Best list I have seen to date!

Facebook's search suggestions are about to get significantly better.  Rather than just suggest the names of people, events, groups, and Pages a person's already connected with, suggestions are going to draw from users' networks of friends and the entire site. It is, of course, nice not to have to type out your closest pal's 17-letter last...

In a move that investors and marketers alike should applaud, Google's figured out another way to make money off the site it bought for $1.65 billion three and a half years ago.  Today, Google explained that it's come up with a tool to help small organizations advertise on YouTube. Emily Williams, a member of the Inside AdWords team,...

Maybe I missed the point of the whole China/Google kerfluffle, but I could have sworn the reason Google was pulling out of China was because they didn’t want to obey China’s rules on censorship anymore. Apparently China has decided to conveniently ignore that fact as they remind Google to continue to obey China’s...

Investors and online advertising experts may want to consider for a moment what, exactly, has contributed to Google's stupendous financial success (current market cap: $180 billion).  Now consider this: Google thinks mobile ad rates might surpass what's come to be deemed the industry standard. According to Reuters, Vic Gundotra, a vice...

Hang around any industry conference, forum or blog long enough and you’ll find someone lamenting our dependence on Google, or search engines altogether. It’s absolutely true that we as webmasters and marketers need to diversify our traffic strategies (you know what they say about eggs and baskets)—but are you...

The clash between Google and the Chinese government appears to be coming to a head.  Various sources have reported that Google ignored a cut-off date to reregister as an Internet content provider in China, and more importantly, that the company has stopped censoring search results. Let's get the paperwork-related story out of the way...

Twitter is not content to occupy those little moments you share together when the boss is not looking. It’s not willing to put up with being used merely as a channel to share what you ate for breakfast! Nope, Twitter wants to be @anywhere and @everywhere. OK, so officially it just wants to be @anywhere–the name of its...

There's good and bad news for Google this morning with respect to Android and the mobile market.  In terms of how many units were sold during their first 74 days of availability, it seems the Droid beat the iPhone to the million-unit mark, but the Nexus One is lagging far behind. That's the state of things according to Flurry, which claims...

I really thought this chart from Hitwise (via TechCrunch) was going to be a bigger deal than it actually is. On the face of it, Facebook just overtook Google as the most visited site in the U.S: However, Google doesn’t get the benefit of traffic to YouTube; and Yahoo is a mere third, because Yahoo Mail or Flickr...

There is no shortage of interesting sessions going on at SXSW Interactive in Austin, but one that was especially interesting was "Can Wikipedia Survive Popular Success and Community Decline?" - a presentation from USC Professor of Journalism Andrew Lih. The session explored factors that contribute to the declining rate of Wikipedia entry...

I’ve been thinking a lot about collaborative marketing lately, and how we can turn co-existing businesses more into partners and less about missing opportunities. I think there’s a great untapped market for someone that really wants to grab collaborative marketing and run with it. For example – imagine you’re going on a trip. You have to...

Twitter should soon become more ubiquitous across the Web.  Today, the company's cofounders announced something called @anywhere that should help integrate the Twitter experience into standard sites, and a number of impressive organizations have agreed to take part in the initial rollout. Evan Williams essentially handled the SXSW side of...

Great story with a happy ending. How @Rhea saved "SEO" . . .

Although the "thud" wasn't verified until this afternoon, it seems that an online giant fell a couple of days ago.  According to new data from Hitwise, Facebook managed to beat Google in terms of visits between March 7th and March 13th, becoming the most visited website in the U.S. for the week. The graph visible below makes the...

Joanne Bradford started at Yahoo about a year and a half ago, assuming the title "Senior Vice President, U.S. Revenue and Market Development."  Now, a fresh report's indicated that the high-ranking exec is on her way out again, ready to take a position at Demand Media. Kara Swisher wrote earlier, "According to several sources...

Yep, now you can have spam delivered in real time to your search results on Google or Twitter. This is just why we all clapped for joy when Bing and Google hooked up with Twitter for real time results, isn’t it? Oh, no? Hm. I guess we’re not the only ones. Search Engine Roundtable noted a Webmaster World forum thread...

We're here at SXSW Interactive waiting for the keynote with Twitter CEO Evan Williams who will discuss "The Next Generation of Social Media." There has been some speculation that an announcement of Twitter's ad platform could occur at this event, but that may or may not happen. We'll see. Either way, I'll be liveblogging the...

Choosing the affiliate marketing model that works for your site can be tough. For a publisher website, you will need to weight pros and cons of CPM vs CPC vs CPA and find out which model will work for your site audience and provide the highest return. Advertisers on the other hand, need to figure out which model will work for the type of...

NEW YORK, NY, March 15, 2010--Public relations (PR) professionals, journalists and marketers will find much valuable information and many networking opportunities at Search Engine Strategies (SES) New York 2010 to be held at the New York Hilton, March 22- 26. With the transition to online PR, SES New York programming staff will be featuring...

NEW YORK, NY, March 15, 2010--Search Engine Strategies (SES) New York 2010 will offer novel and valuable information to even the most advanced and experienced search engine marketers (SEM). A conference track on each day, Tuesday through Thursday, is specifically targeted towards experienced SEMs. These include Tuesday's "Search on the Edge"...

Today, Umair Haque of the Havas Media Lab will interview Twitter CEO Evan Williams at SxSW. TechCrunch is poised to report—especially since they expect Twitter to unveil its advertising platform in the interview. That’s not for certain, of course, but TC points to Twitter head of monetization Anamitra Banerji’s...

In the social media world, it is so important to try to do things that haven't been done before. Why? Well, since social media is so new and the applications of it have not even begun to be thought of yet, you must be a risk taker by default to see if it will work for you and your business. We hear more about social media flame-outs, which I...

Today, Tim Bray started working for Google, and had the search giant just put out a one-sentence press release stating this fact, the development would be worth reporting.  But what makes this move especially noteworthy is that Bray announced it in a 1,260-word blog post mentioning an absolute hatred of the iPhone. Bray is a rather important...

