Happy New Year to those of you who celebrate! This week, the holiday commenced and now we're swamped but we still have to give you our recap. Without further ado, here you go:
Coincidence: Search Updates Around Holiday Time? As you may have read thus far, we celebrated Rosh Hashana and also noticed that Google PageRank has updated. On a somewhat related note, Yahoo's results are being shuffled and Microsoft may have had its own update too.
Google Blog Search Relaunches A new version of Google Blog Search has launched and I'm not sure I'm a fan. It now has a more "news" feel that reminds me of Technorati and how every single blog post talks about a single issue versus a search that may be more relevant.
Google Turns 10 Google has celebrated one decade of search and more. Can you believe it's really been 10 years? Well, neither can I. But in case you wanted to reminisce, you can check out the Google search engine from 2001 which actually is rather fun.
Yahoo's Site Explorer Looks Great Finally, a new verison of Yahoo Site Explorer is live. And it's pretty awesome. It has a lot new data, like number of inlinks/inlink domains, number of pages crawled, and more. Check it out and let us know what you think.
Yahoo's Rip Off? Yahoo has done some stupid things lately by raising the credit card minimum to $250, which is 10 times more expensive than the previous requirement of $25. Their cost per click has also gone up, phone support is going down, and nobody is happy. Seriously, why are you guys using Yahoo again?
Microsoft's Smart Move? Microsoft has launched Search Perks, a "get paid to search" type engine. Also viewed as a stupid move, people are wondering why Microsoft has to incentivize the search process. Oh well. Maybe I'll be able to get my husband Forza 2. Only 4000 searches to go. (Heck, I don't even do that using Google.)
eBay <3 Google eBay has increased its ad spending with Google after their apparent "breakup" last year. Now, both companies are holding hands again and things are looking up. We may be in a recession or whatever, but people still want to use search engines to find great deals, and eBay is probably delivering results.
Google Request: AdWords Account Change Phone Authorization After all these Google AdWords account hijackings, I'm wondering why Google is just having employees monitor accounts for abnormalities. That's great, and all, but it'd be great if Google could put some security precaution -- perhaps phone authorization -- in place to prevent the high number of account hijackings.
Next Week: SMX East in NYC In the NYC area? We hope you charity party on Monday night. It's a great opportunity to help and network all at the same time!