Earthfrisk.org launches with mega PR campaign

Earthfrisk.org, the combination Meta Search Engine and Social Bookmarking Community launched earlier today (along with a barrage of Press Releases).

Being compared to the 'planned' Wikipedia search, Earthfrisk.org's Michael Lodispoto commented “We’ve created the first search engine where the community can vote and comment on the very best search results, which are the top searches of Google, MSN’s Live and Yahoo, among others, all with less spam”.

You can test drive Earthfrisk.org here .

staff edit Jan 1, 2008

New Years Countdown and just Thanks

As many of you probably realized, a lot of what we did (and didn't do) on this blog were small tests. Search tests, marketing tests, 'what do you like to read' tests.

This past week, my weak attempt at humor, a few 'Hype for Headlines' (unfortunately, they do work but that's probably the last you'll see from me for a while...), and wandering into different waters to see what the responses might be.

I reconnected with old friends, and made a few new ones. Some of YOUR stuff has been outright great!

We made Lee Odden's Top List in 3 months, (and the Google main index SERPs in less than two weeks :).

Many of you connected on Facebook, got me addicted, and then I went cold turkey (Without rehab!). Same for Twitter. I don't remember who took me there first, but way too many long nights :) Anybody relate to this?

I'm starting to remember what my wife looks like again.

This post, is very simply to prematurely to wish all a very Healthy and Happy New Year!

I'm busy fixing things around here (that had our house sale fall through at the eleventh hour .... UGH!!!). One thing I know I'll never be ... a Real Estate Person. Commercial maybe, residential? These people must be made of stone.

PS: In the outside chance you haven't noticed, just about everywhere you look Barry Schwartz is begging (his words) for your vote in the Search Engine Journal Blog Awards. Personally, I have no idea how Barry finds the time to do what he does. So wander on over and send Barry the 'all around good guy' .....

Three Excellent Mash-ups

Don't have a lot of time? Think you missed something? These mash-ups update dynamically!

No doubt, you've used one of these at one time or another.
Take another look if you haven't looked lately!

Popurls - Added a lot of new content in the past three or four months.
Techmeme - How many people are writing about the same thing? It's a 'good thing'.
SEOMash - Top of the heap updates for the SEO / SEM crowd

Search Engine Journal opens voting

Nominations were held in a variety of categories last week for this year's annual Search Engine Journal Search Blog Awards.

The voting is now open and can be found here .

With ten of thousands of new blogs, this year gets a lot tougher to narrow things down ... but cast your vote! 

If things keep going at this pace, maybe next year we can have an award for the best awards?

NY Times ignores Fox - Fox trashes Twitter !

Perhaps one of the most visible ex-Googlers is Vanessa Fox. If you don't know her, she left Google to join Zillow, and more recently left Zillow to do some speaking and join the Search Engine Land team.

This morning's NY Times article (previous post) completely left out any reference to Fox. Journalism miss a beat here? Sure there's a lot of ex-Googlers out there, but something 'felt' really wrong with this.

I'm sitting in my office this afternoon and an RSS feed comes through from the 'Fox blog'. (If you're in or near New York, you don't work Friday afternoons, you watch your tech options tank until the close of trading...).

So I wandered over to read what was really one of the most comprehesive pieces on Twitter I've seen yet, references and everything. Absolutely great stuff.

Then I thought. The last time I checked, Fox's Feedburner stats showed a couple of million subscribers (All right, maybe I'm exaggerating a little? ...).

Can Twitter handle all this new action on a Friday afternoon? Thousands of execs playing on Facebook and waiting to go home. This IS primetime!

Twitter literally tanked ... on both coasts. Really. No Twitter. Zippo. (No Joke!)

Was it Fox? Was someone at the Times afraid Fox would 'twit' at them :)

Who pays the medical bills of all the people that had "Sudden Twitter Withdrawal" ????

staff edit 12/29 3 AM est

Wikipedia dropping in Google SERPS?

Several of our colleagues are noticing some drop-off of Wikipedia pages in Google's SERPS this morning. Drops of 4 to 7 positions are being noticed in a variety of spaces.

I suppose while some will speculate that this is a precursor to Knol, it's more likely recent feedback has Google realizing that changes to the Wikipedia pages aren't always positive or relevant, and often reflect a business or other agenda.

Well see :)

Ex-Googlers buy the Internet - IPO to trade on NASDAQ

Earlier this year, we had a few posts on 'Googlers cashing-out'.

We engaged a few of them (more than few?). All were truly generous with their comments, observations.

Today's NY Times has a piece on an 'assortment' of Google departees.

You can read the entire article here .

The question. Will Matt Cutts ever cash-out ?

As for the headline, we promised we'd never do that..... So we did.

Staff Edit Friday 7:23

Hi - I'm a MAC and I'm a Dell XPS (and more)

Some of the most entertaining reading lately on blogs and 'other media' have been the comments below a post.

As some of you know, I'm making a few changes around here, so I've been ringing out the year pointing to some pieces that I thought you might find profound, interesting, or just make you laugh out loud.

Best comments category:

1) In a weird coincidence, someone showed me a Dell XPS laptop earlier today. It was really very slick. "That's a Dell?" Taking a tour of the web-a-sphere tonight, I noticed this piece at Gizmodo quoting NY Times author Walter Mossberg who compared a Dell XPS with a MAC. The Dell won. Check out the comments :)

2) David Berkowitz blog took on Facebook about a week ago. Berkowitz was calm and genuine in the piece. 70 comments (so far?) weren't so calm .... Hopefully a few thousand of us will send this one to Facebook.

