Website Auditor Enterprise, from Link Assistant, is another software package for maximizing a website’s appeal for search engines. We get a little uncomfortable when a firm claims “guaranteed #1 search engine placement,” as Link Assistant does for Website Auditor. But the software sounds well-conceived and is modestly priced. So give it a look if you’re in the SEO market. 
MacWorld reports that Yahoo! plans to convert to anonymity the data it keeps on Web searches in three months instead of 13. That will be the least amount of time web search data is identifiable as to individuals among Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!
For privacy advocates, “neutering” search data is a big deal. ”Google said in September,” MacWord advises, “that it would anonymize data after nine months, down from 18 months. Microsoft keeps data for 18 months, although it said earlier this month it would reduce the period to six months if its rivals did the same.
“Technology companies have maintained they needed to keep the…
SEO Inc., a Carlsbad, CA-based search engine marketing company, will continue teaching a search engine optimization course at the University of California San Diego. Though the company’s press release on the course being retained is a bit cryptic, we take it as an indication that SEO may be gaining academic credentials. The SEO Inc. course “is believed to be one of the only courses of its kind to offer college credit” – 2.5 credits earned over three class days.
Student support apparently saved the course. ”After teaching ‘SEO & SEM: The Fast Track to Search Engine Optimization and Marketing’ for the first time…
Be wary of diagnosing health conditions via Web searches. That’s good advice from Microsoft as it releases a study on self-diagnosis by means of search engines. The study suggests that health searches frequently lead people “to conclude the worst about what ails them.” 
Take care not to fret unnecessarily. It all has to do with the term “cyberchondria,” which emerged in 2000 to refer to the practice of leaping to dire conclusions while researching health matters online. The Microsoft study is the first systematic look at the anxieties of people doing searches related to health care, says Eric Horvitz, an artificial intelligence researcher…
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 is giving a boost to paid search advertisers by giving them a way to determine the terms consumers use to search for their products.
The new Google service is the
Search-based Keyword Tool, just released in the UK and US in beta format. Digital Response Media
reports that the tool “looks at the content of the user’s website to determine the most common search queries for that site. These keywords can then be used by businesses in their paid search engine marketing campaigns or to refine their operations based on popular consumer search trends.”
The new search service is discussed by Google’s Trevor Claiborne in…
Jerry Yang will step down as Yahoo’s chief executive officer when a replacement is found, The Wall Street Journal reports. Word of Yang’s intention to relinquish his CEO role ignited speculation that Microsoft will revive its bid to buy Yahoo! when there’s a new chief executive at the search company. 
Yang, who co-founded Yahoo!, will stay on as a senior executive, says the WSJ. His rejection of a Microsoft purchase offer earlier this year drew heavy criticism from investors, including Carl Ichan, who was named to Yahoo’s board.
Supposedly Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is still interested in buying Yahoo! so long as…
Truevert is a new, “green” search engine. “It gets its search results from Yahoo BOSS and applies its own text-analyzing software to generate the most relevant green results.”
“Truevert,” adds techcrunch.com, “is actually just a demonstration of some powerful underlying semantic technology developed at OrcaTec
, a company co-founded by (Herbert) Roitblat and Brian Golbère….OrcaTec’s software could just as easily be used to create a fashion search engine, a startup search engine, or any of a thousand other vertical search engines.
”So a search for “SUV” brings back HybridSUV.com as the top result. A search for “building materials” brings back results for green building materials.” Sounds like a cool…
Here’s all the videos, on blip.tv, from the Web 2.0 Summit, just concluded in San Francisco. There’s lots of other timely material on the summit site as well. Good job O’Reilly Conferences, producers of the summit!
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sounded as though once or twice spurned, that’s it, in telling a business group in Sydney, Australia, today that Microsoft is no longer interested in acquiring YAHOO! Inc. But, advises The Wall Street Journal, he added that “there are still opportunities for some kind of partnership on search” with YAHOO!
Ballmer’s comments came after Google withdrew this week from a search-advertising partnership with YAHOO! in the face of Justice Department opposition to the deal. “We are not interested in going back and relooking at an acquisition,” Ballmer said, “We made an offer, we made another offer –…
