Newsrooms are cutting staff and reporters and editors are hard pressed to do more with less. Tools like search engines and social media make available a tremendous amount of information in real-time.  The news world is a world of deadlines and it would seem the use of search and social networks to source experts or people/companies that fit a story angle would be ideal. Even respected news organizations like the BBC are encouraging their journalists to embrace social media.
http://www.toprankblog.com/2010/02/journalists-search-social-media/

If you’re using Google Analytics and are new, learn both the basic and deeper functionality, such as creating advanced segmentation. It’s critical to understand your tool before you get into creating reports. Inevitably after making reports questions will arise asking for specifics, so you’ll want to know how to answer them. Smashing Magazine has a fleshed out guide to Google Analytics that will give you a crash course in the app.
http://www.toprankblog.com/2010/02/web-analytics-reporting/

The major news networks are all covering the disaster in Chile, and Pacific reaction to the tsunami warnings, via social media feeds from residents in the Chilean area, and tweets from Hawaiians and locals from other Pacific islands. Twitter is tracking the Tsunami warnings with the hashtag #Tsunami. Looking at the Twitter results, we can see that the Hawaii Red Cross is proactively reaching out to native Hawaiians via Twitter.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/tsunami-warnings/18279/

Although Google’s undoubtedly best known for dominating the traditional search market, the company’s no slouch when it comes to mobile. New stats from Opera indicate that Google has a huge lead over its closest rival, and that its other well-funded competitor barely enters the equation.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/25/google-trounces-yahoo-bing-in-mobile-search-report

Now Google’s real-time search results include (as listed by Danny Sullivan) Facebook, MySpace, Twiter, Google Buzz, FriendFeed, Jaiku, Identi.ca, TwitArmy, Google News links, Google Blog Search links, new web pages, and freshly updated pages. At this point, Google generally only shows the real-time results for newsy/trending topics.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/25/your-facebook-page-is-in-googles-real-time-results-now

Information architecture supports findability and usability. It can also support organic SEO practices related to on-page content and word usage. Information architects use terms such as taxonomies and semantics to help describe what they do. Simply put, they organize categories of information into something that makes logical sense. A usability oriented person is interested in the same thing because words can create momentum or promote frustration.
http://searchengineland.com/its-a-fatal-mistake-to-copy-successful-web-sites-36855

Things in the Local Search space are out of the control of the typical small business owner; even if they know about the Google Local Business Center, Yahoo Local Listings, or Bing Local Listing Center, they’re only covering half their bases (according to last year’s 15 Miles survey.) And other portals and data companies typically don’t push updates live with the same alacrity as Google and Bing.
http://searchengineland.com/local-search-complexity-smb-frustration-36839

Google added the ability to refine your searches with the “Nearby” tool in the Search Options panel. One of the really helpful things about this tool is that it works geographically — not just with keywords — so you don’t have to worry about adding “Minneapolis” to your query and missing webpages that only say “St. Paul” or “Twin Cities.”
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/refine-your-searches-by-location.html

Mobile search continues to explode. According to eMarketer, mobile search spending will grow 81% over the next two years. So there’s no better time to get a jump start on your mobile search campaigns.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/5-steps-to-launching-a-mobile-search-campaign/18153/

Search engine optimization is never in a void. It is never a best case scenario. As long as there are budgets (clients, in-house, agency) there are going to be limitations to any SEO program. If you read the blog-o-sphere, took some courses, no matter how you keep on top of things, it is generally the whole ball of wax approach. This can be a flawed business model.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-priorities-%E2%80%93-task-roi/18196/

If you travel much and still need to keep your blog active, you will definitely find these tips useful: they will show you how to post to your blogs from email (and thus from your mobile phone). You can use the huge advantage of Posterous is that you can email it anything – text, photos, mp3’s, videos, documents – and it will automatically uploaded and posted to your site.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/3-ways-to-blog-from-your-email/18020/

Yahoo has announced a fairly substantial overhaul of how Yahoo Answers looks and works — and as a semi-regular user of the site. The primary functional changes involve a new set of navigation tabs and a new way of browsing the categories on Yahoo Answers. Yahoo has also changed the general look and feel of the site, and made backend upgrades, as well.

http://searchengineland.com/yahoo-answers-gets-a-new-look-36895

Chinese scientists say their research will be dramatically compromised if Google shuts down its search engine in China. One scientist says it would be like going blind: “If I lose Google, it will [be] just like a man without his eyes.” Another says it “would be like life without electricity.”

http://searchengineland.com/losing-google-chinese-scientists-say-like-going-blind-36890

Companies like Google, Facebook, MySpace, etc. couldn’t let users upload content, which essentially means social media couldn’t exist. User-generated content couldn’t exist. That’s why Google is not only upset about the ruling against its

Google announced via Twitter, 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.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/25/your-facebook-page-is-in-googles-real-time-results-now

It is not a good blogging objective to earn a massive amount of Google AdSense income. In that situation, a blog is NOT a content-based blog; rather, it’s more of an affiliate blog which can be classified as “spam” in an extreme case.
http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Google-Optimization-Help/How-to-Increase-Google-AdSense-Revenue/

Twitter seems to be getting on every search engines lately. It has already struck deals with both Microsoft and Google whereby Twitter streams will be integrated into search result pages. And now, it just agreed on a content sharing deal with Yahoo.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/yahoo-twitter-agree-on-content-sharing-deal/18184/