Back in April 2008, a man began his attempt to trademark SEO, his name was Jason Gambert. Today I learned, Gambert’s claim to register a trademark on the term “SEO” was formally blocked. It may come to a surprise to you that this trademark application was blocked only because of the help from a few individuals in the SEO industry.

David Towers live blogged from the Think Visibility conference in Leeds at the weekend. Read his in-depth notes and reviews from each session he attended.

If you’re a search geek that’s curious, a blogger looking for hot topics or even a search conference looking for topics of interest; hang in for the ride while we see what is really going on in the space ...

The odds of Google keeping its Chinese search operation running are starting to seem quite small.  The Chinese government has started advising Google's partners to prepare contingency plans, and one anonymous person who's supposed to be close to Google even said the company is 99.9 percent likely to shut things down. The "99.9...

Not since the year-long courtship between Yahoo and Microsoft have I wanted two sides to just DO IT ALREADY! What am I talking about? China and Google. For the love of my RSS stream, either pull out or make-up–this is getting old! The latest? Google is "99.9 percent" likely to shut down its Chinese search...

Here at SXSW, we attended the session "CrowdControl: Changing the Face of Media or Hype?" At the end, one of the speakers asked the crowd, which they thought it was. Almost everybody responded with the former, while maybe one or two raised their hand for hype. I think it's pretty clear that citizen journalism, the real topic of this...

Ironically, my own field tests with a variety of sites (from small ones to the multi-million page Fortune 500 variety) would suggest that Mr. Cutts' assertion is false, but I think that this article and his comments are still worth mentioning.Perhaps there is a bit of a dropoff with the 301, but maybe it's so minimal (think trace amounts of...

I don’t often jump into the world of SEO advice–there are plenty of excellent blogs that do that–but when Google’s Matt Cutts confirms that 301 redirects do, in fact, lose PageRank, well, that’s worth sharing. Eric Enge gets the scoop–boy, is he gonna get a lot of backlinks from...

Dear Kalena I am searching the web looking for an idea of how to redo my mortgage site. I plan on optimizing many pages of content and am finding out that  local SEO companies that are placing high on search rankings barely have 150 or so words of body text– and that is on the home page. I thought the 250 words minimum was a “black...

There are certain things that anyone can hear and automatically say “I don’t think that’ll work very well” without doing any real research. You hear something and you have a visceral reaction that just makes you go with your gut because it makes sense. Even in those kind of no-brainer situations it helps when your...

Google really created quite a buzz around Buzz when it was rolled out in February. The first wave of buzz (pun intended although the whole Wave thing is another story altogether) for Buzz was reasonable and was more about “What do I do with it?” than anything else. That was soon followed by the privacy outcry that became...

I'm sitting here in Exhibit Hall 1 waiting for the keynote to begin. I will be liveblogging/paraphrasing what is discussed (please excuse the inevitable typos). Bio from the SXSW Booklet: Valerie Casey works with start-ups, governments, and companies all over the world on challenges ranging from creating new products and services to...

At SXSW, Rob Millis and Will Coghlan of the newly launched Dynamo Player talked about different routes online video producers can take to try and make a buck. While the discussion ultimately led up to the duo's demo of its new product, it was not above representing some different options fairly. The two talked about some of the pros and cons...

Rob Millis and Will Cohlan, the pair beyond the web show Political Lunch, gave a presentation at SXSW called "Beyond Advertising: Can Online Video Finally Pay?" The discussion led to the unveiling of a tool for online video monetization called Dynamo Player. The goal (short-term at least) of the tool is to simplify the process of...

Over the years, there have been more than a few arguments about whether online news sites are killing newspapers.  Now, due to some almost startling comments made by the president of CNN, it looks like the next round of old media-new media disputes might concern social networks and cable news organizations. According to the AFP, Jonathan...

At the keynote today at SXSW, Microsoft's Danah Boyd placed a lot of emphasis on Google's privacy "fails" with Buzz. The topic of the keynote was the relationship between privacy and publicity, and she certainly covered much more territory and social media in general, but it was interesting that Google Buzz was essentially the...

I'm sitting here in the exhibit hall at SXSW getting ready for the opening remarks keynote, which is getting ready to get underway. It will be delivered by Danah Boyd of Microsoft Research Her SXSW Bio: One of the world's foremost authorities on social networks, boyd works at Microsoft Research New England and also serves as a Fellow...

After a long morning of travel and SXSW preperation, WebProNews popped in on an interesting talk from writer and tech watcher, Kaiser Kuo (here's his bio) about what might happen with the whole Google/China situation, which has essentially remained at a stand-still for the past two months, since Google made its famous announcement about a...

Sarah Haskins is part of InfoMania’s line up of commentators that pokes fun at mainstream media. Sarah’s biggest contribution is her recurring segment “Target Women.” “Target Women” is a video commentary that takes a satirical look at television adverts that target women. As we can see above...

Glass-half-full and glass-half-empty types, prepare to be split.  New stats from Nielsen indicate that February of 2010 was a great month for the online video industry compared to February of 2009.  Last month was a little bit rotten compared to January of 2010, however. The chart below shows how the big-picture data categories played...

I enjoyed this conversation between Ruud Hein and Arnie Kuenn on link building. Think you will, too.

Austin, Texas - which already plays home to tech companies Freescale Semiconductor and Dell - will soon boast a Facebook office, too.  A $1.4 million incentive package we reported on in late February has been approved, and Facebook's decided to establish a team in Austin as a result. Grady Burnett, Director of Global Online Sales and...

comScore released a new study today examining the effects of display advertising in the European market—and it’s pretty dang impressive. The study (well, actually, report based on more than 20 studies) indicates that, despite minimal clicks on the ads themselves, “those exposed to online ad campaigns in Europe...

AOL unveiled its social aggregator and publisher, Lifestream, as part of its instant messenger platform last Fall. Now they’re launching a stand-alone site at lifestream.aol.com. After it appears they’ve failed with Bebo, this social venture may have a chance of success, in the opinion of TechCrunch at...

Apparently it wasn't enough that Jason kept snubbing his nose at Google with the other forms of Mahalo spam, now he has started selling links from there as well.

