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• Microsoft Live & Yahoo Push For Firefox Users, Plus Revisiting The IE7 Search Battle
  Today I noticed Live.com trying to get me to search with it in Firefox. Then Yahoo did the same thing. So I guess a new round of "let's change search defaults" is going on within Firefox. That seemed a good excuse for a revisit how the various search engines are trying to pull us as their default choices in both Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox....
• Study Says Get In Top 5 Not Top 10 & Search Engines May Need To Highlight Official Sites
  On Friday, we reported briefly on a new eye tracking study from Microsoft on how users interact with search results. I spent some time doing a deep dive into the survey, which is full of interesting information. Among the findings is that search marketers may need to be more concerned about getting into the top five rather than the top ten, if they want to be seen. In addition, search engines might want to seriously experiment more with adding "official site" links at the top of their pages and possibly enlarge the size of listing descriptions or "snippets" to help...
• Link Week: New Column From Search Engine Land
  I'd like to welcome Eric Ward who kicks off Link Week today, a regular weekly column from Search Engine Land. Eric's has been both building links as a professional over the past 14 years and educating people about the space over that time. We're thrilled to have him writing for us. Link Week is the first of several other columns that will be launching on Search Engine Land over the coming weeks. I'll provide an introduction for each one of them, as they launch....
• New Year's Resolution: Know Your Inbound Link Potential!
  So what's your linking strategy for 2007? I mean besides get as many as possible? Maybe you're adding link bait? Or buying links? Or ramping up your link-loaded "press releases" to six per month?  Buying old sites and 301'ing them? Or maybe you want to get to the Digg homepage? Reciprocals? Three ways? Ask your college kid for a link from his .edu page? Outsource it all? Or how about this? Works for me. Whatever your linking strategy -- and there are many -- one thing has not changed a bit in the 14 years I've been in the link...
• The Right Way To Ask For A Link
  I can't tell you how many times over the years I've received link requests that are variously inept, ridiculous, or worst of all, generated by some idiot link exchange software. I've also heard people agonize at SES conferences over how difficult the link building process can be. But link building isn't difficult, really, when done with common sense, and, more importantly, with the right human touch. Over at Search Engine Guide, Jennifer Laycock has a great article about someone who approached her for a link—and did it the right way. She writes:...
• Google: Free Real-Time Quotes Here To Stay
  Many financial web sites, including Google Finance, Yahoo Finance, Forbes and others were offering free real-time quotes to users until last fall, when the New York Stock Exchange increased the fees it charged for displaying market data. In response, many of these firms teamed up to form NetCoalition.com, a Washington trade group that petitioned the SEC to halt recent fee increases. Today, according to the Official Google Blog, the NYSE issued a proposal to the SEC which if approved, keep fees at a level that would allow Google to display real-time, last-sale prices across all Google properties....
• Matt Cutts On Appealing Google Malware Warnings
  For some time now, Google has scanned web sites for potentially malicious software that can download and install itself on a web site visitor's computer simply by viewing a page. If Google detects a potential threat, it displays a warning message when a user clicks a result link (you can see an example of this warning message by clicking this link). Matt Cutts says that a number of people have protested that their sites are getting improperly flagged by this malware warning. He writes:...
• Local And The Paradox of Participation
  Yesterday's SearchDay article referenced a Yahoo-Harris Poll conducted in October about user-generated content and its importance to local buying decisions. The poll involved roughly 2,700 U.S. adults. Here were the verbatim questions and the top-level findings:...
• Interview with Ask.com "Head Chef" and CEO Jim Lanzone
  Spotted via Marketing Pilgrim, this interview with Ask.com CEO Jim Lanzone by Donna Bogatin at ZDNet on his vision and his role within both Ask and parent company IAC: "We are a world-class technology company and we are able to take ingredients from our sister companies, luckily in many cases premium ingredients because they are number 1 and 2 in their category, and we can remix those ingredients into something that is market leading in a particular vertical. That is exactly what we did with AskCity." Lanzone also talks about the new AskX site, other future additions in vertical search,...
• SEMPO Board Of Directors Nominations Open
  SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, sends word that the organization has opened nominations for the 2007-2008 Board Of Directors election. Any SEMPO member can nominate another member or themselves through next Thursday, January 18, by 5pm Eastern. Nominations are accepted via email, through the member login section of the SEMPO web site. Actual elections will happen in mid-March. Here are the key dates that SEMPO sent me covering the process: January 8th through 18th, nominations for board candidates are accepted January 25th all confirmed nominees will be announced and their bios will be posted on the SEMPO web...
• Microsoft adCenter Offering Webcast Next Week
  Looking to better understand Microsoft's adCenter and the tools it offers that let you target searchers by demographics? Microsoft's doing a webcast about the system and related tools next Wednesday, January 17, at 8:30am. You'll find more detail and registration information here. It's the first time Microsoft adCenter says they've done an online seminar like this, so I thought it worth a mention!...
• If Google *Really* Copied Yahoo...
  About a month ago, Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodny and Google's Matt Cutts traded a number of sharp barbs over design similarities in Yahoo and Google. Google copied Yahoo! No, Yahoo copied Google! Danny described the tiff in Google Copies Yahoo's IE7 Page; Originality War Breaks Out!, writing "If I had time and desire, I'd sit here all day pointing out similar things that Google has copied from others, that Yahoo has copied from others, that Microsoft has copied from others, that Ask has copied from others. There's no end of finger pointing that can be done." Over at Google Watch, Steve...