar has also been spiffed up. In addition, Google has launched several new features for Google Presentations, including the ability to embed presentations into a page of any site. More details on the Presentations features below.

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Google: Business Issues
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Google Revenues Up 51 Percent, Social Networking Monetization "Disappointing" – Google posted Q4, 2007 revenues that represented 51 percent growth vs. 2006. Quarterly revenues were $4.83 billion, compared with $3.21 billion a year ago. However, earnings and revenue per share fell short of analyst consensus estimates. The headline that everyone is repeating is that social network monetization is not performing as well as hoped by Google (interpreted chiefly as MySpace traffic). Below are more revenue numbers, slides, and selected highlights from the Q&A portion of the call. See also:

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Google: Employees
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Google’s Founders & CEO Promised To Work Together Until 2024 – Google CEO, Co-Founders Made Long-Term Promise from the Wall Street Journal reports Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, said they would work together until the year 2024. See also:

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Google: FeedBurner & Reader
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FeedBurner Numbers Spike — Blame FeedBlitz! – Nice — I picked up 5,000 new feed subscribers today, while Barry Schwartz saw Search Engine Roundtable grow 35,000. Overnight! Obviously, the FeedBurner numbers we and others get have gone wonky. To blame? FeedBlitz seems to be putting out bad stats. Consider the comparison above. The left side shows reported subscribers from various feed reading services taking the Search Engine Land feed as of Wednesday, January 16. The right side shows Thursday, January 17. See the box highlighted in red? Out of the blue, FeedBlitz appears, telling me that I have 5,177 readers.

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Google: Maps & Local
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New "Show Search Options" Broadens Google Maps – As the Google LatLong Blog reports, Google has added a new "show search options" link beside the main search box in Google Maps. This is a very interesting development for several reasons. It’s a pull-down menu that allows you to narrow or expand results for the same query and more easily discover non-traditional content in Google Maps. See also:

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Google: Mobile
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"Open Network" A Reality, C Block Of 700MHz Spectrum Hits $4.6 Billion "Reserve Price" - Yesterday the coveted "C Block" of the 700MHz spectrum, which will serve the entire US market, hit the FCC required minimum "reserve bid" of $4.6 billion. Google had promised to bid this amount to trigger the "openness provisions" imposed by the FCC. Effectively the rules now require that "any legal consumer device" must be allowed to access the C Block broadband network. See also:

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Google: News
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Google News’ New Local Angle – Just as Ask is introducing "BigNews," Google is offering local news. The Google New Blog says that the new capabilities allow users to "create a local section for any city, state or country in the world." As the Google News Blog admits, Google isn’t the first to do this. Topix.com was. And Topix powers local news feeds for sites like CNN (scroll for local). Yahoo News offers local content through its various newspaper and TV affiliate relationships, while Ask’s new BigNews allows users to search for news tied to a particular location. And there are a range of "hyper-local" news sites such as EveryBlock and YourStreet.

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Google: SEO Issues
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Google’s Position Six Penalty (Or Bug) A Reality – A week ago we wrote about Google’s Mysterious Position Six Penalty. The phenomenon described has now been confirmed by Google’s Matt Cutts in one of our Sphinn threads on the topic. It appears from Matt’s comments that the drop for pages impacted was an "unintended consequence," as Glengara puts it in a WebmasterWorld thread, to the December 2007 Google update. Matt confirmed the behavior and said Google has already begun reversing it. If you are stuck in the position six penalty, you will most likely see it reverse itself within the next few days. See also:

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Google: Searching
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Mine The Web’s Socially-Tagged Links: Google Social Graph API Launched – Did you know there’s a way to tag links on pages to indicate social connections? I’d heard about this vaguely, but you can bet there’s going to be much more public awareness and potential use, thanks to Google launching its new Google Social Graph API. Now available, the API allows developers to discover socially-labeled links on pages and generate connections between them. See also:

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Google: YouTube
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YouTube Improves YouTube Mobile Version – A New And Improved YouTube For Mobile from the YouTube Blog announces that they have improved their mobile version at m.youtube.com. The new features include: Tens of millions of added videos Community features now available on the mobile version Mobile phone uploads available within moments YouTube for Mobile is available and localized for the UK, Italy, France, Spain, Netherlands, Poland, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, New Zealand, Germany, and Russia. See also:

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Google: Other
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Google Health Close To Launching? – Philipp Lenssen and Tony Ruscoe at Google Blogoscoped have noted that the login page for Google Health is now live, although the service itself is not (and www.google.com/health currently redirects to the Google Coop page about health). Gabriel Stricker, Google spokesperson, told us: "We’re very interested in working on products in the area of health, and we’ve been blogging and speaking publicly about this for some time. While we have no additional information to share right now, we hope to in the future." See also:

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In House SEM
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Building A Career In Search Marketing – So, you’ve decided that a career in search marketing IS for you. Sure, your friends, parents, and significant other have no idea what you’re talking about when you describe the profession, but there’s money to be made, and you want your share! But, where to begin? Wanting the job is one thing. Being qualified for it, and even finding the right job, are quite different matters. Though it may seem atypical, a career in search marketing requires knowledge and skill. Unproven, you are not bringing much to the game, and since search work is usually tied to measurable performance, being able to perform is essential. See also:

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Link Building
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The Latest in Link Development – Rae Hoffman has released her second annual set of interviews with link building experts. This year, she talked to 11 people in the search industry who are well-versed in the art of link development. Below is a brief synopsis of what the link builders had to say, but there are lots of great details in the post, so click over for in depth explanations and examples. See also:

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Local Search & Maps
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What Does 2008 Have In Store For Local? - Many people I speak to still ask the familiar question, "Is this going to be the breakout year for local?" while expressing frustration or disappointment that "local hasn’t yet lived up to expectations." But local is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s also more complex than the general search market, which features an ecosystem built around a small number of large and highly visible companies. Even though many of those same companies are focused on local, one could almost flip that equation when discussing the local internet: it’s about a very large number of mostly small companies. In the spirit of that "Is this the year?" question, I thought that for the first Locals Only column of 2008, it’s worth taking stock of where we are and what the coming year likely holds for local. See also:

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Local SEM
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Why Local Businesses Should Be Like The Jerk – “The new phone book’s here! The new phone book’s here!” Steve Martin’s character in the movie The Jerk is ecstatic. He rifles through the pages and finds his name. “I’m somebody now! Millions of people look at this book everyday!” He knows the importance of being listed. “This is the kind of spontaneous publicity—your name in print—that makes people. I’m in print! Things are going to start happening to me now.” Businesses feel the same way. They are excited to see their name first appear in the phone book. And the emotion would certainly be stronger if their business was not there. Businesses have a vested interest in helping customers find them. They know the importance of being listed. The Jerk had it easy. The phone book was it. But his words ring true today. Now businesses face the challenge of myriad local sites featuring listings that range from simple names and addresses to extensive profile pages. See also:

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Microsoft: adCenter
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Microsoft Launches adCenter Add-in Beta for Excel 2007 – The adCenter Blog announced the launch of the adCenter Add-in for Excel 2007. To download the 64MB zipped version of the add-in, click here. There will be a webinar explaining how to use the add-in on January 23, 2008, which you can register for in advance. See also:

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Microsoft: Business Issues
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Microsoft Earnings Soar, Gates Calls For More Help To Poor – Microsoft issued fiscal Q2 earnings yesterday and simply crushed estimates. The company had quarterly revenues of more than $16 billion, which exceeded the highest previous quarterly earnings mark by a whopping $2 billion (the earnings release is here.) Profits were $4.71 billion. See also:

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Microsoft: Microhoo!
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Microsoft Makes $45 Billion Bid To Buy Yahoo – Microsoft is to bid $31 per share to Yahoo’s board of directors to purchase the company, a deal potentially worth $45 billion. Below, more details, some history, and analysis. See also:

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Microsoft: Mobile
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Microsoft Provides Local Search Content To Garmin Personal Navigation Devices – LiveSide reports on a deal that provides access to Live Search Maps/Local content via MSN Direct to the Garmin nüvi 780 personal navigation device (PND). Users can get maps, news, weather, local events, and other content. One can also plan trips on Windows Live Local and then "send to GPS." The latter capability works on more PNDs that just the Garmin devices.

