A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Business.com’s practice of using “nofollow” attributes on editorial listings within their directory but did not use them on the paid listings, a backwards procedure for what the attribute was originally intended for. Today they have decided to stop using the attribute altogether.
Via Threadwatch, it appears that Business.com has attached the rel=”nofollow” attribute to its editorial listings. At the same time, paid listings (the ones that have four additional links underneath them) do not have the rel=”nofollow” attribute. A bit of a controversial move on Business.com’s part seeing that this attribute was originally intended for paid links and not editorial type of links.
A new extension is available for the Firefox browser called SEO For Firefox. It has been developed by Aaron Wall, famous for his SEOBook e-book publication and also his half ownership of Threadwatch, a popular blog style forum. According to Jason Lee Miller of Web Pro News, The tool pulls data from a number of sources to offer search engine marketers “a more holistic view of the competitive landscape.”
On Friday, Google will try to convince a judge to dismiss a lawsuit that challenges the heart of the company’s business: its methods for indexing and ranking Web pages. KinderStart.com originally filed suit against Google in March alleging that it suffered crippling financial harm after its Web site got dropped from the search engine’s index. This is not the first lawsuit of its kind as I recently wrote about another similar lawsuit filed over positioning in Google’s index.
I have been practically living on Craigslist and eBay for the last couple of days searching for a couple of vehicles for my son and daughter. This experience has lead me to ask the question over and over again, “Do people really want to sell this?”. They either do not provide enough information or do not include a way to contact them. If you are able to contact them, they don’t follow through.
Google has fended off a lawsuit filed by a California man who claimed his Web site rankings precipitously and unfairly dropped. The plaintiff, Mark Roberts, who runs two protein drink sites (including MrProtein.com), sued Google for breach of contract. Huh? What contract?
Many webmasters have noticed that since the full implementation of the Big Daddy software update to the Google algorithm, that fewer and fewer of their pages have been finding their way into the index. What could be causing this? Is Google finally cleaning up the quality factor of their index, riding it of pages and even sites that don’t meet new quality standards?
Another email spammer gets slapped on the wrist! Ryan Pitylak, an individual who is know as the world’s fourth most-prolific spammer, has settled a lawsuit with Microsoft and the state of Texas which accused him of sending up to 25 million e-mails per day. The settlement cost Ryan Pitylak 1 million dollars, as well as the seizure of many of the assets he accumulated during a short-lived career as one of the world’s worst spammers. No jail time? No lifelong banning of access to the Internet?
In the U.S. Government’s continual quest to battle terrorism and child pornography, they have recently asked Internet companies such as Microsoft, Google and AOL to preserve records of customers’ Web activity. This latest move of course does not go unnoticed by privacy advocates who are complaining that the government may be intruding on the rights and privacy of law abiding citizens.
In an email sent to Froogle account holders, Google has made the announcement that Google Base, a new project thought to allow Google to compete with Craigslist and eBay, has swallowed up Froogle and that Froogle feeds will now have to be submitted through Google Base. Existing account and product information has already been transferred and is now viewable in Google Base. Along with Froogle, content should also be viewable on http://base.google.com.