3) Finally, there's Guy Kawasaki and Dear Santa . How many times can you say Truemors? More comments needed here :)

Notables for Thursday - Found around - Enjoy!

A few 'notables' for today:

Emily Chang posted a new travel social network at HiEverywhere.com .

Tamar Weinberg (where does she find the time?) produced this exhaustive list of mostly excellent resources. Bookmark this to read when you have a few weeks !!.

THE Lisa is now on the 'very kewl kid' list after making contact yesterday (See yesterday's post :)

Apple's stock hit 200 for the first time yesterday !

'Bargain Wednesday' here in the US not only had Amazon reporting record sales, but we found some really cheap memory at CircuitCity.com. I bought a few. Let's hope they're not 'really cheap' ?

Finally, Wired Magazine posted their take on the ten best gadgets of 2007 here .

Politics of Blog and Internet Marketing - Exclusion?

Seth Godin has a great piece on his blog today called Exclusion.

I'd call this one mandatory reading for all web marketers, bloggers, and website owners.

Here are a few examples that I found after launching this blog in August....

After setting out to 'penetrate an industry' that I had been relatively quiet in for years, and finally decided to brand my company (and myself) going in to 2008. The FIRST thing I did was target those who had already done it. I was changing my profile from in-house (and out-house) SEO to more writing and traveling. Some people I knew from many years ago. Some I had had casual contact or e-mail contact with. Others were successful (for now) and I wanted to begin a dialog, or at the very least, follow what they had to say.

Some were making the 'buzz of the day'.

For one reason or another, many practice exclusion at the expense of their own product.

Just because you're a superstar in your space today, doesn't mean you'll will be one tomorrow. It doesn't matter how many years you've been around, or even who you know or where you graduated from. There are too many examples to site and way too many start-ups ready to challenge YOU!?

Our experiences:
1) Robert Scoble gets it. You follow him on Twitter, he's going to follow you right back. There are many others that will. Most won't. It's a mistake. You can always block someone later.

2) Facebook. A little different here, as a lot of people prefer Facebook to be a personal space and not a promotional one. We targeted 35 search engine experts on Facebook, some whom I had met at some point or another, others that had made their way in recent years. Our Facebook example is really interesting (so far). Bruce Clay got it immediately (I haven't seen or spoken to Bruce in 6 years). One of his best writers, Lisa Barone did not reply and also keeps her Twitter posts locked down. Don't get me wrong, it all depends what you're using these services for, but you really could be missing that little 'gem' for your next blog post ?
Many can attest to the factual tidbits I passed along when I didn't have time to write.
3) MyBlogLog. You'll find more social bookmarkers here and very few 'closed doors' but if you're looking to promote anything, wouldn't it be great to have one of them 'Digg you', cite your story or Sphinn you? Your last 'twit' is right there at the top of your page!

I realize some of these people get more e-mail than they can count. They're busy. So am I.
Many don't return e-mail. This one's tricky. Not returning an e-mail is probably better than "Who the heck are you?" or "Do I know you?". More importantly, and I really hope everyone knows this by now..... Don't send an e-mail when you're angry or upset. Sit on it for a day. Take your frustration out off-line.

In the last four months, I've found more brilliant bloggers than I can count. I've tried to reflect those results in our Blogroll right here, so that you can find them too. It does change about once a week.

There are a LOT of new people out there that can teach us 'old guys' a thing or two, and many of them post every day.

Happy Holidays from SEO and Tech Daily

It's certainly been a fun and educational few months as I made my way back into the 'public' scene the last few months.

This post is simply to wish all of our friends, old and new, a very Happy Holiday Season and a Healthy and Happy New Year to all.

Many thanks for all of your notes !
Charlie Anzman (and company :)

Knol and Google Dynamic Indexing

Last week, for some strange reason, a post that we made about Dynamic Indexing and Google's new initiative Knol was deleted from this blog.

I learned this morning that the article was picked up by BlogBurst and Reuters, so rather than repeat the entire piece, you can still read the entire text at Reuters here .

The Yahoo Searchlight Award NY February 12 2008

There's still time to submit your campaign to the annual Yahoo! Searchlight Award Show.

This year's award show will be held at the Time Life building in New York City on February 12th, 2008.

Panelists include Abbey Klaassen (Advertising Age), Kevin Ryan (Search Engine Watch), Greg Sterling (Sterling Market Intelligence), and Brian Morrissey (Adweek). Keynote Speaker is Rob Norman, CEO of Group M Interaction.

Rules and campaign submission information can be found on the Yahoo! Searchlight website here.

Queen of England on YouTube ?

The Sunday Buzz around the web today included an announcement that the British Monarchy has launched a video channel on YouTube. From all accounts, the channel appears to be authentic.

The page has historical Christmas Broadcasts from Buckingham Palace and other videos of the Royal Family dating back to 1957.

Perhaps the most interesting note on the "TheRoyalChannel" is that "The Christmas Broadcast or 'Queen's Speech' for 2007 will appear on this channel at approximately 3pm GMT on Christmas Day."

You can check out the Royal Channel on YouTube here .

Update: The site is, in fact, authentic. The announcement from Buckingham Palace was made on the official Royal Family website earlier today here .

Zawodny gets engaged - Heads for Africa ....

In a year when we saw more than a well-known tech personalities get married, it appears Jeremy Zawodny is the latest to take the plunge!

In a post to his blog yesterday, Zawodny announced he's "off to get hitched".