Despite weeks of talks that have supposedly taken place behind closed doors, the Chinese government still seems unwilling to compromise with respect to Google and censorship.  Indeed, it may be growing hostile, as a minister talked about "consequences" today. The BBC reported that Minister of Industry and Information Technology Li...

Google Wave didn't do so well when it came out of the gate, and Buzz's privacy problems stole all of the attention not too long after.  But now that Google's addressed most of Buzz's faults, it's trying to move forward again by rolling out an extensions gallery for Google Wave. Interestingly, this initial version is still a little rough...

Google has announced that a service that was previewed last December is now live for mobile devices. I’ll call it the “Blue Dot of Availability” which is stupid but it’s the best I can do. This function is just more evidence that Google is making mobile a top priority and it is giving retailers the ability to come along...

If Yahoo has its way, it'll soon be the place to go for information about movies, TV shows, and the celebrities who star in them.  Yahoo announced several upgrades to its search engine this morning, and they're all meant to make entertainment-related queries turn up much better results. A Yahoo representative told WebProNews, "Today...

Reuters has sat somewhat silently in the background of all the hub bub surrounding whether Google should be able to index stories and make money off that content through advertising. That has been an AP fight for the most part. The strategy has helped Reuters, at least in my eyes, because by staying out of the fray they are...

Don’t go for second best baby Put your blog to the test You know, you know, you’ve got to Make Blogger express how it feels And maybe then you’ll know your blog is real! I used to be a Blogger fan. However, just like my love of Madonna, I stopped liking Blogger when it started looking tired and old. Well,...

Last week, we reported that Facebook wanted to hire two people in Washington, D.C., and then dissected the official descriptions of the positions as best we could.  Still, the bullet points left a lot unclear, so it's noteworthy that Facebook provided some clarifying paragraphs today. Adam Conner was the first member of Facebook's D.C. team,...

YouTube Partners are, pretty much by definition, some of YouTube's most important users.  They create original content, don't violate copyright laws, and have huge audiences.  It makes sense, then, that YouTube is now looking hard for ways to improve its Partner Program. The hunt has taken the form of a crowdsourced project.  Just...

Now here’s a great way to gather totally, completely unbiased information about a potential merger: ask the companies’ competitors. Okay, so the FTC isn’t completely crazy—of course other companies in the market would have a pretty good idea what the industry looks like and what a big merger might do. But...

Users of the mobile version of Google Product Search can now see if items are in stock at a local store from select retailers. These retailers include: Best Buy, Sears, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, and West Elm. Product listings from these retailers will have blue dots that can be tapped to see an "in stock nearby" link, which takes...

Gowalla is a service that has been getting a lot of buzz lately. If you're not familiar with it, it's a location-based social networksing service that comes in the form of mobile apps. Gowalla announced today, the availability of Gowalla 2.0 for the iPhone 3G and 3GS platforms. Gowalla highlights the following new features with this version: -...

Google Reader Labs is adding a new way to view your feeds—Play. According to the blog announcement, this was conceived as a way to help introduce people to Google Reader—people who “aren’t interested in taking the time to get Reader set up” but are interested in using it. I hope both of you are happy ...

A Google exec recently said, "In three years' time, desktops will be irrelevant." That's debatable, but there's no question that mobile use will have grown much more than it already has. Based on comments in a recent keynote, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer doesn't seem to think PC use is going to drop too much, but he did say, "Mobile...

Trying to craft the perfect piece of linkbait to land you on the front page of Digg or ReddIt? Want your post to go viral on Twitter? No matter how great your content is, if the headline sucks, it stands little chance of getting the attention it deserves. That’s why I’ve come up with a list of 22 linkbait headline ideas almost every...

Google has launched the Blogger Template Designer, a way to customize the look and feel of your Blogger blog. "Over the past few years we've worked to scale Blogger and ensure that it is capable of handling hundreds of millions of pageviews per day," Google says. "But we also believe that blogging is about self expression and that...

Running an e-commerce website is a never-ending task, from trying to squeeze that extra bit of conversion rate out of the check-out page to figuring out which referrers give you the best traffic ....

When Twitter users go to post a new tweet, they have in the past used a button that says "update" (at least from Twitter.com...that varies when you get into all the different apps Twitter users use). Now, that button says "Tweet". We're not sure exactly when the change was made, but it appears to have been very recently, as...

Last fall, Twitter started including geolocation information in its API, but it was not available through Twitter.com. That appears to be in the process of changing now. This week, Twitter has been rolling out (it appears to still be in the process) geolocation info on tweets at Twitter.com. Various reports from users have been circulating, with...

Pick a road, any road.  So long as it's in the UK, there's a good chance Google will be able to provide you with pictures taken from it.  Today, the search giant made much more Street View imagery available, meaning its photographs now cover about 238,000 miles - or 96 percent - of British roads. The figure below tells most of the story...

As you know, a couple of weeks ago (my company) Trackur launched Trackur Free–a competely free version of the popular social media monitoring tool. To celebrate Trackur Free’s success–and to get as many people protecting their reputation as possible–Trackur is now giving all users a chance to win a free...

I know that what I am about to say is not original but it really struck me that as Twitter announces that it is offering location based information on its site there is so little reported about the potential issues this may create. I think it struck me because the Twitter site is usually the last place where the cool ideas are...

Motorola has announced a "global" alliance with Microsoft, which will see Bing used as the default search engine on Motorola Android-based devices. The move begins in China, where obviously there is some turmoil between Google and that country, but again, this is being called a "global" alliance that is "launching" in...

The "Facts about Google's acquisition of AdMob" page Google established in November of last year apparently hasn't satisfied the Federal Trade Commission's curiosity.  A fresh report indicates that the FTC has stepped up its investigation of the deal by seeking sworn declarations from third parties. This isn't a good sign for...

The tip is rather basic but I find very useful and the list is really bookmark-worthy, so I decided to share it here.