Facebook Insights shows demographic details and interactions on your pages BUT limited to show information of fans only. It is far less sophisticated and comprehensive when compared to the free Google Analytics. One of the limitations of Facebook Fan pages is that you can only run limited Javascript on it and Google Analytics needs Javascript code included to correctly track visitors.
http://www.webdigi.co.uk/blog/2010/google-analytics-for-facebook-fan-pages/

Simply sharing your location has simply become a way of sending out a generic query, and local businesses have some tremendous new opportunities as a result. Potential customers sharing their locations means businesses can provide a real-time call-to-action to get them inside their establishment while they’re nearby.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/24/why-even-local-search-is-becoming-more-real-time

Consumer Watchdog today called on the Justice Department to guarantee that its ongoing antitrust probe of Google’s business practices include an investigation into if the company is manipulating its search results to favor its own products. The nonprofit advocacy group said it sent a letter to Christine Varney, Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Division, after news that the European Commission had received three complaints against Google alleging the company manipulated search engine results in an anticompetitive way.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/24/advocacy-group-asks-doj-to-probe-google-search-results

The outer web is where the best practices of landing page optimization and post-click marketing shine. Users have more flexible expectations on landing pages, especially when responding to specific, targeted offers.
http://searchengineland.com/the-5-rings-of-conversion-optimization-36205

B2B marketers work hard to target the right keywords, create compelling ad copy, and drive potential customers to click on their ads, all with the hopes of capturing them as a lead. But unfortunately, conversion rates often fall short of what they could be. Desperate to make up ground, many B2B marketers ramp up their paid search spend to drive more traffic, and in doing so, end up maintaining their dismal conversion rate.
http://searchengineland.com/5-landing-page-tips-to-boost-your-conversion-rate-36395

Google specifically scroll different websites according to their business logic. As per Google rule, it keeps details on number of times it found fresh content on any particular website. If any website update content within a span of 2-3 days, then google crawler will frequently visit that website. Google search crawler is thirsty for good content and is always in search of those websites which produce quality content on regular basis.
http://www.submitexpress.com/bbs/about74792.html&sid=c0dd61e2ed2608cf587e211bdec3c92d

Content optimization is not the only way to optimize landing pages. In fact, when it comes to boosting your conversion rate, it may not even be the most effective method.
http://www.submitexpress.com/bbs/about75041.html&sid=c0dd61e2ed2608cf587e211bdec3c92d

SEO is done for one reason — gaining the attention of the search engines. You want your site to appear in results when certain keywords are typed into search engine browsers,

There really is only one way to react to personalised search [besides encouraging people to jump through hoops and volunteer to search for you in Google rather than simply typing in your web address] and that is by improving the quality of search listings to maximise click through rates. This should be part of your SEO task list already, but it is now more vital than ever to ensure that your search listing is as enticing as possible to ensure you get that first click.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/writing-for-attention-ammunition-for-personalised-search/17968/

By applying the long-tail concept to driving website traffic, you can achieve greater traffic by leveraging multiple sites, instead of just the 3 major search engines. Here is a great place to start to find the most important and highly visited sites on the web.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-leverage-traffic-besides-using-organic-search/18100/

Keywords and search queries are two very different entities. While keywords are the inventory an advertiser buys, search queries are the actual words people type into a search engine. The distinction is important, because search queries typically cover a significantly longer tail than keyword buys, and there is a lot of value in mining search engine query data.
http://searchengineland.com/short-vs-long-tail-which-search-queries-perform-best-36762

Google’s massive computing power and bandwidth give the company an undeniable edge. Some observers say it’s an advantage that essentially prohibits startups from trying to compete. But Manber says it’s not infrastructure alone that makes Google the leader: “The very, very, very key ingredient in all of this is that we hired the right people.”
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_google_algorithm/all/1

Yahoo’s been busy in Nebraska. This week, the company announced the opening of both a data center and a call center in the state, and apparently the celebration was a big deal, with Jerry Yang and several high(-ish) ranking politicians all showing up. One possible interpretation of all this activity is that Yahoo’s very optimistic about its future even as Microsoft’s stepping in to influence the search and advertising side of things.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/18/yahoo-opens-data-center-call-center-in-nebraska

Google continues to invest in DoubleClick, the ad management system it bought in 2007 for a whopping $3.1 billion. Today Google released a major upgrade to the ad server that includes a new interface and new features designed to make it easier for publishers to manage ad campaigns across multiple Web sites, including when they want them to appear.
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3866486/Googles+DoubleClick+Ad+Server+Gets+Major+Upgrade.htm

Optimizing for Yahoo is not going to be limited to showing up in Bing’s results. That’s not to say that showing up in Bing’s results won’t have its advantages for Yahoo search, but there is a lot more going on at Yahoo than that. The company has been stressing that it is still very much focused on search, and under the deal with Microsoft, Yahoo will still be controlling the user experience at Yahoo.com.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/22/will-bing-powering-yahoo-make-seo-easier

Microsoft has spent a lot of money promoting Bing since its launch, and Bing’s usage has grown by millions of people since then, but it still has a long way to go to reach the top of the search market share mountain. Google is still sitting comfortably atop that mountain of course, but Google doesn’t really have to lose for Bing to win.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/18/why-bing-may-be-on-the-road-to-incredible-growth