We wish Jeremy and Kathleen many, many happy years together.

Microsoft Office Live upgrade, scheduled outage

Microsoft will be rolling out a variety of upgrades to it's Office Live Small Business product (including Firefox compatibility) over the next few weeks. Some downtime may be experienced during the first week of January. Details of the new enhancements can be found here .

Nominations done for Crunchies - Voting in progress

The Crunchies, jointly sponsored by TechCrunch GigaOM, Read/Write Web and VentureBeat have closed nominations and have already launched the voting page. You cast your vote here .

Update: Having trouble deciding? Robert Scoble did interviews with about half the nominees this year. The post is here .

Beta Review update - XP SP3, Silverlight, and Firefox

This past week, we noted two significant pre-release announcements. A little follow-up ...

The Firefox 3.0 project (the next generation) released Beta 2. In brief, it's a huge improvement over Beta 1 but still not ready for prime time. While the memory problems (330 of them?) have been fixed, we found that the kernel still likes to stay resident for a less 5-10 seconds, and a few other minor glitches which we'll be passing along to the developers (They are seeking comments for those who mess with beta boxes).

Sidenote: Microsoft's Silverlight is very messy on the current stable release of Firefox but looks great in IE7. Silverlight 1.1 is being promoted for installation right on the front page of Microsoft.com. For now, if you're a diehard FireFox user, you may not want to 'push the button'.
As for Microsoft's release of Windows XP Service Pack 3 Release Candidate on Technet this week, we ran it on the beta box for three days so far with absolutely no issues or software conflicts. More to come on this important roll-up. We feel pretty confident this pack will make final release in short order and serve to fix a number of conficting update problems and more. Refreshing to see Micorsoft continuing to support the deeply embedded XP user base.

Noticed this week in the Search information space

WebProNews has been growing their video library with some (very) informative interviews over the past few weeks. Their video blog can be found here .

Danny Sullivan and Barry Schwartz launched a Facebook application (more like a widget?) reeling off the very latest from Search Engine Land on your Facebook page. You can take it for a test drive here .

Finally Search Engine Journal has closed the nominations for their 2007 Search Blog Awards. If you haven't been following the somewhat 'open' (and just fun?) nominations, the article is still here . Get ready to vote!

AzoogleAds opens to small and medium business

Azoogle.com Inc. has launched a limited beta of their new 'Epic Ad Center', targeting small and medium size business.

The NY-based player in the higher-end fixed cost PPC space has, in the past, concentrated they efforts on larger advertisers with budgets of over $100,000 per month.

The new Epic Ad Center allows small and medium size businesses to create 'on-the-fly' display ads online, then target their desired audience.

Kayak to buy SideStep

In a further consolidation of the online travel space, TechCrunch is reporting that Kayak is acquiring SideStep. Details have been posted to TechCrunch here

Big VC round for GainSpan ! - 20M in Series B funding

GainSpan, an innovator in Wi-Fi sensor technology, has closed $20 Million (US) in series B funding. This round led by Opus Capital, also saw existing investors participate including Intel Capital, New Venture Partners, OVP Venture Partners and Sigma Partners.

Opus General Partner Carl Showalter will join GainSpan's Board of Directors.

Microsoft unleashes XP Service Pack 3 RC to all

Microsoft has posted the 'Release Candidate' of what is planned to be the last roll-up Service Pack for Windows XP (SP3), to the MS download center for any user of XP to test.

While we are doing that on our 'beta box' here, we thought you might want to know.

This release is for 'testers only' and not for installation on any mission-critical PC.

The public post implies some confidence on Microsoft's part, as their Service Pack RC's, in the past, have been kept with a limited number of approved Beta testers.

Staff update: More information on Windows XP Service Pack 3 can be found at Microsoft's TechNet site here

The Tenth Milestone - Firefox 3.0 Beta 2 released

The second beta of the new Firefox 3.0 was released by the team at Mozilla late Tuesday.

Over 900 improvements have been incorporated in this release!.

If you have a 'beta box', you may want to take it for a spin, but note that Mozilla is emphasizing that this is still a Beta and not to install it on any mission-critical machines.

We took the Windows version for a quick test drive ... and will do a bit more before commenting, but so far, it seems like a dramatic improvement over Beta 1.

Goin' Mobile - More Juice for Juice

LA-based Juice Wireless has closed a third round of venture capital financing with $6 million led by 21Ventures.

Juicecaster is a free player application that interfaces with MySpace, Hi5, Xanga, Facebook and more.

Google to put the Davos Question on YouTube

Google has set-up a place for YOU to speak up and give your thoughts on the World Economic Forum's annual survey on 'how to make the world a better place', better known as the Davos Question.

"What one thing do you think that countries, companies or individuals must do to make the world a better place in 2008?"

You can check out the initiative announced today at Google's blog here

3.8 Million for Ideeli.com

Ideeli.com has secured 3.8 Million in financing from Kodiak Ventures and other angel investors. The upscale online shopping site offers products from luxury vendors.

