Archive: January, 2008

This post takes a step away from the business of search engine optimization and marketing but it covers an important facet of the environment, the search-media. This is an issue that is obviously near and dear to my heart. I write it because my tech-hardened heart broke a bit while reading an apology from Search Engine Land editor Danny Sullivan to Wired and the search marketing community.

At issue is a short article published in Search Engine Land last Friday morning. Written by Barry Schwartz, the piece was supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek exposure of a fairly obvious link-building loophole found in Wired’s “How To” wiki. Links placed in its user-generated content area did not have default NOFOLLOW tags!

Naturally, links from Wired.com are weighted with considerable authority. Search Engine Land found out when they saw spammy SEO content that linked back to the “How To” wiki. Seeing an issue of note and noting the implications of the issue Barry wrote the controversial piece which turned out to read like a short how-to on spamming Wired’s “How To” wiki under the link-bait loaded title, “Get a Free Link From Wired“.

Today we are going to have an extra-fun show on Webcology as we broadcast live from the Metamend offices in Victoria BC.  Andrew Goodman, co-founder and CEO of Page Zero Media from Toronto will join co-host Dave Davies and I.

We plan to cover the business of search marketing and take a look at the growth of the industry over the last couple of years. Andrew publishes the Traffick blog and also plans and organizes the Toronto Search Engine Strategies Conference, the only major annual search conference held in Canada.

Tune in today at 2pm(eastern) or 11am(pacific) for Webcology, at www.webmasterradio.fm

Search Engine Journal is reporting that IAC has announced today that Jim Lanzone was stepping down as CEO of Ask.com and being replaced by IAC insider Jim Safka. Lanzone is credited with the successful transformation of failing property AskJeeves into what many regard as the web’s best search engine, Ask.com.

Loren Baker notes that Safka was, “… CEO of Match.com from 2004 to 2006 before becoming the CEO of Primal Ventures, the venture incubating branch of IAC.”

Lanzone will move to join the Entrepreneur in Residence program at Redpoint Ventures, a Venture Capital firm with offices in Menlo Park, Shanghai and Los Angeles. Through this program, Redpoint fosters entrepreneurs with proven track records. According to their E-i-R page, “Redpoint has a successful history of partnering with outstanding entrepreneurs through its Entrepreneur-in-Residence program. By teaming up early on, we accelerate the time it takes to identify a large market opportunity and create a great company to go after it.”

Jim Lanzone is a figure who is well liked and well regarded by the search engine optimization community. His “open-door” policy extended to anyone with a good question or important insights and Lanzone was known for reaching out to SEOs through blog comments and personal emails.

Earlier today, Microsoft released information stating they will complete a $1.2billion purchase of Norwegian search firm FAST Search and Transfer sometime in the second quarter of this year.

Founded in 1997, FAST has had a significant impact on the evolution of search engines over its 11 year history. Most recently, FAST has been the backbone of several enterprise search engines (those used by large-scale businesses on their websites or intranets) including Microsoft Windows Marketplace, Fujitsu UK, WebTrends, Lexis Nexis, and Omniture.

In 1999, FAST Search and Transfer introduced one of the most innovative general search engines, AlltheWeb. Seen as a potential rival to Google, AlltheWeb was, for a short time, a major contender in the early search engine loyalty battles.  In the long run, AlltheWeb helped set the stage for the current state of the search engine business world.

Yahoo, which was serving Google organic results at the time, saved itself from total irrelevance when it bought AlltheWeb in 2003. The purchase allowed Yahoo to reinvent itself as it integrated AlltheWeb and two acquisitions, Alta Vista and Inktomi, into its organic search database. Around the same time, Yahoo bought the original PPC pioneer, Overture, running it as a separate but associated operation for two years.