If “Content is King” and “Links are Queen” when it comes to SEO, ecommerce sites must be like America – no king and no queen (but there is opportunity)! To put it another way, the typical medium or large e-commerce website faces substantial challenges to SEO – both from a content and a link perspective.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/7-ways-to-beat-the-challenges-of-seo-for-ecommerce/18057/

The Pew Internet & American Life Project recently undertook a massive task (for the fourth time): predicting the future of the internet. Combine the sense that generally, searchers seem to assume high ranking results are truthful ones with the data showing that searchers trust organic results more than paid ones and a clear case emerges for an investment in organic search for overall brand credibility.
http://searchengineland.com/the-future-of-the-internet-search-looks-bright-36585

Google confirmed two different discussions taking place in the webmaster and SEO community over the past few days. The first is that MySpace results are now included in Google’s Real Time search results feature. In addition, Google launched real-time search in Russian and Japanese.
http://searchengineland.com/google-adds-myspace-to-real-time-results-images-site-command-updates-36657

In a recent study conducted by Conductor, Inc reveals that although Fortune 500 companies spend a massive amount of online spend on paid search, their organic search results perform very poorly. Only 2% of the domains (not companies) surveyed showed a significant number of their terms in the top results. All of these positive domain scores were offset by other owned domains with significant visibility issues.
http://www.webanalyticsworld.net/2010/02/half-of-fortune-500-have-no-natural.html

There’s no perfect length for a blog post. It’s like the idea of keyword density in SEO; there’s no magic number for keyword density on a web page, and there’s no magic number for how long your blog posts should be.
http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/how-long-should-a-blog-post-be/2817/

Press releases are just another version of article submission. But the main differences are news will be taken from main sites to blogs, feeds and other smaller news networks, so if your news is a good one you will get lots of links. Press releases will bring more (more than double) traffic than articles. Articles will do best with link building, but if you are good at press releases, the same kind of link building can be done here also.
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1698995&page=2

Google announced a new Android application called Google Shopper. Shopper lets you find product information quickly by using your phone’s camera. It can recognize cover art of books, CDs, DVDs, and video games, along with most barcodes.
http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/02/shopping-smarter-with-google-shopper.html

No matter how popular Gmail is, not everyone is still aware of what he can do with it. Search option is one of the most awesome features of the service which (together with some external utilities) is a great fun to use.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/3-gmail-search-tips-you-will-be-thankful-for/17726/

The big mobile search engines are still serving up old-fashioned lists of desktop (i.e. full web) search results on touch devices. They are assuming that the full desktop web page is the best result for every search. Search engines that can crawl and index the touch-friendly web will improve upon today’s mobile search services in four crucial ways.
http://searchengineland.com/touch-phones-changing-the-way-we-search-36556

VentureBeat reports Twitter has increased their traffic by 9 percent from December to January. After deeper insight from ComScore and Hitwise, it appears that most, if not all, came from Google. When Google added real-time results to their search interface in December, it had a major impact on people discovering Tweets in the search results. Google will show real time results from Twitter and other sites based on if that is a trending (hot) query.
http://searchengineland.com/twitters-traffic-up-9-thanks-to-google-36509

With the imminent release of the Apple iPad, the publishing industry is about to take yet another giant leap into the digital space. Just as with the iPhone, the tablet will not support Adobe’s proprietary format. The pad instead favors the potent HTML 5 standard for interaction and H.264 or MPEG-4 for movie viewing. And in the process you’ll likely increase the SEO of your site.
http://www.searchmarketingstandard.com/optimize-website-preparation-ipad

Some WordPress websites are hosted in a very limited environment that won’t allow the creation of more than one database. However, creating multiple databases can be useful for diverse WordPress applications (such as having a separate MySQL database for English language content and another for customized French-based content).
http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Search-Engine-Optimization-Help/WordPress-Database-Tutorial-Security-Backup-and-Efficiency-Tips/

Some tips for getting traffic towards website or blog is including subscription on blog page. It helps people to get updates from your blog, so that they can visit your blog again and again whenever you update your blog page. Another one is video distribution which has now become one of the most lethal weapon for attracting people. Share your video on all video sharing platforms with a link back to your blog page. Using numbers in title of the post generates good traffic too.
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1698301

A comment from DigitalPoint forum says that regardless of the PR of the site (which is just for showing the authority – not for SERPs) the best thing is to put single key phrases with url (like ‘SEO Services’ and so than putting ‘SEO Services with guaranteed results’). But there is a small difference in this. If you put ‘SEO Services’ alone (the keyword alone) you will get extra weight there but SEs point only for the exact keywords (searches for ‘SEO Services’ alone) and if you put the entire phrase like ‘SEO Services with guaranteed results’ there is a chance to get more pointing towards your site than the other, but here the weight of the link will be comparatively less.
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1698995

There are no doubts that reviews effect ranking factors on the major search engines, as well as a number of IYP’s (Internet Yellow Pages). This issue has a very high “agreeance” among local SEO’s. “Yahoo Local has said there’s a threshold for the number of reviews and that once you reach that threshold, the reviews begin to factor into your rankings. Reviews are a very good trust factor to prove the validity of a business, but they can be semi-easily fabricated by guys with black hats and dark sunglasses. At this current time, and for the foreseeable future, reviews affect rankings.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/an-extremely-nifty-guide-to-reviews-and-local-search/17853/

