Today, I was driving in San Francisco with a couple of other SEO-types and we spotted a prominent billboard for Google’s 411 service. The sign wasn’t too specific, but it conveyed that it was a free directory information service of some type. So, being intrepid explorers, we gave ...

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I’ve probably discussed Netflix more than any other online business here, primarily because they have been a leader in using the power of online community and Web 2.0 in general to directly impact their customer experience. (See Netflix - A Different Approach, Netflix Using Community Intelligence, and many more ...

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Google didn’t invent the long tail, but it certainly enabled it. With its original algorithm, Google enabled searchers to find information on the most obscure search terms with surprising accuracy. Adwords enabled advertisers to target obscure keywords, and Adsense enabled publishers to attract advertisers automatically for highly specialized ...

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Could anything be more unlikely than AlltheWeb becoming the search engine champion? AlltheWho? The current kingpin, Google, has become synonymous with search, to the point where its intellectual property attorneys have to police the use of “google” as a generic term for web search. And doesn’t AlltheWeb ...

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“The SEO Playbook - Welcome to the Rabbit Hole Alice” is a must-bookmark post by Todd Malicoat, aka Stuntdubl, that compiles a massive list of search engine optization resources that shed light on every area of SEO. From content to links, from site structure to general SEO, Todd has ...

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Comments by senior Google engineer Matt Cutts often spark discussion in the webmaster community, and particularly among search engine optimization folks, but I can’t recall ever seeing a reaction like the one he created with his call for webmasters to identify paid links. While discussing hidden links, Matt suggested ...

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Search technology has been marked by a few big leaps in its history. What began with relatively crude algorithmic analysis of the content of individual pages was improved dramatically by Google’s sophisticated use of off-page criteria, notably PageRank and link anchor text analysis. While refinements continue - Google ...

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Google has filed a patent application for ranking blogs using measures of quality, and Bill Slawski at SEO by the Sea has an excellent summary of the key factors. The quality factors fall into both positive and negative categories: (more…)

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The Web seems to spawn an array of weird lawsuits, but the one described in Colorado Woman Sues To Hold Web Crawlers To Contracts is surely one of the more bizarre ones. The Internet Archive, which spiders the Internet to copy Web sites for posterity (unless site owners opt out), is ...

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ZDNet blogger Tom Foremski poses the question, “Is Search Broken?” Foremski’s thesis is that Google, Yahoo, MSN et al should be able to find Web content and figure out what it’s about without so much human intervention: (more…)

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