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Microsoft: Searching
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Politically Tinged Promotion For Live Search – Microsoft has launched another would-be viral online campaign for Live Search that conceptually mimics the earlier Ms. Dewey campaign but is politically themed for the election year. The site is called Left vs. Right and (probably) takes its inspiration from the old Saturday Night Live skit point/counterpoint, featuring Dan Ackroyd and Jane Curtain, which was itself a parody of a long-running "60 Minutes" debate segment. A left-leaning male and a right-leaning female commentator snipe at each other and make quips while they wait for users to input terms into the search box.

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Mobile Search
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Comparing Mobile Search Surveys: Early Adopters Vs. Mainstream Users – I conducted a very informal, online Search Engine Land reader survey several weeks ago on a range of high-level topics pertaining to mobile search. The ultimate number of responses from SEL readers was a small sample of 77. Mike Blumethal, a contributor to SEL who writes the Understanding Google Maps & Yahoo Local blog, thought it would be interesting to conduct this same survey with readers of his newsletter, which is generally an older audience of several thousand people mostly living in rural, Upstate New York. We used the identical online survey and obtained 124 total responses over the course of a couple of weeks in December 2007. See also:

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Paid Search & Contextual
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Use Lifetime Visitor Values To Raise Bids While Increasing Profits – It’s easy to set PPC bids based upon a direct response ROI. Using this simple metric makes it simple to base every keyword bid on its profit and conversion rate. However, are those bids accurately reflecting the entire revenue your PPC account generates? To get a complete picture of revenue, and to make sure you aren’t underbidding and leaving profit on the table on some of your most important keywords, you should ask yourself the following questions. See also:

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Searching
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Center For The Digital Future: Perceptions Of Search Reliability And Accuracy Declining - The University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication’s Center for the Digital Future is engaged in an ambitious longitudinal study on consumer behavior and media usage. Each year the center surveys the same 2,000 US adults to track attitudes toward media as well as any changes in actual media consumption. This year the center found a number of consumer attitude changes, including more skepticism about the reliability and accuracy of search results. You can download a summary of the report here; highlights are below. See also:

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Search Marketing Industry
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A Bad Month For SEO’s Reputation – We seem to be going through another wave "SEOs are scumbags" incidents, and I find myself with little energy to push back against them with yet another defense of the industry. It’s not that SEO doesn’t deserve better treatment. It’s just that I feel anything I could say, I’ve said before – as have others as well. But below, a round-up of some of the latest developments, including a podcast defense of SEO that I did after Jeremy "Shoemoney" Schoemaker gave SEO some slams. See also:

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Search Marketing Tactics
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Search Engine Reputation Management: Setting & Managing Expectations – The euphemistic phrase "reputation management issue" describes what happens when you have a problem arise in search engine result pages. Whether it’s the result of an algorithm change, bloggers, or social media sites jumping on negative news or other negative linking bandwagons, reputation management issues are a major pain for brands. When this happens, frustrations can run high, and you bear a lot of weight on your shoulders to fix the crisis, keep the unfavorable sites at bay, and make clients happy. One of the key things you need to master quickly when this occurs is setting and managing client expectations. See also:

5 Ways To Make 2008 Pay Off Big

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SEO / Natural / Unpaid Search
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How SEO Has Evolved Over The Years – As I write this on New Year’s day, I can’t help but reflect on how SEO has changed during the more than 12 years since I first started optimizing websites. When I spotted an old workshop outline from 7 years ago, I thought it would be interesting to compare it to the current workshop outline we’ve been busily putting together for our upcoming class. I wasn’t sure what to expect, as I sometimes feel that the more SEO changes, the more it stays the same. Would the old outline be focusing on the same things we’re focusing on today? Or would it be completely irrelevant in today’s highly competitive world of organic SEO? See also:

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Security & Privacy
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FTC Complaint Filed Over AskEraser: "Unfair & Deceptive" – Some felt Ask.com won the privacy oneupmanship that went on last year when it rolled out Ask Eraser, a tool promising to stop recording any information about someone doing a search. But questions quickly came up, including whether the tool helped at all, considering that query data was still being sent to Ask’s paid listings partner, Google. A privacy group complained to Ask last month, and now Wired reports that it and others have filed a formal complaint with the US government. See also:

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Small Business
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Why The SEO Industry Needs Small Business – Here’s the primary thing on my mind as we begin 2008: If we, the search/online marketing industry, don’t do a better job of helping the small business owner understand and adopt the best practices of search marketing, we are doomed to irrelevance. "Oh, but there’s no money in small businesses," you say. Or, "Small business owners are too busy to be good clients, they have too many other things on their minds." I know it’s easy to dismiss small business clients as a "good fit for someone else," and I know small businesses aren’t always good for your company’s bottom line. But before you disagree with me wholesale, let me explain why I think we need small businesses to understand and appreciate SEO and search marketing. See also:

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Social Search
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Search Wikia: Not Even A Remote Threat To Google – Search Wikia, the open source search engine from Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales’ Wikia, Inc. organization, launched today in an alpha version. Widely hyped, typically portrayed as a heroic David vs. Goliath struggle, it’s really just yet another crappy search service that may, potentially, if all goes well, eventually turn into something useful. For now, though, Search Wikia is essentially useless as a search engine. What makes it interesting are some of the ideas and approaches that the service is exploring. I’ll not bother bashing the search results that even Search Wikia itself admits are poor. Instead, I’ll take a look at some of the problems and issues with the current state of web search today that Search Wikia is attempting to address. See also:

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Social Media
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Digg Updates Algorithm – Digg Community Revolts – Two days ago, Digg went down for a short while while changes were being implemented in the system. While nothing was immediately apparent, Brent Csutoras noticed some slight changes, and after several hours, a bigger trend emerged: the algorithm had changed and you needed a lot more votes to hit the front page of Digg. The Digg community reacted strongly to these changes. Digg’s "unofficial" podcast, The Drill Down, which is led by the the top three Digg submitters, went into emergency mode on Ustream and people began offering their thoughts on the implications of the change. The top users were ready to propose that nobody use Digg at least until Monday. See also:

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US Elections
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Super Tuesday, Internet Style: How We’re Using the Web In the 2008 Elections – Today is Super Tuesday, which means that voters in 24 states are carefully reviewing their candidate research and doing last minute thoughtful analysis in preparation for voting in the primaries. Well, maybe that’s hopeful optimism, but in any case, the place these voters are turning to for information is increasingly the internet. Search engines are even getting into the political fray. Ask if offering political Smart Answers and Google is displaying primary-related Twitters on a Google map. Below, the results of a recent study on election-related internet use, as well as a general survey of the online political landscape. See also:

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Video Search
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Google’s Video Sites Gain Market Share – Americans are increasingly turning to the web for video, averaging 3.25 hours of video per person during the month of November, according to new data released by comScore today. Americans viewed nearly 9.5 billion online videos during the month and Google was the leading destination, with 3 billion videos viewed (31.3 percent share of all videos viewed), 2.9 billion of which occurred at YouTube.com (30.6 percent). Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 419 million videos viewed (4.4 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 328 million (3.5 percent) and Viacom Digital with 304 million (2.6 percent). ComScore also says that watching video on the web has become ubiquitous, with 138 million Americans (roughly three in four U.S Internet users) turning to the web for video. See also:

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Yahoo: Business Issues
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Yahoo Earnings Mixed, Company To Go Through With 1,000 Job Cuts Amid Uncertain 2008 - Despite the hopes of many and rumors that Yahoo would post "strong" earnings, Q4 2007 results (PDF) were mixed, and net income was down from a year ago. In addition, CEO Jerry Yang said the company faced "headwinds" in 2008 and offered weak guidance but promised a return to growth in 2009. Investors were unhappy, and stock was down at one point 10 percent in after-hours trading (this morning it has recovered). Total revenue in Q4 was $1.83 billion, which represented 8 percent growth of the same period a year ago ($1.7 billion). Full year 2007 revenues for Yahoo were $6.97 billion. Simultaneously, Yahoo announced it would be cutting 1,000 jobs, which is at the low end of the rumored range. See also:

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Yahoo: Delicious
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Yahoo Tests Delicious Integration In Search Results – Yahoo has sent word that they are testing integration of data from their Delicious social bookmarking site within the Yahoo search results pages. For some users, a search will now show whether a page listed in Yahoo results is also on Delicious and how it has been tagged. It brings back memories of Yahoo My Web integration and, before that, how the Yahoo Directory used to work.

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Yahoo: Flickr
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The Library of Congress Teams Up With Flickr – The Library of Congress has teamed up with Flickr to create The Commons. The Library of Congress has added a sample of their over one million photos to Flickr, so that the Flickr community can help describe the photos through tagging. My Friend Flickr: A Match Made in Photo Heaven from the Library of Congress Blog writes that the goal of this partnership is to help "better access to our collections, and how to ensure that we have the best possible information about those collections for the benefit of researchers and posterity." They have selected about 1,500 photos each from two of their more popular collections and posted them on Flickr for this purpose.

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Yahoo: Mobile
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Yahoo Makes Bid To Become A Mobile Development Platform – Last night at CES, Yahoo made several related mobile announcements tied to its application Go and a new bid to become a mobile platform for third party publishers and developers. There are essentially three pieces to what Yahoo announced: Yahoo Go 3.0 (not yet live), an open mobile widget development platform for third parties, and a redesigned mobile WAP homepage that emphasizes personalization and customization. The first partners for Yahoo’s new open mobile platform are eBay, MTV, and MySpace. There’s also a bigger mobile display ad push by Yahoo in this set of releases.

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Yahoo: Paid Search
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Yahoo Directory Places Images On Sponsored Ads – Yahoo Serving Images in Sponsored Search Listings from Search Engine Journal reports the Yahoo Directory is displaying image ads near the sponsored results. The images appear on the left hand side of each sponsored result within the directory pages. The images appear to be hosted by ImageAdvantage and draw your eyes to those ads. For example, the NY Internet Consultants category now looks like this:

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Yahoo: SEO
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Yahoo Search Update: First Update Of 2008 – Yahoo has announced the first Yahoo Search update of 2008. Sharad Verma said Yahoo has been rolling out updates to their "crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms" over the past couple days. Yahoo tells us the update will be done soon, but you may notice "some ranking changes and page shuffling in the index." I reported news on the Yahoo update last Friday at the Search Engine Roundtable. Typically, we beat Yahoo to these type of announcements but I don’t think we ever beat them by four full days.

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Yahoo: Other
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Goodbye, Yahoo Picks – Children, gather ’round. When I was a boy, we didn’t have Digg. We didn’t have Slashdot. When we wanted a big traffic rush, we had to walk eight miles in the snow to Yahoo Picks — Yahoo Picks Of The Week & Picks Of The Day – and we liked it. But now, Yahoo Picks is gone. See also:

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Fun, Weird Stuff & Other Things
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Google Walks Down Fashion Avenue: The Oogle Sari – Saptarshi Roy Chaudhury wrote about a design in Satya Paul’s latest collection named "Oogle sari." As you can see above, it looks like a sari made up of the Google web search results. See also:

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