Despite spending millions of dollars on paid search, Fortune 500 companies continue to fail when it comes to natural search visibility. That’s the conclusion of “Natural Search Trends of the Fortune 500: Q4/2009,” the latest study released today by Conductor, a New York-based SEO services/technology firm. Collectively, the Fortune 500 spent about $3.4 million per day on more than 97,000 keywords, but they show up in the Top 50 of natural search results for only 25% of those keywords.
http://searchengineland.com/fortune-500-still-clueless-about-seo-36420

Microsoft and Yahoo announced today that they have received clearance for their search agreement, without restrictions, from both the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission, and will now turn their attention to beginning the process of implementing the deal. Implementation of the deal is expected to begin in the coming days and will involve transitioning Yahoo!’s algorithmic and paid search platforms to Microsoft, with Yahoo! becoming the exclusive relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers globally.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Yahoo-and-Microsoft-to-bw-2356666634.html?x=0

Michael VanDeMar has documented possible evidence that Google is using fake referrers, possibly to detect forms of spam. Michael said the GoogleBot is being cloaked and is sending fake referrers for keywords the site is not related to and has no chance in ranking for. Bing has been doing this for years, fixed the issue several times, but it does appear Bing is no longer creating this fake referrer in webmaster’s log files.
http://searchengineland.com/is-google-referrer-spamming-to-detect-spam-36453

According to a forum, IP plays an important role but not the whole sole factor for SEO. Getting a host from target market would help a great deal but if not, it won’t affect in negative way.
http://www.submitexpress.com/bbs/about395-0-asc-15.html&sid=0bd406fb55df31668f32ffec0ed3aea4

Submitting RSS feeds is a good way to increase your subscribers, visitors who visit the concerned directories may enjoy reading and thus decide to visit the parent websites. Advertising your RSS feeds can actually help your search engine rankings, both inadvertently and directly.
http://www.submitexpress.com/bbs/about89763.html&sid=0bd406fb55df31668f32ffec0ed3aea4

Conversions are king. But to take your PPC campaigns to the next level in 2010, you must go beyond measuring traditional conversions (lead, transaction) and start measuring (and achieving!) new goals – from social media engagement, to RSS subscribers, to inbounds. A popular best practice for PPC landing pages is to create a multi-step landing experience that segments the visitor according to their audience segment or offers of interest, and subsequently delivers more relevant pitch and information.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/10-types-of-landing-page-goals-for-ppc-campaigns/17849/

There’s a reason why vanity URLs, personalized profile pages and recommendation systems are so popular. To a customer or site visitor, there’s nothing more interesting than themselves. In order to close deals, sales people need to know as much as they possibly can about a potential customer. Genius.com works with companies to generate leads through web analytics, visitor profiling and contact / point-of-sales services.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2010/02/humanism-sales-conversion.php

AOL is continuing with its push to create content on a massive local scale, according to a story by the Silicon Valley Insider. The story says that AOL is looking to “expand Patch, its network of local news blogs, from 30 sites to ‘hundreds’, by the end of 2010.” AOL recently announced a similar 0-to-60 sort of initiative with its attempt to cover every single band at this year’s South By Southwest festival with its content distribution project Seed. Patch is a “hyperlocal” website that offers news, photos and videos, discussions and information about local businesses.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_new_aol_local_reporters_covering_your_neighbor.php

Google views its relationship with Apple as valuable and does not see any reason for that to change, even with the rumors Microsoft’s Bing may replace Google search on the iPhone. Vic-Gundotra “Apple is a very close and valuable partner and we’re very excited about the relationship we have with them today. We have no reason to believe that’s going to change,” said Vic Gundortra, Vice President, Engineering, Google, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/15/google-views-apple-relationship-as-valuable

Microsoft has unveiled its Windows Phone 7 Series, a new mobile platform. The phones will bring Microsoft’s XBox Live service and its Zune music and video experience together on phones. Microsoft says this will provide one-click access to search from anywhere on the phone. A special implementation of Bing search also provides intent-specific results, depending on the type of query, the company says.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/15/will-windows-phone-7-help-bing-market-share

Hubpages is extremely useful according to a comment from DigitalPoint forum, as their internal linking structure makes it pretty easy to get PR2 or even PR3 hubs without building any real backlinks on your own. Just note that hub quality and tags are important. Each hub should be between 800 and 1500 words. A single hub is more valuable link-wise than several articles (usually, since you won’t have to build it up as much.) Also make sure to link all the hubs together.
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1698558

Google News ranks stories in two distinct ways. An oversimplification of this process is that a story rank is first applied which identifies the story topics that are most talked about across the web. Then, once the most popular story topics are identified, each cluster is displayed in descending order based on relevance and interest in the topic.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/getting-started-with-google-news

The analytics ninja is not dead, but with Avinash talking more about SEO analytics and SEOs like Rand talking more about web analytics, 2010 has brought with it increased cross-pollination between analytics experts and SEOs. If you’re running an offline campaign, such as a magazine ad, a business card run or a billboard creative, you’re not going to want to use the long URL builder parameter. In order to keep your metrics from being skewed as a result of page load times, you’ll want to implement using a 301 redirect, rather than using meta refresh.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-analytics-tracking-code-basics-and-time-saving-plugins

The inside knowledge of a business as an in-house SEO may make you a lean mean SEO machine ranking for any industry keyword you choose but your ideal visitor may not even know your industry. You need to know who this visitor is and what language he uses to see real results.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/lose-the-jargon-talk-street-and-gain-visitors/17788/

