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…
Worio is a new engine that’s partly a social bookmarking site as well. It searches, in part, according to what other people have preferred in the same category. Sort of a search consensus builder. This is called “using recommendation techologies to improve the search experience.” 
On Search Engine Guide, Stony deGeyter has two highly pertinent, cautionary posts on how search engine optimization should be approached culturally, apart from the tweaks of website design and technology. 
He’s writing, actually, about the basics of good organizational communication and how they apply to SEO. He’s concerned with such matters as how open SEO folks are to other peoples ideas, whether they listen well, are willing to change their opinions, readily admit they’re wrong and think and observe clearly before taking action.
Good cautionary stuff in the context of SEO – highly recommended.
AOL has launched When.com, an online guide to local events. It looks like a great place to scout for weekend activities in your area, or places to go or events to enjoy at any time. PC Magazine notes of the new service: “It’s powered by Zvents, a local search engine behind hundreds of Web and mobile partners, featuring event listings to promote local businesses. When.com will derive revenue from online advertising sold through AOL’s Platform-A service.”
When was the last time you saw an online display ad you’d click on? Or, better put, when was the last time you clicked on an online display ad? I seriously never had unless I did once in 1994 or something. But I saw this ad and was intrigued enough, and entertained, that I’d click.
I had to write this post first, so I haven’t yet. It’s my next order of business. Good job Very Short List, whoever you are and whatever you’re selling!
(i.e., Why try to game the system when you can do just plain good work?!)
— Abigail
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Great thoughts about SEO sites, practices, community, etc., and do please read the comments. Very good peek. The latest post however makes this pretty poignant. To this post let me just add that I too am no-one in particular, and that’s an important attribute.
Social Media and Web 2-3.0 being what they are, should I use my graphic design skills to make a “No-one In Particular” logo we can use on our sites to celebrate good practices and humility within the biz? If there are YES comments I’ll do it! With enthusiasm!
— Abigail
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Abigail Hamilton is a professional with over…
See? I got your attention with some words which a search engine wouldn’t know where to start with. Whether it’s on the light side (i.e., digestible by non-professional marketers/SEOs) at How Design, or more intense at Sphinn, I’m seeing a lot of good discussion out there about the importance of writing for people rather than [just] search engines. There are a million angles on why/how/when/where to make your writing work best, but the underlying point is tremendously important: people need to read — and be moved by — what you write for it to matter at all. So, brief and compelling.
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It’s pretty sad watching SEOs battle the pros (Search Engine Journal) and cons (Learning SEO Basics) of using SEO to combat complaint sites that can rank highly and spread negative information/experiences about a product, company, or brand.
Why is it sad? Because it’s so much more effective to add well written, well-thought out responses to complaints and offer solutions and follow up THAT YOU ACTUALLY DO PERFORM AND DOCUMENT.
Dell had that nightmare trying to bully people into removing pictures of flaming laptops…other companies’ fun and contrite response letters have gone viral and done wonders to repair damage to the brand. Your choice in 2008?…
My work life straddles design and marketing, and corporate vs. small-business approaches to each. And I’m seeing a lot of variation in how people understand and advocate for SEO strategies.
I see larger businesses with a team of marketing specialists are leaning past plain-old keyword optimization. I personally suspect that they were led in this direction by their lust for Flash and dynamic page technologies that cloak content and disorient spiders. And now that bots can better read Flash, along comes Silverlight; the jury is out on the future of rich-media page readability.
So, to compensate for having hard-to-search pages, and relying…
Every once in a while I find something so amazing, so interesting, and so well executed that I feel I must heap some praise! Well, Other then the new Batman move “The Dark Knight” being on the verge of being the highest grossing movie ever it was also the best movie I have seen so far this summer, but what was even more amazing to me was the online presence that was created just for this film. Sure, the movie had its homepage, but it was all of the other pages that dealt with the story, city, and characters that…
