Here’s Danny Sullivan’s heartfelt meditation on why Microsoft doesn’t succeed with search – its heart isn’t in the technology, only its appetite for the dollars it yields. Danny, of course, is editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land and has been covering search since 1996.
Danny laments that he hasn’t been able to get Bill Gates or Steve Balmer to speak at his search conferences, while their rivals at Google, Yahoo! and Ask have accepted his invitations to mix it up with the search community. But it’s not just a question of shunning conferences – it’s a failure, in Danny’s sense of it, to…
Google Zeitgeist looks at the top events, trends and memorable moments of 2008 as reflected in billions of Google searches. Sort of a coalescence of the mass mind. Fascinating! 
26 December 2008
Open letter to GOOGLE
Chairman and CEO: Eric E. Schmidt
Co-Founder and President, Products: Larry Page
President, Technology and Director: Sergey Brin
SVP Product Management: Jonathan Rosenberg
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043
Gentlemen:
I find myself posing questions about Google PageRank to various web experts and link brokers and decided it was only fair to ask you directly about it here. After all, Google PageRank does kind of cut to the heart of everything we’re doing, or trying to do, on places like SEO Shootout–a site which, btw, my Google toolbars in both Firefox and IE currently indicate as having a PageRank of 3.
I myself labor…
Search Engine Optimization reports that Google search results have now been optimized for the iPhone and G1 mobile devices. The revision avoids the need for zooming or sideways scrolling on the phones. Here’s a sample of what it looks like, courtesy of SEO: 
In another 2009 search prediction, this one from Bangalore, India, Dirhaj Sinha, of Perot Systems’ Application Solutions, says: “Serious effort to dislodge Google supremacy will be mounted - More serious competitors will emerge to Google even in its core search engine business. Search engines will innovate fast to become analytics tool and also use concepts of semantic web. Many of the not so successful Google ventures will get lot of attention and Google Chrome will continue to struggle against Microsoft Internet Explorer even in 2009.”
Dislodging Google? That would make 2009 epochal in search.
JEFF COTRUPE
I just launched a new site for my business. Same domain, http://marketpowerLLC.com, but anyone who saw the old site may not even recognize us as the same company today. In planning the launch I realized one of the first things I look for as a site visitor is a search capability. Not of the whole web; I can get to Google or Yahoo! via my own bookmarks, thank you, and I never understand companies who provide web search but no search of their own site. Or, as is still the case at a surprising number of sites: No search at all.…
Jeff Cotrupe, Founder and CEO
One of my favorite comedy lines ever, which in this case emanated from the magically twisted mind of Steven Wright, goes like this: “I bought some batteries. But they weren’t included. So I bought ‘em again…I bought some powdered water. But I didn’t know what to add…”
Open letter to Steven and ROW (rest of world): When it comes to websites, I can tell you exactly what to add.
It’s always a good idea to keep your keywords and metatags complete and current on a website; many search engines still key on that when deciding whether to list you in search…
Here’s a Google blog post and video on using its new SearchWiki and another blog post noting the potential significance of SearchWiki. Aggregated SearchWiki changes from personal search viewings could become a rankings factor on Google searches. 
Google has come out with a search wiki that allows you to reorder and otherwise edit search results for your own keeping. It needs to be used in conjunction with a Google account. It’s apparently causing confusion and a lot of Web commentary. Need to get up on this. 
Google has introduced a new search app for the iPhone that does its searches in response to spoken requests. Head to this Information Week review to check it out.