In December, Google announced plans to implement the MySpace Real-Time Search API, which would push publicly available updates from our users to Google in real-time. The implementation is now LIVE on Google and couldn’t be more excited to be the first social networking platform to light up real-time integration with Google.

http://myspace.tekgroupweb.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=1150

As a web marketer who is requesting high-quality links from the gatekeepers of academic sites, understanding the lingo and professional culture of the academic world can greatly improve your success rate. Although the red tape and hesitation around outbound linking in the academic world can be challenging, the response and linking rates from .edu contacts can increase dramatically with some subtle tactical changes.
http://searchengineland.com/how-to-improve-edu-link-requests-using-academic-metaphors-34472

Google has a new program that allows local businesses to get paid listings that appear within what’s known as the 7-pack of local listings. In The Trouble With Google’s Yellow Pages Experiment from Silicon Valley Watcher, Tom Forenski, notes: Prior to this, the results were separated. Sponsored links were always on the right, and the main search results were ‘organic,’ they were listed on how relevant they were to the query — not because of payment.
http://searchengineland.com/google-blurs-the-line-between-paid-unpaid-results-again-36268

Running giveaways online typically offers a few different opportunities. It can attract links from authoritative sites and a variety of domains. They can also be great for data collection – it’s fine to ask the entrants for their email address and whether they’d be happy for you to send them emails again in the future.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/running-giveaway-competitions-for-links-and-seo

For most search marketers, optimizing landing pages means A/B testing and multivariate testing (MVT). It means using tools such as Google Website Optimizer to experiment with different arrangements of a page or different variations in the content of a page – to maximize its conversion rate. But content optimization is not the only way to optimize landing pages. In fact, when it comes to boosting your conversion rate, it may not even be the most effective method.
http://www.submitexpress.com/bbs/about75041.html&sid=c4249db6ca427798dd44afa46011c6cd

Logically, older links are less likely to be spam-links, so they probably should have more value. On the other hand, the efforts of gaining a spam-link are inversely proportional to the PageRank of the linking page. The age factor is more significant for low-PR links, while high-PR links are much less affected.
http://forums.seochat.com/google-optimization-7/link-age-299673.html

The rumor that Google might build a data center in Australia has been circulating for some time. Deepak Ramanathan, the head of Google’s enterprise marketing arm in the Asia-Pacific region, recently spoke at an event in Sydney. Renai LeMay reported that people representing several Australian corporations expressed an interest in Google Apps while there.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/15/google-again-linked-to-australian-data-center-plans

Yahoo emphasized it’s committed to continuing research and development in search and to bringing out new services. While both Bing and Yahoo search will run off Microsoft’s back end, each company will control its own front-end user experience. Part of that effort is focused on retrieving the most relevant search results, including a selection of images and videos and social media content from Twitter.
http://www.internetnews.com/search/article.php/3864321/Yahoos+Message+Were+in+the+Search+Fight.htm

According to data from Compete, Facebook has become a bigger traffic source than Google for some sites, and for many others, it is right up there with Google as a major traffic source. If it can drive the traffic, then that means the people are already at Facebook. You can be on Facebook without having your own website.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/15/is-it-becoming-less-critical-for-businesses-to-have-websites

A vocal contingent of search engine optimizers is up in arms today, saying Google is “offering SEO consulting services.” Only thing is, Google isn’t doing anything they haven’t done for years and to say the company is “offering SEO services” seems like a real stretch of the imagination.
http://searchengineland.com/seo-industry-cries-foul-over-google-seo-services-35982

The Google AdWords Blog announced a new feature was added to the Opportunities Tab in the AdWords console. The new feature is named “Bid Ideas” and it gives you suggestions on if you should increase or decrease your bids on certain keywords.
http://searchengineland.com/google-adwords-now-offering-bid-ideas-36053

A links audit should examine backlinks and anchor text, to see what good links the site has gained naturally, to investigate if more of this type can be gained, or if there are obvious types have links that have never been gained. There should also be a competitors audit – examine the main rival sites, what they do well, and what can be learned from them and replicated and improved upon.
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1696219

Aardvark is already available in Google Labs. Users will keep the same Aardvark account. It will continue to work under Google. The company says it will continue to keep introducing new features, fixing bugs, and improving speed and quality. They say the main thing that is going to change is that they will be able to move faster with the support of Google.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/12/aardvark-already-part-of-google-answers-will-show-up-in-search

Local business search is becoming more of an area of great focus by search providers as time goes on. Google, especially, has been working overtime on providing new features that can help users find local businesses of interest. AOL’s MapQuest has been working on improving its own business search functionality.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/12/driving-traffic-with-mapquest-and-its-new-search-engine

It’s a known fact that Bing has a slow crawler and indexer. That’s the way it is programmed to work and not a bug. It indexes web page that fulfill its criteria for quality and unique content.
http://www.bing.com/community/forums/t/657400.aspx

Twitter went wild on rumors that Google decided to actually begin offering SEO consulting services. At one point people started ranting about getting tested by Google like they offer for AdWords.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-gets-into-the-seo-consulting-business/17647/

The preconception that buying links is dishonest and “cheating” the system prevails, it’s ingrained by industry leaders and SEO blogs that genuine organic links are the only answer for strong “long term results”. The big danger is buying spammy links, often from foreign agencies.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/is-link-building-worth-your-time/17590/