What do you do when you finally reach your goal of #1 rankings? Do you simply enjoy the ride and pray Google keeps you at the top spot? Or is there a way you can be more proactive with your approach so you can maintain and even add to your success? In this article, I want to answer all of those questions and outline the various strategies and...

Hi Kalena I use a company that “specializes” in mortgage sites and hosting. Since I am in the process of applying everything I am learning, I saw fit to have my site graded by one of the many online tools available. The tool showed that my site is coming up for both the www and non www versions of my domain. When I enquired with my...

PPC-Advice   Rebecca Lieb interview SES New York sneak peekPPC-Advice   Dennis Mortensen - in depth SES NY sneak peekSEMGeek     An exclusive interview with Allen Hammock of looksmart.comSEMGeek     Exclusive interview with Paul Pellman, CEO, Click ForensicsPromediacorp    SES NY 2010 - Which hat...

StumbleUpon has launched a new advertising system, which the company says helps cost-effectively deliver advertiser content to targeted audiences, while increasing the opportunity for content to go viral. StumbleUpon finds and recommends ad content it deems relevant to targeted audiences' interested based on demographic and topic areas....

Google Books has done it again.  Despite heavy opposition to its book-scanning project, another deal's been established, and this time, the agreement involves the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage (along with the National Libraries of Florence and Rome). Up to one million out-of-copyright works may be digitized as a result of this...

With the 2010 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament starting next week (March 16), it's no surprise the majority (83%) of fans will watch coverage on television, while 44 percent will go online and 10 percent will use a mobile device, according to a new survey by Unicast. Among those planning to follow the tournament online or on a mobile device, a...

An awesome step by step walkthrough from Rich Baxter showing how to use pivot tables to construct awesome pivot charts to visualise keyphrase research and ranking data.Excel ftw.

Microsoft want Yahoo! That's no secret. Whilst it has been made clear in the past that a partial sale is not an option, the recently approved search partnership seems to open the doors for a deeper understanding of the Yahoo! properties and a sale may seem to be inevitable. Or is it? In this industry analysis piece for State of Search, I take a...

Some good posints for examining potential linking urls.

Wanna-be SEO types (you know, the ones that would be better off in boiler rooms) love to pitch W3C Validation as being crucial to SEO.

Interactive infographics open up a whole new level of engagement. Social media users love them because they can easily segment and dissect data that they want to see.

Alan does a good job of laying out the two sides of the coin. A good read for folks confused about the relative importance of W3C compliance as it relates to SEO.

I find it a very useful guide on the best practices moving your site to a new domain. As the one who has experienced various weird cases while doing it, I recommend bookmarking the post.

Ripoff Report is a blight in the search results and really needs to be removed.

Today marks a milestone for me. On behalf of the Canterbury Development Corporation, I presented a 3 hour SEO workshop to a group of small to medium business owners based in Christchurch. Nothing too unusual about that, I’ve run workshops before and have presented at conferences and seminars quite a few times over the years. But what made...

Diversification and creativity will get you a long way in your link building efforts ....

The second ever SphinnCon Israel was a huge hit.  Check out the big recap to catch up on all the highlights.

The acquisitive arm of Google reached out again today, and this time, grabbed DocVerse, a company that specializes in the real-time sharing and editing of documents.  The unusual thing is that DocVerse doesn't deal with just any documents; instead, it focuses on Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, and Word documents. A post on the Official Google...

Last year, Google's Matt Cutts dropped the bomb (to put it in the exaggerated tone that many took the news in), that Google was considering taking site speed into consideration as one of many potential ranking factors for search results. Is your site's performance up to snuff? Comment here. This of course freaked a lot of people out, but as...

The Associated Press said today it is partnering with Livestream to launch AP Live "Oscars Red Carpet," coverage. AP Live coverage of the 82nd Annual Academy Awards will feature social media elements, on-demand clips, photos and news. AP Live is available on a Facebook fan page and syndicated to AP publishers and other distribution...

A year ago, we first covered the extortion rumblings against local review site Yelp. Business owners claimed that Yelp offered to remove negative reviews—for a price. Yelp disputed the allegations, but did add a feature for business owners to respond to negative reviews last April. But apparently the other practices...

Microsoft is rolling out the largest imagery update to Bing Maps to date, adding 6.7 million square kilometers of new imagery, a representative for Bing tells WebProNews. The update includes new aerial imagery for the Russian Federation, Australia, Mexico and most places in the US where there is existing black and white imagery. "There is...

A couple weeks ago, Google acquired reMail, a popular iPhone app, and pulled it from Apple's App Store. Now, Google has made it open source. "After looking at a number of options to make reMail available in some form, we decided to open source the code, which is now available on Google Code as remail-iphone under the Apache 2.0...

Virginia Nussey worked her fingers to the bone to liveblog 15 sessions straight from Santa Clara. If you missed the conference, or just couldn't make all the sessions you wanted to, Virginia's coverage will catch you up. Also thanks to the speakers and conference organizers for their hard work.

Cybercrime syndicates are expanding the base of brands they exploit for online fraud beyond major financial institutions and online merchants, according to a new report from the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG). The number of hijacked brands reached a record 356 in October, up nearly 4.4 percent from the previous record of 341 in August...

An important, if not surprising, item: Another Google/YouTube exec has voiced his opinion that YouTube will be profitable this year.  More interestingly, an outside analyst has done the same, and also forecast a gross revenue figure of almost $1 billion. Let's start by talking about Citigroup's Mark Mahaney, who generated that...

I don't know how Lisa Barone does it without absolutely collapsing on the last day, but here we have another roundup of her excellent liveblogging coverage from SMX West 2010. If you couldn't attend, you'll feel like you did with the coverage at Outspoken Media of 15 sessions.

As you know, Microsoft and Yahoo were recently granted regulatory approval on their search and advertising deal, and we've discussed what this might mean for search engine optimization. WebProNews stopped by the Yahoo Headquarters in Sunnyvale before heading to SMX West in Santa Clara this week, and talked with Shashi Seth, Sr. VP of Yahoo Search...