Search Engine Journal Blog Awards

Loren Baker's Search Engine Journal this morning opened nominations for their annual Search Blog Awards. Some of this year's categories include :

• Best SEO Blog
• Best SEM Blog
• Best SEO Plugin for Wordpress
• Best Search Agency Resource Blog
• Best Link Building Blog
• Best Social Media Marketing or Optimization Blog
• Best Local Search Blog
• Best Video Search Blog
• Best Mobile Search Blog
• Best Google Blog Not Owned by Google
• Best Search Engine Corporate Blog (owned by the search engines)
• Best Contextual Advertising Blog
• Best Affiliate Marketing Blog
• Best Search Engine Community/Forum Blog
• Best Search Engine Research Blog
• Best Search Linkbait of 2007
• Breakout Blog of 2007
• Best Search Conference Coverage of 2007
• Best Search Conference Coverage in Photos
• Best Search Marketing Facebook Group
• Most Giving Search Blogger
• Best Independent Search Blog (not owned by media company or marketing agency)
• Best Search Blog Post of 2007

You can submit your nominations to the post here

Twitter, Twitter and more Twitter

The hyper-bloggers and bookmarkers are keeping an eye on lots of platforms. StumbleUpon and MIXX are getting a lot of attention.

Twitter continues to grow. Why?

MyBlogLog (a Yahoo property) now shows your latest Twitter post on your profile page. A new Twitter app for Facebook lets you not only read, but update Twitter from within Facebook, and display it on your Facebook page.

I don't know about you, but I really don't like to sign on to seven sites to find out what's going on or what my friends and colleagues are up to.

The combination of Facebook and Twitter is awesome. Keep MyBlogLog's cookie going and you're learning and marketing at the same time .....

Let's attack the 'big guys' !

While everyone is running around pointing fingers at Google's latest initiative 'Knol' and some worrying that Google is going to take over the entire world, maybe it's time for a little retrospective.

Google has managed to maintain (and grow) their leadership position by staying 'flexible'. They change dynamically with the times. In this environment, that can mean daily.

When you achieve huge success, there will ALWAYS be people taking shots at you, or worse, anti-trust shots. The fact is that Google was the first to recognize they could engage the community right here on the Internet. It was a huge step forward. They monitized almost everything they did along the way, and only gave away what they had to.

History lesson?
Microsoft and Intel - In different ways, Microsoft and Intel, once dubbed 'WinTel' by the 'attackers of the time' managed to make their way into the pockets of almost everyone in America. Whether it was in your car or on your desktop, they were there. For the first few years, it was called business success. Then came the lawsuits.
They were under heavy attack and they spent millions (billions?) fighting legal battles and allegations. A few of which, I suppose, were legitimate. Most were born out of the lack of resources (financial and otherwise) to compete. IBM in years prior felt the same heat but in a different way.

Where were the challengers and visionaries? Any company, with the right people, and the right financing can compete. That's what capitalism is all about? Despite what you might read, there's plenty of capital out there for the right company. The VC gang is trying desperately to find that company.

Although I do believe that greed continues to be one of the biggest problems in our society, this piece isn't about greed at all.

Microsoft, despite recent initiatives 'could' go the way of IBM. They won't go away. They'll remain strong. They could stagnate. Maybe it's an over-simplification, but the reason seems obvious. From shirt sleeves to multiple levels of management. From the ability to embrace change rapidly to cautiously entering markets that are already heavily populated. Maybe they should just 'lose the suits' and go back to tee-shirts?

Wall Street needs a heads up too. The first dot-com crash was a result of analysts that had NO CLUE. I'd like to think it's a lot better now, but when Microsoft buys a 'little piece' of Facebook and the stock takes off for the first time in years, you have to wonder, just a little.

There are more than a few incubators out there looking directly at Google. Heads continue to roll at Yahoo and AOL. The 'founders' are back at Yahoo. Can they take on Google? Better yet, should they?

Companies needs to lead, not follow. Visionaries like Jobs and Case (and others) seem to be able to come back, whenever they want, and turn a company around. We need more of these people to level the playing field.

When people attack and sue, lawyers get rich and the stockholders suffer. There is no productivity (or job creation) at all.

The winners for this year no doubt will be Apple, Google, and yes, Wal-Mart.
Think about why. Then re-write your business plan for next year....

Paint.NET to version 3.20

Probably the best FREE graphics creation tool, Paint.NET, was moved up a notch to version 3.20 yesterday.

With numerous new and improved features, Paint.Net continues to be one of the best freeware graphics programs around.

You can download Paint.NET here. If you LOVE it, you can help the project by sending your vote to Digg here.

Kudos to Rick Brewster and the entire Paint.NET team. Keep it comin' !

SMX West discount!

Worth noting (a non-requested plug :)

Limited time - SMX West - $400 off here .

If the price gets any lower, I may just fly ....

When Google Speaks .....

By now, I would assume that somewhere you've probably read about Google's test initiative called Knol. There's been more news stories and commentaries in one day on this blog post than I can remember..

The best part is, if you look at the bottom of the original post on the Google blog, you can watch the list growing.

Web 2.0 just gets better every day :)

Duck Wikipedia! The post is here .

Top 40 people of search 2007 - Vote and give

UK-based SEM company wants you to vote.

It's that time of year.

Why not vote for your picks of most-influential people in search and SEO here, and they'll give $500 to charity!

Great idea. Matching funds anyone?

New Flickr Uploadr 3.0 released - New client software

Yahoo's popular Flickr online photo gallery team announced the release of a significant upgrade to it's Uploader (yes, it's spelled right :) client software for Windows and Mac.

Version 3.0 includes sets, labels (and more!) and can be checked out and / or downloaded here

Yes, it's free .... :)

Google AdWords Editor 5.0 released

Google released Version 5 of the Adwords client application for Windows or Mac.

The downloadable campaign management app includes support for local business ads, import and export and other features.

Adwords Editor 5.0 can be explored or downloaded from Google here .