META tags play an important role in a site’s success with SEO, mainly by helping the search engines identify the theme of your web site. The key takeaway when setting up META tags is to remember to be concise and consistent (at the page level).
http://searchengineland.com/unloved-but-still-important-how-to-leverage-meta-tags-35886

Consumers adding descriptive phrases and shorthand to client pages as (crawler-friendly) UGC, which Google matched on when other consumers searched for the same phrases—apparently increasing long-tail organic search traffic at no marginal cost. For instance, one multichannel merchant’s “under armour hooded sweatshirt” landing page gets top rankings for about a half dozen derivatives of “UA Hoodie”—not because the merchant, or the Under Armour brand, use that shorthand on the page; this page gets found because end-consumers added the “UA hoodie” phrase to the page through their UGC product reviews.
http://searchengineland.com/user-generated-content-offfers-significant-seo-benefits-36037

Google doesn’t make money from organic search. It’s simply content they need to monetize like any publisher. Google is playing with the visual balance between organic and paid search to balance user satisfaction and the average revenue per click/SERP. Any combination of images, videos, PlusBoxes, icons, product listings and multiple text ad links can now appear mixed in with paid search ads.
http://searchenginewatch.com/3636449

There are no more “shady” SEO people than there are “shady” clients. Professionals that provide effective SEO consulting are reputable, experienced and probably more talented than most traditional marketers you’ve ever worked with. People doing shady things in the name of SEO are NOT professionals and the absence of that word, professionals, in the question is the problem.
http://www.toprankblog.com/2010/02/news-seo-tips/

Bing saw the number of U.S. searches on its site increase 5 percent in January from December to 9.37 percent of the search market, according to a new report from Hitwise. Ask also had a 4 percent increase in the number of searches from December to account for 2.64 percent of the search market. Among the top three search engines, Google sent the most visits to the automotive, health, shopping and travel categories. Bing saw double-digit growth among all four categories, including a 94 percent increase in the health category.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/10/bing-and-ask-increase-search-share-in-january

On a day that Google augmented Gmail with a social networking feature, Facebook and AOL announced a partnership that will allow millions of their users to add friends and chat across the Web environments. Tuesday’s dueling announcements underscore the growing rivalry between Google, the Internet’s leading company, and Facebook, which recently passed AOL to rank third in Web traffic.
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_14368763?nclick_check=1

Google has made some adjustments to how it uses referral URLs for contextual matching of AdSense ads. Google has started expanding the use of query words in referral URLs to a few hours.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/11/google-uses-a-few-hours-of-search-history-to-serve-ads

Google has reportedly acquired Aardvark, which operates at Vark.com, for around $50 million. Aardvark is a Q&A site. This is a space Ask.com says it is the number one brand for. Ask sees this move by Google as a direct challenge. “Bottom line, this move validates the space we have been #1 in for years,” the company says. “It’s Google coming after us and our mission.”
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/11/ask-says-it-has-a-head-start-as-google-acquires-qa-site

For all of the attention that we give most of the major players in search, it remains a mystery why the second largest search engine is routinely ignored. In case you hadn’t realized, in terms of share of search, YouTube remains ahead of Yahoo!, safely in the No. 2 spot behind Google, according to comScore.
http://searchengineland.com/the-key-to-top-video-rankings-on-youtube-google-35930

Yesterday Yahoo hosted a press event called SearchSpeak that sought to dispel the “misconception,” in the words of new Search Products SVP Shashi Seth, that Yahoo was no longer investing in search. But it would appear that Yahoo will continue to do interesting and innovative things in search — and the industry wants and needs them to.
http://searchengineland.com/yahoo-search-this-is-the-dark-time-but-well-be-back-35934

The search engine consumers use to find a brand’s website impacts both their perception of that brand and the decisions they make while on the site, according to new research by Wunderman, ZAAZ, and Compete. Loyal users of Bing, Yahoo and Google were found to have distinct characteristics that benefit some brands more than others. The search experience on different search engines offers different results, with some being more relevant to the consumer than others. This contributes to overall customer and brand awareness.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/09/search-engines-impact-perception-of-brands

Bing demands that sites have a good number of quality and relevant backlinks to encourage its bot to index their web pages. Bing is programmed differently from Google and their criteria for ranking are different, even though they’re similar in some ways.
http://www.bing.com/community/forums/t/657072.aspx

Correlation Does Not Imply Causation is a very simple concept that is completely ignored by 99% of the population. It is the logical fallacy that is the root of most false information about SEO.
http://forums.seochat.com/google-optimization-7/two-basic-seo-facts-which-are-actually-false-298574.html

Yesterday Google released Buzz, an integration of new social features for Gmail that connect users with each other. Microsoft is slightly threatened by the capabilities Buzz has and the implications for its competitors. Yahoo, on the other hand, took more of a direct hit from Buzz due to the fact that they are now sharing the same name. It seems Google has followed suit of Yahoo! Updates, another feature Yahoo has to congregate your social networking and updates.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/microsoft-and-yahoo-displeased-with-google-buzz/17602/

Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns gives LIVE impressions and gives a quick idea if the keyword gets searched or not. Broad match campaigns will not give you the EXACT keyword until the ad gets clicked and Google shows the actual keyword. You’ll get thousands of impressions but will never know what the actual keyword is.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/ppc-magic-for-keyword-research/17572/

