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Discussion, news and information about searching via the internet and other means. For more background, see web search news stories from our sister site, Search Engine Land. Below are topics submitted by Sphinn members:
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Lisa Barone writes "Oh my poor disgraced Ask.com bag. I wish I could rescue you from the back of my closet but I still can't bring myself to look at you.

I didn't intend to blog about the recent phone call I had with Ask CEO Jim Safka and the PR read more »
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Ask.com... getting closer to core search or simply trying to increase the number of searches? Barry Schwartz gets to the nitty gritty... or not. read more »
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If you are looking for a particular video, an old friend from high school, or the perfect handbag, a niche search engine can help. They can make life even better if you can use them in a pinch. read more »
3 Comments     
Best of The Web adds a local component, making a great directory an even better resource on the consumer level. read more »
1 Comment     
The following FireFox Extensions will help you to adapt Google’s interface and results to what you need, in the most efficient manner possible, making Google even better. read more »
1 Comment     
As I watch search marketers often continue to obsess about things like PageRank, I wanted to do a personal post / wake-up call related to our SMX Local & Mobile Search Marketing show happening next month in San Francisco, July 24-25. Because for all read more »
2 Comments     
Time to honor Gary Price for his accomplishments as an informational professional. He's been one of the guiding lights of the search industry and deserves all the kudos he's receiving. read more »
4 Comments     
Here Ann listed 4 tools to find your competitors keywords ranking read more »
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Some quick ideas on why you might want to optimize your site for phone number searches. read more »
5 Comments     
Could Stumbleupon’s human-filtered search results be the beginning of the next evolution of search engines that could see the all-powerful Google algorithim be made redundant?

I think Nowsourcing is on to something here. read more »
8 Comments     
David Mihm's excellent analysis of the Google Local / Map Algorithm which argues in compelling fashion that citations (mentions of the business without a link) play an important role in ranking well in the Google's Local Listings. read more »
2 Comments     
Previously I've covered what I dubbed Search 3.0, how search engines have evolved toward blending vertical or specialized results into "regular" web listings. Today, the step beyond that: Search 4.0, how personal, social and human-edited data can be read more »
7 Comments     
Mahalo pages must be just packed full of useful information, because such a flamboyant crusader for the anti-spam cause would ever allow his own masterpiece to look like a crappy MFA site which would be improved by a $2 article about GTA4 cheats out read more »
7 Comments     
If you own a web site, or work on one, it might be time to start thinking about how your site looks on a phone, how people use your site, and how mobile search might influence whether your site will be found in searches made by people using phones. read more »
4 Comments     
Ann Smarty asks what should the image search look like? The image search giants (Google images, Yahoo images and even Flickr) represent rather a poor example of image search usability (to my mind). Luckily we have a number of good examples (still no read more »
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Bill Slawski writes... When you search for something at a search engine, the search engine might not just try to find pages on the web which match the keywords that you searched with, but may first try to expand upon those keywords by finding simila read more »
2 Comments     
Online reputation management issues can really affect a persons life as there are a lot of ways your reputation can be damaged. Glen shows examples where women have taken reputation management into their own hands after their men went looking for ot read more »
13 Comments     
A fully optimized Local Business Profile contains a well-crafted business description, containing a unique selling proposition based on market and keyword research, domain name and email cross branding (including generic domains), authentic testimon read more »
6 Comments     
David Wallace writes... The days of flipping through a big fat yellow book to find a local business are quickly coming to a close. After all, why settle for a simple phone number when an online search can also net you menus, pricing, hours and consu read more »
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If you haven't heard of human powered search engine, Stumpedia, you might want to give it a whirl. It is essentially a human-powered search engine with a social aspect to it. Stumpedia allows content producers to submit and profit from their work an read more »
10 Comments     
An thoughtful response by Ahmed of iBegin to the recent Yahoo Affiliate Mapspam reports asking:

•What is mapspam?
•What is a reasonable approach to to the varying forms of it?
•How do we respond to it?.
•What are the technical and human limits read more »
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An excellent article, Mike, and excellent suggestions. It is an unfortunate byproduct of universal search and multiple algo's that the effort by Google to provide "better information" is at times providing "inferior and erroneous" information. read more »
8 Comments     
Tim Nash reveals in a local study that SEO firms which target local businesses are not in fact getting that many local clients. read more »
11 Comments     
How important is using images in your posts? Michaels example is one of many to show the benefits of putting your little 3 minutes worth of effort into adding an image, including locating, cropping and tagging. As Michael puts it, "How nice is it to read more »
6 Comments     
Here's a list of 12 search engines that could eventually replace Ask.com. read more »
3 Comments     


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