billslawski

Linkbaiting false stories, using sockpuppets in social voting networks, engaging in comment spam and forum spam, being solely self promotional in venues where self promotion is frowned upon?

Small business can benefit from engaging in conversatio read more »
6 Comments     
What makes a title a good one for the personalities that you see in a social setting? In your personal networks?

An insightful and fun exploration on the topic of creating page and article titles for the many people you may find in different soc read more »
5 Comments     
A nicely done high level overview of search algorithms and the role of SEO in optimizing sites. read more »
Discuss     
Mixx shares the news that just about anything you could do on Mixx, you can now do in Mixx on Facebook.

Good move, bad move? I don't know. But it's interesting to see social sites being social like this. read more »
2 Comments     
Stumbleupon is a great way to discover new websites, and the lessons learned, and shared, in this article about SU are helpful and insightful regarding stumbleupon and social networks in general. read more »
4 Comments     
Does the evolution of search and the web point towards search engines favoring sites that update and change frequently,and follow the conversations between site owners and their audiences?

Nice discussion of the topic. read more »
2 Comments     
A quick run through the "Hot Topics," the "What's New," and "Sphinn's Greatest Hits" shows that news posts outnumber discussion posts on a grand scale.

I think it's great that news posts are so popular, I wondered if discussion posts could gain i read more »
18 Comments     
I like looking at primary resources like patents and white papers. I also like exploring the history of the Web and the .net to understand those better.

SEO is constantly changing, as noted in the article, and 1998s SEO has evolved a great deal read more »
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There are a number of reasons why rankings within search engines may decrease. Some of them might not be that obvious. Provides a number of things to explore, and resources, to understand why rankings may have dropped. read more »
2 Comments     
Kim offers encouragement to people considering the Search Marketing industry, and thinking about entering into jobs in the SEO field.

What would you tell someone contemplating becoming an SEO? read more »
2 Comments     
Frequently used words, or stop words, were often ignored in search engine indexing, but sometimes they can be significant to a search, like one for the opening line of a Shakespearean soliloquy, "To be, or not to be?"

If using compression inte read more »
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It’s good to see folks in the search community challenging some assumptions behind PageRank, while introducing a new flavor of PageRank which replaces those assumptions with user data.

A patent application from Yahoo, published last week, takes read more »
6 Comments     
Ruud dives into how search works, with a review of the usefulness of meta keywords and how off page factors act as meta data. read more »
6 Comments     
This long New Yorker article provides some intriguing insights into the leadership, operations, and ambitions of Google. Lots of great quotes from many conversations with people inside and outside of Google.

One of my favorite passages:

"What read more »
1 Comment     
Real picture taking robots, coming to stores and museums near you? Plus, how well can Google really understand text within images? Possible very well. read more »
5 Comments     
From the patent application:

"Search engines are increasingly implementing features that restrict the results for queries to be from blog pages."

Do you think that search engines purposefully push down search results from blogs? read more »
5 Comments     
How does Google mine anchor text from links, and what kind of text around links might it also use to determine relevancy for pages being linked to?

What role might PageRank play in a page being included in a Base, Daily, or Realtime crawling proc read more »
1 Comment     
A thoughtful and helpful look at how personalization in search may impact search results, and an exploration of a handful of the key metrics involved in that personalization.

Very nicely done. read more »
4 Comments     
People are talking: Carbon offsets, plug-in hybrids, species extinction, debt-for-nature swaps, urban sustainability, permafrost meltdowns, carfree days.

Links to Green Communities and Social Networks, so that you can join in on the conversations read more »
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"Around August 20, 2007 many clients’ Google AdWords accounts saw their cost/conversion skyrocket — in one particular case we saw it was over 100% increase. It was caused by a corrupted “Expanded Broad Match” algorithm."

Why does Google refuse to read more »
9 Comments     
I'm sure that many of the ideas in this post are probably familiar to the many bloggers who post here.

I'm curious though as to some of the things that you might tell people who express an interest about blogging for their business. read more »
9 Comments     
Last October, I wrote about "20 ways search engines might rerank search results." It was Sphunn a couple of days ago (thanks, Dave), and Danny pulled it from the "what's new" section, because, like, it's not new. :)

I vowed to write a sequel in t read more »
7 Comments     
The question is, though, will they launch it.

The Google patent application highlights a method of using text messaging to make offline payments directly to merchants, or even through vending machines.

The patent filing includes screenshots read more »
1 Comment     
Yahoo explores methods to figure out a user's intent in location-based searches, and to identify the location of searchers, in a patent that was granted yesterday. read more »
Discuss     
I've been hearing that local search results appearing in search engine Web results pages have become pretty popular since being introduced.

How might whois data play a role in whether contact and address information is displayed in search resuls? read more »
6 Comments     
Search Marketing Expo

Save the date for:
SMX Local & Mobile - San Francisco, CA (July 24-25) See the agenda, and register now!
SMX Sao Paolo - Brazil - (Aug. 7-8)
SMX China - September 23 & 24, 2008
SMX Stockholm - September 23 & 24, 2008
SMX East - NYC - (Oct. 6-8) Registration is now open.
SMX London - November 4 & 5, 2008