How would you like to indulge in two days of hands-on, advanced social media marketing training? Training from experts such as Jason Falls,  John Jantsch,  Giovanni Gallucci, yours truly, and a bunch of other top-notch marketers? What if I said you could get that training for just $429? When was the last time you went to a 2-day...

What will come first, Christmas or Twitter’s 20 billionth tweet? Well, according to the GigaTweet counter, you can celebrate Twitter hitting the 20 billion mark, a few months before you can put up your Christmas tree. Twitter has already passed the 10 billion tweet count and is rapidly chasing towards the big two-oh. Of...

According to a study by EmailStatCenter.com (sponsored by ExactTarget and BrightWave), the promise of social media marketing riches is too much of a temptation for email marketers–they want in on the action. According to the study, 43% of email marketing firms are already offering social media marketing as part of their...

Volusion, a provider of online shopping cart software for businesses recently introduced its newest credit card fraud protection service, Fraud Score. Volusion spoke with WebProNews about Fraud Score and how it works to protect online merchants of any size from fraudulent transactions. When an order is placed customer information is...

Let me start off by saying that I have no problem with my search results being personalized, because I understand that search engines want to deliver the best user experience so that users will keep using them. If I get results that are personalized well, that means I don't have to look too far for what I'm trying to find. However, not all users...

I think that based on the legal angle of much of the news around Google lately, we could see a service called Google Legal. I have no idea what that might look like but since the Internet behemoth spends so much time in court battles they should be able to find a way to monetize that right? They make money on everything else they...

Apple said today its much anticipated iPad device will be available in the U.S. on Saturday, April 3, for Wi-Fi models and in late April for Wi-Fi + 3G models. All models of iPad will be available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the U.K. in late April. Beginning March 12, U.S. customers can pre-order...

Believe it or not, Yahoo has a market cap of about $22 billion, and the company intends to put some of that money to good use in the near future.  Carol Bartz stated at the Transformation 2010 conference that she intends to acquire more stuff this year. In response to what could have been a "yes" or "no" question...

YouTube has changed the default size for embedded videos. By default they're getting bigger at either 480x385 for a 4:3 video, or 640x385 for a 16:9 video. YouTube says it went with these sizes, because they will give most viewers the best viewing experience because they better match current video encoding sizes. "A video's life on YouTube...

Leave it to Yahoo’s CEO Carol Bartz to stir up a little controversy from time to time. It seems like that’s the best way for Yahoo to get in the news these days. In recent months most stories are more about what Yahoo used to be and people trying to figure out what it will be. For any business, especially in the Internet...

Are you obsessing over big 'trophy' keywords? Mark Nunney on Wordtracker takes a fresh look at the power of the long tail and suggests a great work process for tackling both head and tail terms when planning your site architecture / content.

Every now and then, there is a discussion about where email stands as social network use becomes the "it" thing. We've all heard mutterings like, "email is dead" and "social media is killing email," but it's just not the case, and there are plenty of reasons why (even if Google thinks it's time to start over). Do...

In a single day, Bing has increased the number of fans of their Facebook page by 500 percent. How? By using clever social media advertising embedded within the popular Facebook application Farmville. The advert appeared yesterday inside the game Farmville, encouraging players to become a fan of Bing in exchange for free farm cash (the virtual...

With all the talk this week about Facebook valuations and the money that they are making (OK so it’s a guesstimate but what the heck……it’s the Internet!) it makes one think about just how Facebook plans to continue to grow top line revenue. One way was revealed as the ability to target Facebook ads locally increased...

Since SEO is all about optimizing for keywords that people are actually searching for, misspellings present a pretty big opportunity to gain visibility in search. You could potentially get more traffic and make more money from organic search by targeting a few strategic misspellings. Just don’t tell your 5th grade English teacher about it.

We'll let you decide whether, given the recent loss of life in Haiti and Chile, Google's timing is a little off here.  But for better or for worse, the search giant picked today to promote Google Apps in a blog post titled "Disaster Recovery by Google." A few points in Google's defense: it created a Person Finder tool in response...

In case you missed it, WebProNews streamed a live interview with Google's Matt Cutts today from SMX West in Santa Clara. It's hard to narrow down the discussion to a singular topic, but here are some of the things touched upon in the video: - The status of Google's Caffeine update (nothing's wrong, they're just being careful.) - Site Speed as a...

Yahoo Mail users should find it considerably more convenient to get in touch with their friends and acquaintances from now on.  Today, Yahoo and Facebook made it possible for those users to add their Facebook friends' email addresses to their Yahoo Contacts lists. The benefits should be obvious.  A post on the Yahoo Mail Blog pointed...

Update: Matt Cutts says they probably won't rename PageRank. However, he agrees with Peter Norvig that people obsess about it too much. Original article: Last year, Google quietly got rid of PageRank in Webmaster Tools. Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Susan Moskwa had said, "We've been telling people for a long time that they shouldn't...

Google Buzz has captured a lot of the buzz around services with "Buzz" in the title (of which there are a few), but before Google Buzz was even announced, AT&T Interactive had already launched a beta version of its latest take on local business search at Buzz.com. Buzz.com has only been available on an invitation basis so far, and...

As more wireless users switch to smartphones, many retailers are readjusting their mobile strategies to address the needs of these users, according to a new study by J.D. Power and Associates. The semiannual report analyzed evaluations from customers who recently had an in-store wireless retail sales experience. Overall customer satisfaction...

Whether they're used for the benefit of the hard of hearing, people who speak a different language, or just folks who want to watch videos while at work or in a library, captions can be helpful in all sorts of circumstances.  And now, captions should become much more common, as all YouTube users will be able to take advantage of an...

It’s getting closer to the moment of truth for me and this kind of “news” gets me a little closer to making the move on going with an Android device. I know the days are numbered for my BlackBerry. That’s a foregone conclusion. I guess I am the customer that is being most fought over between Apple and any Android device...

For once, an advance in Google personalized search I actually like. They’re adding the same stars we’re so used to in Google Reader and Gmail to personalized search results. The starred results let you mark favorite sites to show up at the top of future posts—and it doesn’t appear to affect the rankings of...