More New York - SYS-CON events 2008

As the Web continues to meet Wall Street (and Madison Avenue), 'Silicon Alley' in New York continues to grow with more companies opening offices each day.

SYS-CON, publisher of numerous programmer's and other tech magazines (and online journals) has an impressive line-up of events, all to be held in New York City, including an iPhone Developer Summit, Google Developer Summit, and others.

The tentative line-up of SYS-CON 2008 events can be found here .

Be sure to check out the links to the SYS-CON publications if you haven't visited them before.

Digital Domain files to go public

Digital Domain (be sure and check out their VERY cool website) has filed with the NASDAQ stock exchange for an IPO set to raise approx $100 million (US). The trading symbol, should the Initial Public Offering go forward, will be DTWO.

The award-winning company has produced computed generated special effects for films and other media. They also maintain a strong position in media convergence with online branding and an impressive list of clients.

CNET to shutdown Newsburst.com

CNET's News.com sent out an e-mail to users of Newsburst.com, advising that their online feed reader website will be shutting down on December 31st.

They are providing opml files as of today for import into your own browser (or feedreader) for existing users.

The big question. What will they do will a cool URL like Newsburst.com ??

Stay tuned.

Intel gets Social with CoolSoftware.com

CoolSoftware.com launches as 'voting community' for user-generated software.

Coders now have yet another place to showcase their talent, this time being delivered from chipmaker Intel.

The look and feel of 'CoolSW' may appear familiar as Intel chose to go with the Pligg Content Management system, currently being used by Sphinn and numerous other community websites.

Last year Microsoft entered the open source social arena with CodePlex which has grown and now sees daily submissions.

While Sphinn's Michelle Robbins has been making almost daily functionality and other tweaks to the Pligg CMS, it appears Intel chose to go with a more vanilla version at this stage.

Super Tuesday - Techie Alert - Huge Windows Update

If you're anything like me and try to keep web-aware programs silent until you need to, you may want to wander over to Microsoft Update tonight (or TechNet, or the Microsoft Download Center).

In what has to be the largest Tuesday XP / Office update that I can remember, Microsoft began rolling out a huge group of updates today that on our (up-to-date) test box was 52 MB!

Several of the updates are marked critical including a new patch to stop remotely executed code in IE7. In fact, the entire cumulative IE7 patch is included in the update.

I only updated our test beta box tonight, and so far, all is A-OK, and no other programs have been effected.

Google Anchor Text and Crawling Patent issued today

Bill Slawski (SEO by the Sea) once again discovers a patent by a major search company issued today. This one deserves everyone's eyes ... that are in SEO, SEM space, etc.

The piece by Bill can be found at his website here .

Another Dot Com Bubble ?

We couldn't resist posting this video. (Kudos to Danny Sullivan for passing the link on Twitter).
Can anyone relate to this ?
Dec 11 Staff Update: Unfortunately, the very funny video that had appeared hear was pulled from YouTube Today ....

More Real Estate and Search and more Fox ?

If you missed our piece Saturday on Real Estate SEO, you might want to check out Vanessa Fox doing a little Real Estate video for Reachd.com.

A few other WebmasterWorld PubCon videos by Reachd can be found here .

Update: 'Super-blogger' Tamar Weinberg has posted a PubCon recap here with lots of links and gobs of photos at Flickr here

Commodore 64 25th Anniversary tonight

Although it's somewhat late notice for most of us, this piece which (we picked up on about 10 minutes ago) makes some great reading (especially for the younger crowd in our midst :)

Remembering the Commodore 64 - tonight in Mountain View

Check this out! There's some great memories here. Better yet, see if you can get down there ??
Wozniak?

TopRank BigList and why we like Lee Odden

I've gotten a couple of e-mails this morning about our addition of the TopRank logo (lower left) when we don't appear on the list.

The fact is, we're sorta are .... We're still here.

Special thanks to Lee Odden for a some 'special recognition'.

LinkedIn new features now live

Mario Sundar and Lucian Beebe provided a little insight into the new features and the new look at LinkedIn this morning.

You can read the two articles in one place here.

You have to go to Paris - Tell your boss now !

You have to hand it to whomever is promoting LeWeb3. The Internet event enters it's fourth edition on Tuesday and runs two days, Dec 11 and 12 (Paris time :)

As I write this, there are 1710 participants registered.

What's really interesting is that when you 'cross the pond', you get a lot of new ideas and information. A great example is LeWeb3's nominated start-ups.

I'd bet a lot of us never heard of some of these companies. It's international and it's important.

Just think, you could be writing code right now for something that someone else has already launched. Are you ready for that?

The gangs all there ..... just about. A large variety of participants from 'the states' as well as a very cool cross-section of European and Worldwide web people, major companies, mainsteam media, and more.

For you twitter fans (addicts?), some of whom seem to be having a hard time finding it, the official LeWeb twitter address is lewbe3r ).

Bring some warm clothes. Temperatures are running about 45 degrees (F) days and in the 30's at night.

Nominations for the Crunchies - It's not too late

The Crunchies, an award program jointly sponsored by Techcrunch, GigaOM, Read/WriteWeb and VentureBeat is entering the final days of nominations. December 12th at midnight (PST) is the deadline for nominations.

Award benefactors include Microsoft, Sun, and Charles River Ventures.

The award ceremony is slated to be held Friday, January 18, 2008 in San Francisco.

Info on the Crunchies, nomination forms and more can be found here .