In the peek-a-boo dance of the AP-Google negotiation, it appears that AP stories are back in Google News. Yahoo previously reached a deal to continue hosting AP content in Yahoo News. They have the licensing agreement with the Associated Press that permits Google to host its content on Google properties such as Google News.
http://searchengineland.com/theyre-back-ap-stories-reappear-in-google-35869

The Google AdWords blog announced they will be making a policy change to allow certain kinds of pharmaceutical ads to be shown on Google search results. The policy change will go into affect towards the end of this month.
http://searchengineland.com/policy-change-advertise-pharmaceuticals-on-google-adwords-35832

Backlinks coming from multiple pages of the same domain are counted as only one. The result is the number of unique links containing the targeted anchor text. Back linking domain relevance is rated as to how close that linking domain is to the linked page in terms of topics.
http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Google-Optimization-Help/Verifying-Google-Search-Engine-Ranking-Factors/1/

If you can use the exact match of keywords in the domain name, then use it during domain registration (providing you have researched it very carefully, you can read some domain research tips). It has some SEO benefits, particularly long term.
http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Google-Optimization-Help/Keywords-in-Domain-and-Links-as-Google-Ranking-Factors/1/

Being the first SEO in a company and after showing them your worth you can sell the idea of building an SEO team of copywriters, link builders etc. Responsibilities include on-page search engine optimization, inbound link development, PPC management, making HTML changes to the main website, developing PHP scripts, writing content for two blogs, creating landing pages and developing marketing campaigns. If you are a sole SEO in the marketing team it can be quite a challenge to bounce ideas of other members of the team.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/pros-and-cons-of-in-house-seo/17414/

Everyone goes about the process of an SEO site audit differently. Some people rely on various tools or software to do the heavy lifting. Site Audit isn’t supposed to be an advanced course in SEO.  It’s to point out problems and recommend methods of solution.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/anatomy-of-a-hands-on-seo-site-audit-part-1/17199/

Although SEO audits detect problems with indexation, canonicalization, navigation and internal linking structure, content optimization, sitemaps, handling advanced functionality like AJAX, etc., there’s another important component that is sometimes overlooked – Domain Strategy. Understanding all of the domains and subdomains being used by a company is critically important for maximizing SEO strength.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/domain-strategy-critical-component-to-seo-technical-audits/17403/

Google Buzz is a new way to share inside of Gmail, and starts conversations. You can pull in content from other sites — Twitter, Flickr, Picasa, Google Reader. Video links will play automatically. They built a custom photo viewer to show pictures “big and fast” right in Buzz.
http://searchengineland.com/liveblogging-the-google-social-event-35702

The reason why search engine marketing can often be frustrating perhaps is already obvious: even for Google, “industry standard” practices can’t seem to be universally applied. A “golden rule” of writing good PPC ads is to emphasize benefits, not features.
http://searchengineland.com/lessons-from-googles-own-paid-search-campaigns-forget-the-rules-35363

Personalized search is now on by default. This means that every click, branded search, and expression of a “brand preference” or “brand affinity” in Google’s results is likely to result in preferential biasing towards that domain in future searches. A “Google” Pontiac message during this Superbowl wouldn’t just send users to their site, it would also mean that tens of millions of searchers would now be “personalized” towards that domain. Personalization (and even social search, which Google pushed out of Labs two weeks ago) make leveraging your brand, in any channel, a powerful tool for SEO.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/personalization-of-google-results-creates-a-huge-advertising-opportunity

Optimizing pages for the Web is about more than good keyword placement and usage, though that’s where you probably focus the bulk of your efforts. Word-based Internet searches drive traffic, directing the ebb and flow of visitors on the Web. If your site boasts the popular keywords, you stand a pretty good chance of getting some traffic. But when you focus on optimizing your entire site and not just your content, you’ve got a shot at climbing to the top of the search results list and that’s exactly where you want to be.
http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Search-Engine-Optimization-Help/Are-You-Optimized-Use-SEO-Analysis/

Two weeks ago Google announced a new feature for Google Reader: the ability to create/track RSS feeds for pages that don’t provide them. From an SEO standpoint this new feature opens up some interesting possibilities. Effective link building often means keeping track of the links you’ve secured – especially when you’ve invested money/resources into getting the link. Monitoring your in-linking pages manually is time consuming. With Google Reader’s feed creation tool you can track changes to the page in question – and automatically detect when a link has been removed or replaced.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/5-powerful-ways-to-use-google-readers-feed-creation-tool-for-seo/17253/

If you think about it, it’d be slightly inaccurate to say that phones let people all over the world communicate with each other; current tech just transmits sounds, not their significance. But Google’s looking to knock down language barriers with devices that will perform translations on the fly. This isn’t some poorly sourced rumor or random conspiracy theory. Chris Gourlay interviewed Franz Och, Google’s head of translation services, and Och said, “We think speech-to-speech translation should be possible and work reasonably well in a few years’ time.”
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/08/google-sets-target-for-real-time-translator-phones

Google is rumored to be working on a Facebook/Twitter-like feature for Gmail. According to the Wall Street Journal, who cites “people familiar with the matter”, the feature, which would “make it easier and faster” to share status updates may launch as soon as this week.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/08/is-google-launching-a-competitor-for-facebooktwitter