Watch the Keynote live at live.webpronews.com. At SMX West in Santa Clara, the State of the Search Union keynote is taking place today. It's moderated by Chris Sherman, Executive Editor of Search Engine Land, and features SEL Contributing Editor Vanessa Fox, Google Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik, Yahoo Director of Search Marketing David...

The NCAA has unveiled a new website NCAA Vault, which features video highlights and full games of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament going back to 2000. The NCAA Vault lets users search for individual plays and highlights from their favorite NCAA men's basketball teams and players from the Sweet Sixteen through the championship...

So Google’s facing an inquiry from the European Commission after accusations of anti-trust. Naturally, Google’s not taking this lying down. On the European Public Policy blog, Matt Cutts responds to allegations of anti-competitive practices by sharing their secret sauce, PageRank. But are they transparent...

You’d think that with all the SEO conferences Google sponsors and speaks at, it would have at least some grasp of basic search engine optimization techniques, right? Yeah….no. According to a self-examination, Google is about as bad at SEO as any multi-billion company. In fact, you might argue that Google’s SEO...

Effective search engine optimization is equal parts art, science, and EXPERIENCE, so I sat down with industry veteran Joe Laratro to get the dish on what matters most in SEO.

At his keynote at SMX in Santa Clara this week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made it pretty clear that the company wants more people using its products regardless of the device they're using. While his focus in that address was mainly on Microsoft's Bing search engine, the company is keeping with this philosophy, as it has now released its first...

Nearly a quarter (24%) of all U.S. households have a television connected to the Internet, according to a new report from the Leichtman Research Group (LRG). The report found consumers connect to the Internet via variety of devices including a video game console, a Blu-Ray player, or a compatible TV.  While Internet connectivity has become a...

Some great tips and approperiate actions to take if you catch someone trying to steal your content.

Never mind the associated cubicles, desks, chairs, and monitors that, for many people, have become part of everyday life.  A Google exec believes desktop computers will be irrelevant in three years' time. No twisting of words or misinterpretations took place here.  John Herlihy, Google's vice president of global ad operations, simply...

When we publish pretty charts and report on studies, I’m often asked: “What about the B2B guys?” Hold on to your inventory, here they come! Forrester is predicting a significant uptick in internet marketing by those in the B2B space. In fact, it’s predicting spend will almost double over the next five...

Google has a new way for Android users (2.0 and up) to search on their mobile devices. The company has introduced a new Google Labs application that lets users search for apps, bookmarks, music tracks, etc. by drawing alphabet gestures on their touch screen. "Say you want to call your friend Anne," explains Google Research Scientist...

This is a great chock-full-of-goodness interview with Joanna on Twitter, social media, PPC, SEO, and more. Worth a read.

It looks like Facebook will soon begin trying harder to bend the ears of our nation's leaders.  Listings for a public policy manager and public policy associate have both been posted on the social network's "Open Positions" page, and Facebook's decided that these people will work in Washington, D.C. This isn't a simple matter of...

Facebook and Twitter access via mobile browsers has grown by triple-digits in the past year, according to the latest research from comScore. More than a quarter (30.8%) of smartphone users accessed social networking sites via their mobile browser in January, up 8.3 points from 22.5 percent one year ago.  Access to Facebook via mobile browser...

Google today introduced yet another way it is personalizing search results (we talked about social search with the company at SMX). Now Google is letting users "star" search results that they like, just like the star feature in other Google products like Gmail, Reader, and Google News. This almost seems like an obvious move for SERPs...

Okay, it’s not the first time, but it does seem like a rather momentous one: bloggers are now being granted press passes from the City of New York. These passes allow qualified journalists to and even sometimes within police and fire lines (within reason, of course)—and everything from bloggers to other online-only...

TiVo said today it will begin offering two new set-top boxes starting in April. TiVo Premiere will sell for $300 and will have the ability to hold up to 45 hours of HD content or up to 400 hours of standard definition content.  TiVo Premiere XL will retail for $500 and hold up to 150 of HD content or 1,350 hours of standard...

More people have the web in the palm of their hands than ever before. Smartphone usage isn't exactly slowing down, and for that reason, the search market might get shaken up considerably in the coming months. Google has long dominated the search market, and to this day continues to do so. There is nothing indicating that will change in the near...

A little over a month ago, Facebook revealed a planned conversion tracker tool to help marketers track the value of Facebook Pages and fans. Today, analytics firm Omniture announces “A new solution . . . to buy media on Facebook and measure its influence across digital marketing channels.” Any relation? Facebook...

Update: Stay tuned to live.webpronews.com for an exclusive interview ith Peter Norvig, Google's Director or Research. Google’s director of research Peter Norvig is talking at SMX West at 9:15 AM PST / 12:15 PM EST, and I will be...

Online analytics firm Omniture and Facebook said today they have partnered to offer marketers tools to improve Facebook as a marketing channel. Initially the two companies will focus on the ability to automate Facebook media buying and access analytics that measure customer engagement on Facebook. The partnership builds on Facebook analytics the...

NEW YORK, NY, March 3, 2010--Search Engine Strategies (SES) New York will continue its tradition of SEM training prior to the event in 2010. This year, three organizations will be offering full day courses:  Bruce Clay, Inc.'s Bruce Clay will be leading a session covering Search Engine Optimization, the Web Analytics Association (WAA) will...

Almost exactly one month ago, the Yahoo Mobile Blog launched, and nine new posts have been made since, signaling that the company really is interested in mobile tech.  Unfortunately, one of Yahoo's mobile execs has decided to part ways with it at this juncture. Mitch Lazar, Managing Director and General Manager of Yahoo Mobile Europe, is...

It's no secret that Google delivers personalized search results on a user-by-user basis. In fact, software engineer Bryan Horling reportedly said at SMX West in Santa Clara that Google personalizes as much as 20 percent of any user's web searches, which would be one in five searches. One way that Google personalizes search results is with its...

Yahoo celebrated its 15 year anniversary yesterday and Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz decided that it would be the perfect time to take a swipe Facebook. When asked why Yahoo wasn’t as hot as Facebook, she replied: "Facebook? What’s their revenue?" Oh no she didn’t! Well, as if on cue, Inside Facebook comes up...