Microsoft releases more - Volta Preview arrives

Microsoft has released a preview of 'Volta', a new toolset which enables programmers to built muti-tier, cross platform web applications. The .NET platform tool is for programmers and aimed at streamling the creation of multi-tier applications. Some are comparing it to Google's GWT (Google Web Toolkit).

Recently Microsoft also introduced Popfly, a Mash-up initiative which we found easy and fun to experiment with. It is worth noting that Microsoft chose to use the .ms domain for that launch.

Will any of these rise to mainstream use. Way too early to tell. The Microsoft Volta Preview is free and requires the recently releases .NET framework 3.5. Be sure to read the known issues, software requirement and limitations. Preview software should not be run on a mission critical computer or network.

Real Estate SEO - A REAL example that worked

Whether it's Travel, Real Estate, SEO, SEM, or whatever space your company deals in, one thing has happened. Internet consumers are getting smarter, much smarter. They're spending more time shopping, comparing and researching. They're looking for quality and price.

Impulse, in this economy, has taken a back seat in almost every sector.

Those of you that have been reading this blog for a while know that my wife and I decided to put our little place in Northeast Pennsylvania on the market just before the sub-prime nightmare hit.

This week, the contract was signed. The Realtor didn't sell it. The MLS didn't either. 100% white-hat SEO sold it. If you think I expected it, you're wrong. Was it a fluke? NO. Read on ....

Here in Pennsylvania (laws vary by state) there's a vehicle known as 'Exclusive Agency'. It basically means the broker can sell it or you can yourself. If you sell it, the broker doesn't get commission. Note: I am NOT a real estate agent, so if you're considering any of this, be sure and read the pros and cons this type of agreement before you think about it! It may not be right for you. Better yet, get a lawyer.

So here's how it went. There's a lot to be learned here for SEO pros, Real Estate agents, people looking to sell a house, and many others.

I suppose I need to qualify some of this. Pike County PA is one of the fastest growing counties per capita in the Northeast United States. It's commuting distance from NY. It's friendly and it's beautiful. Although the housing market growth slowed in recent months, the potential upside for a buyer was good. This whole concept probably wouldn't work in a major metro market.

The first thing I did was list the house with a local prominent broker who we knew and trusted. They know the neighborhood, and of course, they put our home on the MLS. They were also much more net saavy than I expected. They put the house on Google Base, Trulia, and a host of other Real Estate and relocation websites.

The next thing I did, using PicasaWeb, Flickr, and a little clean SEO was post this page . It's still very much in the SERPs. (Hey, it's still a contract, not a closing!).

A picture tells a thousand words so I took the photos myself, lots of them, then paired them down. I shared them with the broker. Why not?

Next... I looked for websites where the house wasn't being shown including Craigslist which premiered earlier this year in the Poconos. (This area is considered part of the Poconos although the local area has a significantly different profile).

I listed the house on Zillow (Zillow at the time was getting a lot of PR!) and every other FREE real estate website I could find. Where it was allowed, I linked back to the page above. What I found out is that a LOT of these sites share or syndicate. Within days, I found the house on a ton of websites that it hadn't been submitted to.

Then we did a little networking. We knew that Vanessa Fox was selling her house so we jotted a little post on her post. (For those of you not 'living' in the Search Engine community, Fox used to head Google's Webmaster Central team, left to go to Zillow, and more recently joined Search Engine Land and a VC company).

Winter is a BAD time to sell in the Northeast, so as the leaves fell and time went on, I was pretty sure we were toast until Spring although the calls kept coming.

The numbers:
73% of the showing came direct from our website.
27% from the MLS and the Realtor.

How do I know?. We asked every one that came. They had printouts (Note the PRINT button at the bottom of the page!).

The direct showings were all serious buyers probably because of the wording on our page. I went on to create HONEST, PERSONAL relationships with the people I thought would like to live here. I showed them all the positives and negatives.

We DIDN'T spam a whole bunch of Real Estate forums.

I don't want to make this the longest post I ever wrote, but it doesn't take a lot of reading in between the lines.

To our friends in the Real Estate space, be careful with offers of web marketing that sound too good. With keyword CPM's going higher and higher, there's a lot of bogus stuff out there. There are also a lot of legitimate companies that can help you. (Not us, we're not accepting clients for a variety of reasons right now).

This piece is a real life example for many. Check out the links. Do a little more homework. I honestly believe that this post is one of the most important that I've written, in a very difficult time for many during the holiday season. I hope it helps.

First Page Rank, now Google SERP Panic !

We noticed it here a few days ago. Then a few of our colleagues noticed it. Today, a whole bunch of the SEO and SEM forums are discussing it.

There appears to be, at least for for now (in specific spaces), a huge realignment in Google's organic SERP's (Search Engine Relaltive Positions).

Panic?

Well, in the case where some companies have come to rely on their positions to maintain their staff and salaries, I suppose that panic is a more-than-a-little warranted. SEO's as well are concerned about client contracts, etc.

The important thing to realize is that every time Google makes a change to their algorithm, stuff is going to happen. The more feedback we provide the better!

Is this a repeat of the 'Florida mistake' a few years ago? At first blush, on some of the terms we looked at this morning, you could come to that conclusion.

The important thing to realize is that Google has more servers than ever before and until all of this gets 'washed out' and proliferates the servers, nobody really knows .... yet.

All we can do is hope that the 'new' results are more relevant than in the past, and if not, it is straightened out quickly.

Is everyone getting a Mac ? Apple Buzz

In the past two weeks, it seems like everyone I'm speaking to is 'Heading for the Apple store'. While I always expect to see 'graphic types' and yes, the entire search engine crowd from California running around conventions with Apple notebooks, there's something new in the wind here.

