Google launched a new version of Google Trends which includes website traffic estimates, and highlights.... visitor locations top keywords related sites You need to be logged into a Google account to get a numerical scale on the traffic graph, but you can still get the general trend graphs and other data without logging in. Google also allows you to compare up to 5 sites at any given time Search Engine Land reported that Google Trends.

As a field get saturated one of the easiest ways to stand out is to take generalized tips from one field and apply them to another niche. Recently Rebecca mentioned this Recruitment SEO guide , and a friend of mine named Dave spotted this real estate marketing guide . Some resources are niche specific while others are applicable to many industries. Ping Pong Pie )nice domain name( compiled a list of top social networking sites by category .

If you build a clean trusted brand many people will emulate your brand and leech off it. Everything from wrapping spam in the Google brand right on through to registering a domain name that sounds just like your name and doing mass email spam with it. You can't stop all of it )or even most of it( but you can defend yourself from a lot of it by: Registering a couple of the more common alternative domain extensions )like .net and .org(.

Anand Rajaraman recently spoke with Peter Norvig, who revealed that: their best machine learning algorithms is already as good as, and sometimes better than their current hand roled relevancy algorithms but they still prefer to use their hand roled algorithms because of hubris,

I created a new training module talking about how language in new industries changes over time , how you can track change, and how you can take advantage of structural changes. I made the first 1/3 of it freely available, but the action items are for subscribers only. I am still trying to figure out how to balance creating premium members only content and publish many posts to the blog. Which of the following ideas do you like best?

Tim O'Reilly thinks the web is much bigger than search, and actually likes the Yahoo! deal. I think it is easy to overlook how Google is quietly winning marketshare in many non-search markets - and how they can easily build such positions using their brand recognition & distributed ad system. A throw away quote from Tim's post is the title of this post: At O'Reilly, we always say "Create more value than you capture." All successful companies do this.

In Google's commentary about their ad deal with Yahoo! they wrote: This does not let Google raise prices for advertisers. Google does not set the prices manually for ads; rather, advertisers themselves determine prices through an ongoing competitive auction. We have found over years of research that an auction is by far the most efficient way to price search advertising and have no intention of changing that. Aspects of that statement are categorically untrue,

The WSJ reported that Google and Yahoo! have inked a non-exclusive ad deal Yahoo said it will display some ads sold by Google in an agreement estimated to generate $800 million in annual revenue. In the first 12 months following implementation, Yahoo expects the deal to generate an estimated $250 million to $450 million in incremental operating cash flow. Both companies have agreed to "delay implementing the deal for up to three and a half months while regulators review it.

J.K. Rowling gave the Commencement Address at Harvard this year. Two killer quotes: So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else,

Google Trends announced a cool new feature for determining the relative search volume between keywords: Suppose you own an ice cream shop and don't know which flavors to serve, or suppose you're responsible for stocking supermarkets across the country; Trends can help you explore the popularity and seasonality of your products. To conduct your own, more detailed analyses, you can now easily export Trends data to a .csv file. How can you use this data to build your business?

Philipp Lessen pointed out that Google now offers a link in the search results to skip intro on flash intro pages. Philipp also mentioned rumors of a Google Browser from February. Google also launched a major offline advertising campaign in Moscow , hoping to gain market share on Russian search leader Yandex.

In the past I have been a bit hard on AdSense, stating how it cannibalizes publishing , but there are some up sides to Google's AdSense too. Many people talk about the ease of implementation, scalability, and lack of maintenance cost, but 4 more rarely talked about benefits are.

Our keyword tool is powered by Wordtracker's API, but if you want access to more keyword data they just announced they are offering a free 7 day trial to the full Wordtracker keyword tool.

A few years back when I came up with the idea of ReviewMe )prior to Pay Per Post launching, but we were slow to market( I felt there was a need for bloggers and advertisers to be able to interact. Largely because I was getting more email than I could handle, and largely because I kept seeing blogs gain momentum in the marketplace. Recently Patrick Altoft from Blogstorm announced an email group for buying blog placements ,

After hearing a few people mention the NBA finals I went over to Yahoo! Sports to check it out. The Celtics are ahead of the Lakers 1 game to 0. Given the history of that rivalry it is no surprise that decent NBA Finals Tickets are selling for over $1,000 and courtside tickets fetch $20,000 or more. Yahoo! paid the editorial costs to create great content relevant for this high profit margin niche, and what do they do with it? They waste it.

I have worked with some large multi-national brands who had multi-lingual sites, but they typically hired us for English optimization, and never really asked for much more than general advice and strategies )internal link flow, subdomains vs unique domains, etc.( when it came to other languages and cultures. I noticed a few differences between Google.com & International Google results while traveling, but I still only analyzed stuff that was published in English.

Wikia recently announced that their search service was finally almost worth using . It is easy to rate and vote sites up to the top of the search results. When they have limited marketshare they will not get much spam. As they start building marketshare will they be able to get enough people engaged in the project to fight off spam? And who defines what is spam anyhow? You can comment about the results, rate a result, spotlight it, and add images to it.

I talked to a search engineer a few months back and he mentioned that he thought one of my sites and one of the promotions associated with it were both spammy. This month I came across a random blog comment where a person talked about how great that search company was for showing them that same site! The only problem was that since that site was new and we still need more links we had to pay Google for those clicks.

Jeremy Palmer invited me to do a presentation on link building for his Black Ink Project . The presentation will be today at 3PM Pacific time. If you are a member of the Black Ink Project please listen in. If you have not joined the Black Ink Project it is free to sign up. If you have followed this blog for years and are a member of our training program this will not be a ground breaking presentation,

My wife and I got back from our Kauai vacation Sunday afternoon. I slept most of yesterday, but am now back after the seasonal hibernation period. Hope to start posting a bit more frequently in the near future.