Mobile device maker Nokia said today it has made Skype available as a free download in its online Ovi Store. The new Skype for Symbian software will allow more than 200 million Nokia smartphone users globally access Skype over a WiFi or mobile data connection. Skype for Symbian will allow Nokia smartphone users to make free Skype-to-Skype calls...

Two of the most popular shows on Hulu will be pulled off the site after March 9th.  Hulu announced late yesterday that it and Comedy Central have been unable to reach an agreement concerning the distribution of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. This doesn't seem to signal a complete estrangement between the two companies; in fact,...

Google is looking to improve upon its own internal SEO efforts. The company has created what it calls an "SEO Report Card," designed to improve the user experience and visibility of some of its own properties. The company says it aims to identify potential areas for improvement in Google's product pages, which could help users find them...

Yes, if you haven’t heard yet, you can get penalties and banned from AdWords. Kate Morris explains how NOT to get banned in Adwords...

Toyota is now turning to Twitter to help stem the tide of negativity that has been heaped upon it during the “Recall Free For All” (that one’s mine). I guess someone at Toyota HQ has been studying up on this Twitter thing and decided that it was the way to go. Of course, just going headlong into a potentially hostile...

The battle between Google and Apple is heating up and how it shakes out is likely to influence how a lot of online business is done both now and in the future. You know things are serious when one of the partners, in this case Google’s partner HTC, gets hauled into court by Apple for alleged patent infringement and Google, who...

If you were using Chrome, you’d already know what that headline means. (Okay, probably not.) Chrome is integrating a translation tool in its latest beta version. If you browse across a site that’s not in your default language, it’ll offer to translate it for you. Which may or may not help you understand it ....

Well, if the shoe isn’t on the other foot. Once upon a time, Microsoft seemed to be the biggest threat to free trade in the computer world, facing suits across the world. And now it’s Google’s turn—and coincidentally, Microsoft certainly looks like the man behind the curtain. In fact, two thirds of voters...

Some very useful and actionable advice here on why you should encourage customer reviews. Soliciting customer feedback can play a crucial role in building this reputation.

Warning... extremely long post about Google AdWords quality score, how it came about, how it is calculared and on what levels, what it determines on different networks and detailed instructions on how to improve overall quality score.

Rachel discusses how to improve organic CTR through on-site optimization that does not necessarily boost rankings

Businss News Moves From Blogs to Mainstream News Sites. Over the past several years, the cause and direction of news stories have changed the direction of news flow.  Slowly news is migrating from a publicist pitching increasingly scarce news editorial staff at newspapers, radio and TV to blog posts migrating to other blogs and then mainstream...

Debra Mastaler wrote a great piece on some techniques that can be leveraged to generate one-way links on an ongoing basis without resorting to the typical "link begging" routine.Really worth a read, even for Fortune 1000 types (it can be leveraged at the level too).

I have been speaking to several owners of local franchises recently about Internet marketing and it has opened my eyes considerably. Purchasing a franchise has long been a way for people to get away from having a “regular” job and live the American Dream of owning a business. In this day and age with people having the worst job security in...

While I don't get to conferences much, and generally don't read many posts covering them that have anything of interest, the gang at Vertical Measures at least had a few goodies of interest from OMS.... worthy addition.

Dear Kalena A client asked me to check results on about 30 of her company’s list of search terms (breast augmentation L.A.; breast augmentation Beverly Hills; nose job L.A. etc. etc.) Question: am I going to get reliable results by just typing those terms into a Google search box on my computer — 90 miles away from the client —...

Great post by Glen Allsopp on the tools he uses in the daily grind.

Patrick Pichette joined Google as its CFO on August 12, 2008, and since then, he's seen the company through both good times (a stock price of $620 per share) and bad (try $262).  So Google fans should find it comforting that Pichette, with his range of experience, has said the company's doing quite well again. Pichette spoke during the...

A while back, WebProNews had a conversation with RateItAll President Lawrence Coburn about how the long tail of search is getting more competitive. Companies like AOL and Demand Media are working on dominating long tail searches with content across a broad scope of article subject matter. We had another conversation with another company that is...

Small and medium-sized business (SMB) marketers are becoming increasingly convinced of the positive results of video email, social media and personalization, according to a new report from GetResponse. Over 80 percent of respondents plan to use video emails in 2010 and over 90 percent of SMB marketers who use video emails report it delivers...

About five months ago, Google started a contest to determine where its Street View trike would take pictures in the U.S.  Today, Google released some impressive stats concerning participation, and also announced the winning locations. Let's start by establishing how many people took an interest in where Google will send its trike.  A...

Google announced today it has acquired Picnik, a cloud-based photo editing service. The company consists of about 20 employees. "Google processes petabytes of data every day, and with their worldwide infrastructure and world-class team, it is truly the best home we could have found. Under the Google roof we’ll reach more people than...

Yahoo partnered with photo editing company Picnik way back in 2007. It was an important partnership for Yahoo’s Flickr, leading to senior executives to proclaim: “Providing the ability to edit directly within Flickr is an important step in offering our 20 million members around the globe a complete photo...

CBSSports.com said today it has upgraded its NCAA March Madness on Demand (MMOD) video player. CBS said it will again offer a standard video player in addition to providing viewers with the ability to upgrade to a high-quality player delivering an improved video stream. Upgrades to the player include the ability of viewers of the high-quality...

Each month, we look at Twitter's growth based on total tweets and new user registrations. This data is supplied by Matthew Daines, the lead developer for our own Twitter app Twellow. In February, the number of new registrations fell, compared to the previous month, and tweeting in general rose, but the growth in the amount of tweeting slowed....

“Oh my goodness. Can you believe the nerve of that blogger who dared to disagree with that thing that you said? I know what it is. They just wanted more traffic, so they’re leeching off your popularity. By criticizing what you said, they must be trying to rank in the search engines for your name, because you’re just so popular. They ...