The buzz is hot and heavy.

It's not iPhone. It's MAC!

I think the MAC bug is biting. Maybe it's the commercials. I'm seriously resisting.

If you want to take a peek at what your site or blog looks like on a MAC (sort of), head on over to Apple.com and download the Safari 3 Beta for Windows. It's fast and very cool. The first versions were buggy. The latest version is stable here, and the browser is rocket ship!

Staff edit Dec 7 AM

JetBlue to offer e-mail, Yahoo IM on flights

JetBlue reached an agreement with Yahoo and Rim to offer FREE Yahoo E-mail, Yahoo Instant Messaging and also corporate e-mail on WiFi enabled Blackberry devices.

The new Internet services are scheduled to begin with the Blackberry service on December 11th.

Sharing in GMail and Live.com

Earlier this week, GMail accounts became enabled to communicate with AOL's Instant Messenger within GMail. It appears most accounts are now enabled. You will have to go into settings and log on to IM to activate the feature. No software necessary. You can connect with your IM 'buddies' now.

Live.com has also implemented a 'sharing' system in recent days where you can see the online status of other Live.com users that you know. We haven't tested it with anything other than @live addresses, but it's probably a safe assumption that the feature will also find Hotmail and MSN accounts.

No doubt Microsoft wants everyone to have an @live address (Hint: Get your name before it's gone!)

So, now that we're all connected, what do we talk about? :)

OpenID release 2.0

The OpenID foundation, an open source initiative to create a free and universal log-in identity across the Internet has released version 2.0.

Numerous major companies are already embracing, helping and/or keeping an eye on OpenID as a potential 'standard'.

More details are posted to the OpenID website here .

24 million for MyStrands.com

In a second round of funding (now totally about 55 million), MyStrands, a developer of 'social recommendation techniques', has raised 24 million (US) is Series B-2 funding. Spanish Bank BBVA lead this round.

MyStrands.com provides real-time recommendations of products and services and is yet another company targeting the mobile market in the coming years.

An unconventional way to buy PPC keywords

Why I don't buy the keywords the search engines recommend (sometimes).

Over the years, I've probably tried at least 50 keyword 'scientific' programs. Many are very good, and the suggestions from the search engines are good ... but prepare that budget!

On numerous occasions, I've tried what I like to call 'real world searching'. While the search engines can give you a good take on the numbers of what people are searching it isn't always the way to go for YOUR campaign, particularly in niche markets.

So give this a spin and let me know how it works for you. The next time you're in an office with 20 or 30 people, try this little test.

"If you were looking for this, what would you search?". Tell them to write it down and go ahead and search it. Ask them which search engine they used. Look at the results on each monitor. Were they relevant results?. What their query decent?

Want to find a whole bunch of very low budget keywords that may just help you save a few bucks and not have to buy 'the entire set' to compete. Give it a go.

To our friends in Seattle, we hope the water retreats soon!
Charlie Anzman

Bloggers report live from two conventions at the same time

Ever since news went 'real-time' worldwide and broadband Internet finally hit rural America, the web has introduced one innovation after another. Some good, some great, and some .... well you know.

So as I'm sitting here trying to get some work done, my Google Reader is going crazy and people are 'twitting' like no tomorrow from the search conventions in Las Vegas (PubCon) and Chicago (SES).

Some of it's actually pretty funny.

It reminds me of the days when you rushed to 'break that story'. Of course, today, you pretty much know somebody just broke the story that you think you're breaking right now .... Right?

Tonight's positively an interesting (fun?) night. It appears those who have been doing web marketing for a while are mostly hanging out at PubCon, while there's a large audience of heavy hitter advertising people (and other media moguls) trying to get their feet wet in Chicago at SES.

There's only one good thing about these two conferences happening at the same time. Think of it as having the best seat at the football game. Watching it on TV.
I'm sitting here watch the threads go by on a computer monitor. Raw feed. Unedited ! Although I haven't figured out who to root for yet, it's not only entertaining, but I think I actually learned a little tonight (Did I say that?) .

With all of the hyper-blogging from the two conventions, and 'rush to press' from a few, you have to wonder what's next? HD Twitter? Digg in Hi-Def? Google reads it for you? (Some think they already do ..).

Does Matt Cutts go to these things with body guards?

So here's a few highlights and links (which just got much easier - see below):

Lee Odden (Top Rank Online Marketing) seems to get the 'Top Rank First to Flickr' award (when was the last time someone gave Lee an award?) and Marketing Pilgrim's Andy Beal is promising 100 Flickr pics tonight?! They're not there yet. You'll just have to .. ugh ... search.

Instantaneous recaps were excellent on the Bruce Clay Blog .

And finally, I just realized Search Engine Land posted a BIG list of Day 1 Pubcon / SES coverage links, so you can catch up here ... and I can go back to work.

Update: Beal comes through ... First pics are here.

Ask.com releases top 10 searches for 2007

As IAC/Interactive (and Liberty Media) begin the process of figuring out how to spin off more of IAC's companies next year into individual publicly traded companies, it's fairly apparent that Barry Diller's continued energy (and proxy from Liberty) is staying focused on Ask.com.

(My wife wants to buy Home Shopping Network :) Hmmm ...

Earlier today, Ask.com released their Top-10 searches of 2007.

News Corp's 'MySpace' came in at number 1, followed by 'Dictionary', then 'Google'.

The buzz continues. The complete list and press release is here .

