Happy Fourth of July to all those who celebrate it, and even those who don't! Lots of search engines and websites have special logos for Independence Day don't you like how Marketing Pilgrim is red, white and blue today? I know I'm a fan. But I found a little Easter egg )holiday confusion?( in Google Street View today. Check it out: it's Uncle Sam! Enjoy the holiday )or just Friday if it's not a holiday for you(!

Don't forget to catch me at the SEO Meetup next Thursday, 7pm in Charlotte, NC . For just $35 you'll learn Online Reputation Management in Seven Steps , as well as get to network with Charlotte's talented search marketers. If you're still on the fence about attending my one day Online Reputation Management Workshop in Raleigh )August 7th(, the Charlotte event will give you a good taster. Register here . Pilgrim's Partners: SponsoredReviews.com - Bloggers earn cash,

All right, let's face it: it's the afternoon before a three-day weekend and your brain is already on vacation. And that's why we're here at linky extra goodnessa round up of the marketing news you'll want to know come Monday. Oh nm, my bad : Googler JohnMu retracts his previous statements )mentioned yesterday ( about banning countries/regions/continents from your website being "cloaking," as long as you also ban any Googlebots coming from those IP blocks.

Lots of Picks today, so let's dive right in! Don't get too excited when you see that Google Talk is now available for your iPhone . It's browser-based, which means your conversation dies if you switch from Safari. In case you were wondering, Firefox did earn the world record for most downloads in a single day . Google signed an agreement with Brazil to fight child pornography on its social network Orkut-which, outside of Brazil, has to be Google's biggest flop ever!

Paul Dunay has finished his Reputation Management for New Media Survey and you can now download the report-for free ! Finding useful stats on for online reputation management can be a chore, so I'm excited to get some insight into how companies are preparing, or not preparing. Some highlights include: 53% of companies are making reputation monitoring a strategic priority in 2008. Yet, only 42% have any kind of online reputation plan in place,

By Frank Reed. Here's a quick trivia question for you. What was the first video run n MTV back in the early 80's? It was "Video Killed the Radio Star" by the Buggles )I didn't need to look that up and two of the Buggles, Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes, went on to play with Yes for all of you progressive rock fans out there(. At any rate, the idea was that with the onset of video music, Marconi's invention )that's the radio for those of you wondering( would die.

Just yesterday, I had a conversation, agreeing that the only thing that could topple Google, would be privacy. The same day, a judge presiding over the Google/Viacom case issued a court order requiring Google to turn over your personal data. The EFF reports the order requires Google to hand over YouTube's Logging database. What's in YouTube's logging database? 'for each instance a video is watched, the unique "login ID" of the user who watched it,

You have only until the end of day tomorrow to register for my Online Reputation Management Workshop and get the heavily discounted rate of just $797 . After July 3rd, the rate goes up! Whether you work for an online marketing/PR firm, or handle the branding for your employer, you'll want to attend the workshop. Heck, if you're an SEO, you should attend if only to learn how to manage a client's Google reputation.

Sometimes we just can't let dead horses lie. That's okay, neither can Microsoft. After months of more drama than a daytime soap ) ahem ( with the attempted merger/acquisition of Yahoo, Microsoft pulled their offer back in May. And now they're saying, "Whoopsiedoodle. On second thought . . . we will be coming back fighting." The Wall Street Journal reports today that Microsoft is planning another run at Yahooand this time they won't be going it alone.

It's the first linky goodness of a new month. Hurray! More not-so-good news for Yahoo: the DOJ will reviewing the Yahoo-Google ad deal and plans to consult Y&G's rivals. Yet another reason for MSFT to celebrate today, I guess. Webmaster Central Blog gives a little checklist of things to do before and during a reconsideration request using Google Webmaster Tools , complete with video. Has someone at Google misspoken? In a Google Groups thread,

By Frank Reed. An article in today's Wall Street Journal by Lee Gomes the Long Tail theory popularized by Chris Anderson's book "The Long Tail" in 2006 there is now a pretty prominent player saying "Wait a minute now'..is this for real?" The Harvard Business Review has published a study that questions whether this theory actually holds water. Anita Elberse,

First IAC took itself apart, now Ask is slowly dismantling its cool features, too. Chris Pendleton , a Virtual Earth evangelist, has posted that Ask has dropped its own mapping featuresAsk Maps, AskCity and map results integrated into their SERPsin favor of Live Virtual Earth )Microsoft's maps product(. In some regions, the change is even more drastic. As Barry Schwartz reports, Ask UK's map site is offline )and their title element is misspelled: "Unavailabe"?

By Frank Reed. Leave it to bloggers to find a way around censorship. On the heels of the Olympic Games in Beijing riots broke out in the Guizhou province of China over the death of a teenager according to the Wall Street Journal . While the Chinese government worked hard to prevent this from becoming a political and PR black eye before they parade themselves on the world stage that is the Olympic Games bloggers appear to have gotten the best of them.

Real estate has been a more frequent topic recently on Marketing Pilgrim and I promised to write about recent stats on what real estate related terms people are typing in search engines . According to HitWise, the most popular web search volume for real estate sites goes to realtor.com. That's based on data collected for the four weeks ending Jan. 26, 2008. Hitwise is a subsidiary of Experian,

Yeah, okay, I'm still mad at Google for adding every single person I've ever emailed to my "friends" list. But lately worse things have been happening to me over at MyBlogLog ) remember them ?(. I know, I know, MBL has long since fallen out of favor with tech & SEM bloggers. I'd forgotten about them, too, other than the occasional "So and so has added you as a contact" e-mails. Until the end of May, when I got one of these e-mails that stood out.

Breaking news from Microsoft ' We're excited to announce that we've reached an agreement to acquire Powerset, a San Francisco-based search and natural language company. Powerset will join our core Search Relevance team, remaining intact in San Francisco. Powerset brings with it natural language technology that nicely complements other natural language processing technologies we have in Microsoft Research. More importantly,

Let's climb aboard the way-back-machine and take a trip to 2005. Carrie Underwood was rocking American Idol, Batman Begins made us believe in prequels again, and Google was buying a 1 billion dollar 5% stake in AOL. According to a Washington Post article on December 17, 2005,

Good morning Pilgrims! I trust your day is going well. If not, maybe one of these hot news Picks will help-failing that, grab a donut! Silicon Alley Insider knows how Twitter can become a billion dollar company in one year; become a P2P mobile payment provider. Digg 's Recommendation Engine is launching this week. Based upon what you've dugg before, Digg will recommend stories you may like . Speaking of Digg,

While most of Radically Transparent is about managing and monitoring your online reputation, we spend a lot of time explaining that customers are discussing your brand and would love to have you join the conversation. New research from ExpoTV.com shows just how badly your customers want to hear from you.

As an internet marketer, any report of an increase in online ad spending brings a smile to my face. And a new forecast by ZenithOptimedia is the latest reason for happiness. Zenith's original forecast, made in March, said the Internet would account for 9.7 percent of global ad spending this year, for a total of $47.5 billion, and 12.3 percent in 2010, or $66.9 billion. In the new forecast,