April 2007: Search Engine Land’s Most Popular Stories

Below are Search Engine Land’s 10 most popular stories from April 2007: 1) Google Declares Stephen Colbert As Greatest Living American – It’s official. Stephen Colbert is the Greatest Living American, or at least now ranks tops for that phrase at Google. It’s all come from the latest Google bombing campaign sparked off in part […]

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

1) Google Declares
Stephen Colbert As Greatest Living American
– It’s official. Stephen
Colbert is the Greatest Living American, or at least now ranks tops for that
phrase at Google. It’s all come from the latest Google bombing campaign sparked
off in part by Stephen himself. The backstory on this, plus the "I thought
Google bombing didn’t work anymore" angle, in this story.

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

2) George W. Bush:
A Failure Once Again, According To Google
– Remember how Google
introduced a link bomb fix in January that, among other things, finally got US
President George W. Bush out of first page of results for searches on miserable
failure and failure at Google? Bush is back, at least for failure, and the White
House has only itself to blame.

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

3) Goodbye Froogle,
Hello Google Product Search!
– Back in December 2002, Google launched
its long expected product and shopping search engine. It was called Froogle, a
combination of "frugal" and "Google." Just over four years later, Froogle
is finally loses its cutesy name for something more descriptive — to become
Google Product Search. It also gains a cleaner interface, as well.

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

4) Google Search
History Expands, Becomes Web History
– Google’s Search History feature,
which was switched on as a default option for many Google searchers in February,
has now been renamed Web History to reflect how it has expanded to track what
Google users do as they surf the web. It’s a huge move for Google and raises
anew privacy issues. A detailed look at how the system works, how to pause or
delete logging if you want, the impact on search results and more.

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

5) Search In
Pictures: Easter; Search Fun, Google Power, Art & Signs
– In this week’s
Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what
people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where
they speak, what toys they have and more.

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

6) Google Releases
Improved Content Removal Tools
– Google has rolled out new tools to help
people quickly get content removed from its search engine. Those targeted at
site owners allow for speedy removal of pages and cached copies of pages. Other
tools allow those to request the removal of images or links to pages with
personal information about themselves, in the right circumstances.

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

7) What Is Google
PageRank? A Guide For Searchers & Webmasters
– Several times in the past
few months, I’ve written about new Google features where PageRank was involved.
Unfortunately, Google itself has very poor information about PageRank that I
could use for those wanting to learn more about it. To solve that, here’s a
guide to PageRank, designed for searchers and site owners alike.

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

8) Q&A With
Garrett Camp, Founder & Chief Architect, StumbleUpon
– Search engines
are great tools to help you find things you suspect exist on the web, but they
leave a lot to be desired when it comes to discovering the unexpected or
unknown.
Enter StumbleUpon, a service that lets you "channel surf" the internet,
displaying sites that others have "stumbled upon" and recommended.

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

9) StumbleUpon
Acquired By eBay: "Just Rumors," Says Founder
– The blogosphere is abuzz
with rumors that eBay is acquiring StumbleUpon, but they’re "just rumors,"
Garrett Camp, one of StumbleUpon’s founders just told me on the phone. "There
have been rumors before and that’s what they are now," Camp said.

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

10) SEO Is Easy?
Let’s Look At The Hard 5 Percent
– There is a new
battle waging, and on one side you have people calling SEO ‘stupid easy,’
‘bullshit,’ ‘snake oil’ and so forth. On the other side, you have folks like me
taking some pretty serious offence to our livelihood being denigrated by non-SEOs.
A large part of the argument is that SEO is 95 percent easy, and it’s the other
5 percent that is what we really get paid for — and that 5 percent is the slimy
stuff that makes the web a worse place to be. We’re going to take a look at that
5 percent in this article based on actual work I’ve done for real clients.

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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