Social media on the iPad and other tablets will be mainly about sharing information and files—things like e-books, links, documents, etc., instead of details about our lives—status updates about what you’re eating, tweets about what the dog is doing and other chatter that clutters up the social media space. Social media use on the iPad will most likely be more professional—happening when users are sitting down and have time to concentrate.
http://searchengineland.com/the-ipad-as-platform-for-sem-social-media-marketing-35156

If you’re managing multiple SEM programs across a broad landscape of web assets, as more and more of us are, it’s important to realize that when it comes to managing keywords and their bids, it’s not one-size-fits-all. In this reality of diverse business goals and revenue models, marketers looking for a singular approach to SEM program management will be sorely disappointed.
http://searchengineland.com/3-ways-to-optimize-your-bidding-strategies-35123

Bing is known for being a very slow crawler so many webmasters have to face long waits getting their sites indexed. If a site is new, this can be a cause for a delay in indexing as the age of a site is apparently one of Bing’s ranking factors.
http://www.bing.com/community/forums/t/656667.aspx

Yahoo may be doing a lot more in terms of mobile before long. Or at least telling us more about its current cell phone-related efforts. Either way, it launched the Yahoo Mobile Blog this week for the sake of keeping everyone up to date. It should be interesting to see where Yahoo comes into that list. “Local content” seems like the best bet.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/05/yahoo-mobile-blog-launches

Two years ago, Microsoft purchased a 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240M—and with the agreement that Bing would be providing web search on the world’s most popular social network. That deal is now expanding, according to the Bing blog—to not only take in an expanded, enhanced search but also more countries around the world. Most importantly, however, Bing is giving up its claim on selling Facebook advertising.
http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2010/02/bing-facebook-expand-search-agreement.html

Last week, Facebook posted instructions on how to make FB your “personalized news channel” and minimize nonnewsworthy clutter on their blog. Inspired, Hitwise looked at the numbers, and it looks like Facebook is already well on its way as a news starting point. After Google (17.32%), Yahoo (7.89%) and msn (4.43%), Facebook was the fourth most popular referrer for news websites.
http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2010/02/facebook-sends-more-news-traffic-than-google-news.html

Google Insights is an awesome tool for tracking and comparing trends. Most of us use it on a regular basis. Without normalization regions with higher population would always be on top simply because there are more people (and hence more searchers) there.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/understanding-google-insights-you-cant-estimate-traffic-with-it/16924/

Google has added a new content block on place pages that, quite often, gives free advertising to a local business’s competition. It’s called “Nearby places you might like” and it appears below reviews on the place page; the content block will show up to ten recommended businesses — but sometimes less.
http://searchengineland.com/google-recommends-the-competition-on-your-place-page-35316

According to Google trends, [superbowl] is the top spiking search this morning. Google answers the question with its Onebox result, which is coming from nfl.com. This placement, however, is entirely due to Google deciding they should pull NFL content in order to better answer the question, and has nothing to do with the NFL’s efforts to be visible to searchers.
http://searchengineland.com/searching-for-the-superbowl-start-time-how-are-the-engines-the-nfl-and-cbs-doing-35451

Twitter has a great search function and its main advantage is that it offers real-time results. Users are hungry for hot news and nothing beats a real-time search. Many bloggers report that they are getting more traffic from Twitter than from Google and partially this is due to the fact that their tweets are popular and users find them with ease.
http://blogs.siliconindia.com/seo2010/SEO_2010__Twitter_tricks_for_generating_backlinks-bid-3St4Z28646007419.html

Manual submission will definitely yield the best results. Make each unique and custom tailored to the website you are submitting to. Posting the same title, url, descriptions etc. will not get you far in SEO.
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1681892

Even more important than the holy grail of external links is internal links. Easily the most underrated criteria. But, it’s important to make sure you are making good use of anchor text. A well-linked to document is considered more important than an obscure page, even if the links are coming from the site itself.
http://forums.seochat.com/yahoo-search-optimization-60/yahoo-ranking-important-factors-292860.html

Google just introduced message log search for Postini, its group of cloud security and archiving services. “When messages pass through the Postini service, header and transaction data about these messages is stored in a log,” explains Gopal Shah of Google Postini team Previously, admins only had access to this data through customer support. With the Message Log Search feature, email administrators can now easily run searches on these logs and drill down to the details about how specific messages were processed.” Log search is now available through the Postini service administration console, and in Google Apps Preimier Edition.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/04/google-launches-log-search-for-the-cloud

Some searchers come from more expensive keywords, and each keyword produces a different CR and amount of revenue. If competition drives down average sale, ROI may be negative.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/7-tips-for-local-seo-and-ppc-success/16988/

There are a lot of different ways to conduct keyword research. Too often, companies will focus on words that show good demand, even if that word from an intent standpoint does not map to their products and services. Even worse, some companies will just want to rank high for a high-volume keyword, even though they’re really a fish out of water.
http://searchengineland.com/how-to-take-keyword-research-to-the-next-level-34870

A New York retailer named Oh Nuts gave SearchEngineLand.com a tip that Google came to their store to take pictures for a new Google Maps product named “Google Store Views.” Google Store Views will allow people to essentially walk into the store, off of Google Street Views.
http://searchengineland.com/google-maps-to-add-google-store-views-35153

A comment in a forum says that Google is now ignoring the &pws=0 tag and will show you results from your social network whatever you do. The only way of avoiding personalized results is to sign out from your Google account while searching.
http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=74955