Archive: May, 2007

An interesting phenomenon happens when one travels the Trans-Canada (Hwy1) east-bound between Banff and Calgary Alberta. (see Google Map)

As you round a corner forty kilometers east of Banff the mountains suddenly vanish and the vast North American prairies present a broadly flat but rolling landscape as far as the eyes can see. There may be a couple hills large enough to block the horizon but for the most part, everything forward is pancake flat.

That’s what the view looks like from Google’s vantage point today.

There are no boundaries to Google’s overall reach. When it comes to both organic search and paid contextual advertising opportunities for webmasters and businesses Google has built the best of all mousetraps, a molehill built up to become a mountain range.

The visual effect is even more stunning driving west into the Rocky Mountains from the central prairies. Just as you reach the current edge of Calgary’s sprawling suburbs, the full magnificence of the Rockies suddenly rises up before you. It is a dramatic and awe inspiring sight, a wall of enormous mountains looming above the flatlands as far as the eyes can see.

We are in the middle of an interesting period of transition in the search and online marketing sectors. Last saw several major announcements that made change in the industry. Early on, it feels like this week is going to be similar to last. Here is a quick rundown of a half dozen or so SEO/webmaster related news items from today.
Overture Keyword Selection Tool Update

Andy Beal wrote a post at Marketing Pilgrim noting that Yahoo! is “… keeping the [Overture] Keyword Selection Tool on life support.” According to the post, Yahoo suggests using the keyword forecasting services available through Panama and YSM APIs.

“For the time being, Yahoo! plans to adjust the tool to show information from January 2007, but it’s also recommend that advertisers use the more robust forecasting capabilities in the new Sponsored Search to gain insight into expected performance.”

Are Directories Useful for SEO?

Search Engine Roundtable’s Tamar Weinberg noted a Cre8asite Forum thread about the usefulness of directories to SEOs. She continues with links to a few other SER articles about directories and link exchanges.

Pew: 51% of US Adults involved with the Internet (49% not)

It has been an awesome week in the world of search, in every sense of the word.

This week opened with Yahoo!’s acquisition of Right Media on Monday and is closing with persistent rumours of a merger between Yahoo! and Microsoft. Somehow it seems fitting Yahoo! stories should bookend the week. It has been a week of enormous change on the web, the events of which will effect how information is presented for years to come.

On Tuesday, the largest user revolt in the history of the Internet took place, crashing Digg’s network and shattering any illusions of control founders Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson might have shared.

On Wednesday, Google released its next step in personalization, the iGoogle personalized homepage. (See “Google’s Personalized Homepage Gets More Personal“, by Arnold Zafra in SearchEngineJournal.com for more details.)

Thursday was subtly quiet but below the surface, two huge mergers in the information world were being discussed.

The first involves the Dow Jones Company which owns the Wall St. Journal. After the family which controls the Dow Jones shunned an offer of $5billion from Robert Murdoch’s News Corp., speculation has focused on Microsoft, General Electric, and even Google as potential buyers. The second rumour has Thompson Corp or News Corp buying the Reuters News Wire agency.

You noble Diggers all, stand up now, stand up now,
You noble Diggers all, stand up now,
The wast land to maintain, seeing Cavaliers by name
Your digging does maintain, and persons all defame
Stand up now, stand up now.

The lawyers they conjoyne, stand up now, stand up now,
The lawyers they conjoyne, stand up now,
To arrest you they advise, such fury they devise,
The devill in them lies, and hath blinded both their eyes.
Stand up now, stand up now.
(from: The Diggers’ Song by Gerard Winstanley, c. 1648)

History has an uncanny way of repeating itself.

The Diggers are revolting, again. This time, it is a much larger and more focused group of dissenters than seen in previous centuries but in one of history’s ironic hat-tips, a 21^st century body known as the Diggers have effectively taken over the social networking site Digg.

The shot that started the revolt came in the form of a deletion prompted by a Cease and Desist order that caused Digg founders to remove a post revealing HD-DVD decryption numbers. Issued by Advanced Access Content System, an industry sponsored digital rights management organization; the order suggests the post might violate US copy protection laws.