Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
Search Engine Roundtable Threads:
- And the SEMMY Awards Go To....
We talked about the SEMMYs at least twice. These are awards from Matt McGee about his favorite blog posts voted upon by everyone else. Well, the winners are now in, and guess what? I won an award! My article, Top 6 Ideas for Incredible Viral Content, won the best of its class in the Viral Content category. Score! The official results are at the SEMMYs website. But in case you don't want to venture there - Google Urchin 6.0 Now in Beta
Good news, analytics folks: Google Urchin 6.0 is now in beta. It looks a lot like the free version of Google Analytics but the cost is pretty high: $2995 after the beta period ends. As one member puts it, "who is the target audience for that price?" Clearly, there is one: Larger business and corporations who are nervous about using Analytics because they don't want to share their data. In the meantime, it's great that - Yahoo Search Marketing Offers New January 2008 Features
YahooPete has informed us all that there are new features in Yahoo Search Marketing. He lists them as follows: Keyword Generator that allows you to add keywords to existing ad groups Campaign Tune-Up Alerts (only available in the US at the moment) Conversion Based Ad-Optimization You can now exclude up to 250 keywords. Additional information can be found on the Yahoo Search Marketing Blog. Good stuff. Things are getting better, though there's a bit of - Google Challenges the Future of the Web with Microsoft/Yahoo Acquisition
After Google learned of the bid for Microsoft to buy Yahoo, the Google blog responded harshly to the possibilities of an acquisition. David Drummond, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer of Google, writes: So Microsoft's hostile bid for Yahoo! raises troubling questions. This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation. It also seems that - The Value of Fresh Links in the Eyes of Search Engines
Branko at SEO Scientist wrote an excellent post named Tapping into Unconventional Link Attributes. The post was so good, it made the hot list at Sphinn over the weekend. Since I am out on vacation, I'll do a quick quick summary. He plotted data showing that for his tests, there is a strong value to "fresh" or new links, the time before they receive any true PageRank and other metrics from Google. The fresh links
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- SphinnCon North Carolina, Sphinn
- How Many Pages Does An Average User Uses In A Search Engine?, HighRankings Forums
- They Came First For Andy Beard... Then They Came For Dazzlin Donna.. And We Didn't Speak Up!, Sphinn
- Is it a sin to Sphinn yourself?, Sphinn
- Google - Keywords Per Query Have Increased, Search Engine Watch Forums
- What Will Microsoft Yahoo Merger Mean for SEO?, Sphinn
- MSN AdCenter not serving ads?, WebmasterWorld
- V10 Sunset Extended to March 18 - AdWords API Announcements, Google Groups