Maybe you’ve already seen them: the ads that end with “Visit us on Facebook,” instead of a URL. Reminiscent of ads a few years ago that encouraged us to search on a specific search engine with a specific keyword (or use AOL) instead of visiting a website, the latest rash of CTAs scream “look at us,...

When businesses think about search and social media, a great deal of the time, they are thinking about traffic, customer engagement, and brand awareness. While these are all good things to consider, there may be more to that last one that you have spent much time thinking about. Brand awareness goes beyond just having a random customer find your...

Google Maps added user photos from Panaramio to Street View last year. They started with photos around major landmarks and added user photos for all their Street Views as well as maps without Street View. Now geo-tagged, user-submitted Flickr photos as well as other location-specific photos from Google’s own Picasa are more...

European mobile phone operators are now required by the European Union to offer their customers limits on roaming fees. Under the new regulation, mobile operators must offer their customers a monthly cut-off limit of 50 euros ($65) while they are surfing the Internet in other European nations. They can also offer their customers any other limit....

Most major browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Opera, didn't fare well in February, losing market share.  Net Applications found that Chrome managed to attract more than a few new users, however, increasing its market share by 0.39 percent on a month-over-month basis. The fact that Chrome beat all of its competitors...

NEW YORK, NY, March 3, 2010--Yusuf Mehdi, Senior Vice President of the Online Audience Business at Microsoft's Bing, is a delivering keynote address at Search Engine Strategies (SES) New York 2010. Mehdi, a Microsoft employee since 1992, is currently responsible for global product management, strategic partnerships, and business development for...

Microsoft announced today that Bing is just now supporting query history in its Autosuggest feature. In other words, if you have your search history enabled, Bing will incorporate past queries you've made into the suggestions. "You are in full control of your query history," the Bing Team stresses.  "We know your privacy is...

We all know that news is changing. How we get news, where we get news, how we react to news, what we do with news when we get it and on and on. It’s one of those factors that are known to all but hard to quantify as to the true impact of our news habit both for now and into the future. The Pew Internet and American Life Project...

Apparently marketers have forgotten their own mantra. Just when you become sick of an ad campaign, is exactly when the message is just starting to stick with your target audience. You see, 51.4% of those polled by the Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG) say they are tired of hearing the buzz words social media, Twitter,...

Time is a valuable resource, and that's why it is more important than ever to manage your time wisely. "Typically in the SMB space, people have very little resource[s], so you see people trying to get a lot done with a very small staff - maybe one person in their marketing department trying to do it all," Kim Albee, CEO of Genoo told...

The Internet is now the third most-popular news platform, behind local and national television news and ahead of national print newspapers, local print newspapers and radio, according to a new survey out today. The survey of 2,259 U.S. adults, conducted jointly by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and the Project for Excellence in...

Some great insights into SMM. 8 Key Do's and Don'ts of Social Media Marketing.

Manoj Jasra discovered this entertaining video that takes recent research and puts it into a format that is actually enjoyable to consume. Some of my favorite statistics: 90 Trillion emails sent in 2009, 81% of which were spam 4 billion photos hosted on Flickr 148,000 zombie (think botnets/click fraud) programs created each...

Although a few months have passed since the last big flareup, News Corp. may still be willing to go to war with Google.  A fresh report indicates that Rupert Murdoch is indeed prepared to take the search giant to court, and has been talking to Microsoft about an exclusive deal, too. Gabriel Sherman recently published a long profile of...

The first step in getting your pages to rank is to get them indexed. And the fastest way to get them indexed is through mega ping lists and the right ping plugins.

Twitter engineer Alex Payne tweeted over the weekend, "If you had some of the nifty site features that we Twitter employees have, you might not want to use a desktop client. (You will soon.)" Some took that to mean that Twitter was working on some new features for its own site, that would essentially render some popular third-party...

Twitter Engineer, Alex Payne, has inserted his foot in his mouth. Actually he inserted a big chirping bird in his mouth and ended up with a fail whale of backlash. This tweet started it: That apparently caused all kinds of angst among Twitter developers, concerned that third-party apps–such as Seesmic and Twhirl–would...

Google recently made search improvements as your roam around by adding the My Location option to mobile search. The idea is to help everyone find things that can be visited, used or accessed right then and there based on your location. While there is plenty of concentration on the mobile side of search they have not let the local...

Social media use among businesses has grown significantly over the past year or two, but new research from E-Consultancy, in association with the Online Marketing Summit (where WebProNews is conducting exclusive interviews this week), indicates that most businesses are largely still in the experimental stage when it comes to their efforts. There...

Google announced via Twitter this week, that public status updates from Facebook are now included in the search engine's real-time search feature. That means the largest social network in the world is getting play in Google's real-time search alongside Twitter, MySpace, and others, and these real-time results are often featured prominently on the...

Update: Danny Sullivan reports that "slight variations" of this design are "live in the wild," and "still being shown to a randomly selected group of people," and that Google doesn't have an expected launch date for a complete roll-out. Original Article (11/19): Google is testing a new user interface for...

This has not been a great week for American tech companies trying to do business in Europe.  First, Google got in trouble over allegedly anticompetitive search practices and its policy on Street View data retention.  Now, German antitrust authorities are looking at the way in which eBay has supported PayPal. John Oates explained earlier...

Update 2: A Google spokesperson says the full-text issue is not a Google-specific problem. "It is possible for Bloggers to prevent their full content from showing in Buzz just like in Reader --it depends on how they set up their feed. If a blog owner wants to not show their whole blog, they have to use whatever tools they are using to...

There's encouraging news for Google in the Android vs. iPhone war.  A company that's delivered more than one billion applications, games, ringtones, videos, and wallpapers to mobile users claims Android has topped the iPhone in terms of user concentration in eight states. As the map below shows, these eight states are Arizona, Maryland,...

There is an interesting discussion going on in our WebProWorld forum about search engine optimization post Microsoft-Yahoo deal. For those unfamiliar with the topic, Microsoft and Yahoo recently gained regulatory approval on a search and advertising deal announced last year, which will see Yahoo using Bing's algorithm in its search results. The...