Digg is far from Dead

Some have expressed the opinion that it's time for Digg to 'take the cash and run'. Sell now while you're at the top? Mission accomplished?

Despite the ongoing proliferation of social bookmarking sites, Digg continues to add new features and categories.

A few hours ago, Digg premiered the long-promised images section employing image recognition technology to avoid duplicate submissions. Digg will also crawl images from a submitted URL.

Tonight's new release also includes some new Digg categories including Offbeat and Lifestyle.

Finally, if you haven't checked out Digg's dynamic screensavers, you can get your very own here.

Pubcon and SES Chicago coverage on the Web

Webmaster World's PubCon and Search Engine Strategies Chicago fall on the same dates this year - Today through Thursday.

Many in the industry have had to choose between one or the other. The staff at Yahoo is splitting their staff to attend both, as are many others.

I was in Chicago several years ago for SES. It's COLD this time of year, which no doubt had some bearing on a few 'choices'.

In any event, for those like me, that are staying here on the east coast, Search Engine Land has provided some resources for watching coverage on both events on the web here .

Wikipedia HQ to move to Silicon Valley - Seeks new CFO

While we have been critical of the 'human-edited' Wikipedia project in recent months, apparently there has been a lot of improvement.

A news story this morning prompted us to re-visit the pages that we used to frequent for a variety of reasons, and we found a pleasant surprise. Numerous volunteers had cleaned-up the commercial invasion of those pages, and they were back to facts, hopefully for good.

There's no doubt that in the sectors that we watch, the project has gained some responsible volunteers.

The Wikipedia Foundation is moving from St Petersburg, Florida to San Francisco shortly and a look at their blog shows a number of open positions including Chief Financial Officer.

AOL launches finance beta - Stock sites flourish

With all of the major portals, search engines, financial market websites and others now reporting stock quotes and financial news, AOL introduced their own entry in the crowded field late last week. You can take the AOL finance Beta for a test drive here .

While there are simply too many improved (and new) finance news websites to mention here, the past six months has seen a complete makeover at CNBC, a 'partial' sale at TheStreet.com, the introduction of Fox Business News, dynamic updating at Yahoo's stock quotes and many more.

No doubt, a lot of companies are keeping an eye on the lucrative financial markets web space.

Reuters has been using Pluck's Blogburst to include stories from independent blogs (including 5 stories from right here :). Their editors are hard at work weeding through the hundreds of feeds to be sure the most important stories reach their target audience at Reuters, Fox Business, IBS, Cox, USA Today and other members of the their network.

New venture capital and private equity websites have premiered as well. With more angel funding and private equity investments in the technology space than ever, a large audience has developed for these news stories.

Perhaps one of the best in partnering has been Forbes but their full page 'skip this ad' advertisements are still annoying. There has to be a better way.

Murdoch bidding for Linked in ? The rumors continue

The rumors continue about News Corp and Linked-In. The latest was posted today to the Silicon Alley Insider.

I for one, wouldn't be surprised.

1) As I've said many times right here, you may not love him (Murdoch) but he's a genius as far as staying ahead of the media / technology curve.

2) The social networks at some point will be forced to consolidate. There's simply too many social bookmarking sites with a 'general' audience. Niche networks will continue to proliferate both within the newer, large social networks and outside of them. Sound like 'the original web'? You bet. Lots of websites, lots of blogs and a few 'engines' connecting them.

Staff Update: At noon on Monday, numerous sources were reporting that News Corp is NOT involved in talks with LinkedIn.

Two SEO site birthdays in a row

Well gang, it turns out that it's not only Search Engine Land (yesterday) that's celebrating a birthday. Today is the fourth anniversary of Search Engine Roundtable

Think we have enough forums yet?

Another Expo for Bloggers - BlogOnExpo pre-launch

One of 30 sites now participating in the Mashable-sponsored OpenWeb Awards, BlogOnExpo is a FREE expo for bloggers started by Aditya Mahesh.

From the pre-launch website, we found an impressive line-up of 'keynotes' and/or upcoming interviews.

The 'expo' is set to launch January 15, 2008.

While there's still nothing like one-on-one networking, this very well may be an idea whose time has come (and may save some of us from Twittering in airports? :)

Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Land hits 1 year mark

It seems like yesterday that Danny Sullivan was still negotiating with the company he sold Search Engine Watch to, while continuing to putting together Search Engine Strategies conferences for them.

Then came the rumors, then the announcements, a contest for a new name, then Search Engine Land.

Today, SearchEngineLand.com celebrates it's one year anniversary on the web.

Some really interesting statistics were posted by Sullivan earlier today and can be found here.

ILoveRewards.com gets 3.3 million - Venture Capital

Privately-held startup ILoveRewards.com has closed 3.3 million in angel venture capital funding from JLA ventures and others.

What would you do with the money? Check out the blog here

Friday NiteCap - The Winnies and a new AOL widget

As I write this post, there are a post-award parties going on in LA, after the Inaugural Winnies Awards. Sponsored by a variety of Web-based video platforms and other Internet multimedia companies and startups, the 'Winnies' are a somewhat 'different kind of promotion' which appears to be working with a huge buzz tonight across blogs and the web.

Details on the Winnies and the 2-300 attendees tonight can be found here .

AOL today introduced a new widget which can be used on your desktop, or even inside of iGoogle. The widget updates what's hot across the web and is searchable. The announcement from AOL and links to the myAOL or iGoogle versions is posted to the myAOL blog (along with a few photos of Frank ?) here.