Ask has made some pretty significant changes over the last year and a half. First they got rid of the butler and now they have gone 3D. This new three dimensional version not only includes a major overhaul of the home page as well as the way search results appear, they have also added a laundry list of new features and resources.
TechCrunch is reporting that Microsoft has gathered a team of twenty or more “rock star” developers who’ve been tasked at building their next generation search engine. Few other details are provided with the exception that the engine would be “horizontal” and will be very cool. My reaction – yawn.
Receiving several RFQs each week not only requires a significant amount of time to respond to them in a timely manner, but requires a strategic follow-up plan to ensure that we give ourselves the best opportunity to secure the new business. I thought I’d write up a post on how we initially respond to them and our process of follow-up.
Joe Sinkwitz from the Pay Loan Affiliate Blog has put together a “report card” on Google’s acquisition progress over the years. Not only does he list the date, the company and the type of product or service Google acquired, he scores each acquisition as good, bad or mixed.
Sad news out of Search Engine Watch – Elisabeth Osmeloski is leaving her position as Editor to start a new venture with Zonder.com, a vacation rentals company. Zonder is a venture capital funded start-up, based in Salt Lake City where Elisabeth calls home. She will become Director of Online Media for the company.
To tax or not to tax? That is the question. Taxing access to the Internet, access to email and the like has been looked at by the government for several years now but so far has escaped their grasp. A new bill dubbed “The Internet Tax Freedom Extension Act of 2007” was introduced in the Senate yesterday. If passed, this bill would extend the current ban on Internet access taxes for another four years.
Have you ever been someplace besides your home or office with the old laptop in hand and attempted to “sniff out” a WiFi access so you can get online? You better be careful in the future because apparently tapping into a WiFi connection that you do not have authorization to do so can get you arrested.
Owning a few directories myself, this is a question that is of interest to me, especially after Matt Cutts recently stirred up some controversy when he invited people everywhere to report paid links as spam. With our directories, some listings are editorial while others are paid. In the beginning, every site added was editorial simply to populate the directory. Today we require payment for every submission simply to compensate for the time that is taken to review, edit and include the listing.
My thinking for the last few years now is that static search engine ranking reports hold little value in and of themselves. These are reports typically run by a software program in which a list of keywords is added along with the main URL of the site(s) you wish to check and the software then queries pre-selected search engines, creating a report showing where your site ranked for each term.
I just came across this story at WebProNews regarding a new IRS proposal that could have a negative impact on e-commerce. Essentially, The U.S. Treasury Department wants to crack down on Internet businesses like eBay and Amazon.com and require them to share their customer’s personal data with the Internal Revenue Service. What data specifically do they want? The obvious – names, addresses, etc. but then the not so obvious, social security numbers.
