Larry Page, co-founder and new CEO of Google, has started streamlining the company, removing some of its less known offerings. Today saw the end of the Google Directory and the announcement of the closure of Google Labs. RIP Google DMOZ Directory The Google Directory was Google's version of the Open Directory/DMOZ . The directory gave users access to a database of sites hand picked by flesh and blood human beings. In the early days of Internet searching,

We have spent some time updating our beginner's guide to search engine marketing this week, including " for instance " new tips on the use of social media in search engine marketing. Here are some recent search engine marketing and optimization news articles that might be of interest.

Get a Google+ invite! Google has gotten a lot of positive buzz about its Facebook-challenger Google+ this week, and some of it is definitely well deserved. The fact that so many media experts have started using it is certainly a good sign. However, it is still invitation only. Send an email to per.koch@gmail.com with the headline "Google+ Invite", and we will send out as many invites as Google allows.

If you are a freelancer, particularly online, you need a good grip on search engine optimization issues. Whether you are doing social media marketing or blogging, journalism or whatever, SEO is a language you need to know how to speak. If you don't, you may find yourself battling with SEO requirements from clients without even understanding what they want. That is definitely not where you want to be.

Many local businesses don't even know what they want to rank for on the Internet - and some don't even know what the word rank means when you apply it to Google. It's all lumped into that whole "Computer Stuff" and "Rocket Science" category - which most people that have done a decent amount of SEO know is not exactly true. However there is a little bit of jargon and "know-how" involved,

Chances are, you've heard of crowdsourcing? And no, it's not just a buzz word but rather a revolutionary concept that allows people to save time and money, as well as to make a living working from home for tens of thousands of crowdsourcers. So don't think of masses, mobs and crowds as something dumb, scary and unruly. Here are eight companies that chose crowdsourcing as their business model. Crowd in! By Guest Writer Dmitry Davydov Crowdsourcing,

The search goes on! More news from the world of search engines. Details of Facebook's music dashboard are revealed techradar: Facebook is looking to integrate music into the site's normal homepage and use a tab for music, which will be situated under the other tabs currently on the left-hand side of the page, like Places, Pages and Games. Slash Through Spam With Blekko's Zorro Update! TechCrunch: But the new version of search engine Blekko,

In celebration of Social Media Month, Webucator is now offering a social media training giveaway for Pandia readers. By entering our new contest, you can win one a free seat in one of their social media training classes. This class will be taught by a live instructor in an online, interactive classroom. This prize is valued to US$690.00. If you're looking for a way to gain new knowledge in the fields of social media and marketing,

Some search engine marketing posts and articles we have found interesting this week. Dilbert Features The Darker Side Of SEO SE Roundtable: With all the mainstream news press of JC Penney, Overstock and Forbes using paid links and some darker methods of boosting their rankings in Google - Dilbert has decided to feature some best practice lessons in their past two cartoons.

Here are some essential search engine news headlines from this week. Google Test Adds Website Names, Subtracts URLs in Search Results SE Watch: Google appears to be testing a new look for search results, adding the name of popular websites including LinkedIn, Facebook, Apple, Wikipedia, Amazon.com, Yahoo, and Bing next to the page's URL. In some cases, Google replaces the URL entirely.

Here are some interesting stories from the world of search engine marketing and optimization. As always we cast the net wide, and include other stories that may indirectly affect your online marketing efforts. Will Author Markup Help Google's Scraper Problem? SE Watch: Using HTML5 and XFN markup like the rel="author" and rel="me" code, respectively, publishers can now definitively identify themselves as the authoritative author of their published work.

Just like brick and mortar stores see a drastic increase in traffic and sales during the holidays, so do websites with holiday products. In order to take advantage of this holiday traffic though, you'll need to know how to properly optimize your website for the search engines. It takes more than just supplying the hottest products on your website, you'll need to do your research along with some special holiday marketing.

How do you pronounce English words and use them? A new video-based pronunciation dictionary offers pronunciation and use cases from videos of real people in real situations. EmbedPlus The dictionary , which is so brand new it does not yet have a name, is built by the team behind EmpedPlus . A team of coders and videoheads found that many attractive and practical features, even ones from the conventional TV world, are absent in today's popular players.

One of Pandia's most popular resources is the People Finder. Today it has been expanded and is better than ever. Pandia People Finder has search boxes for people, email addresses and public records, so many searches can be done right there. But if you want advanced options or other kinds of people search tools, we have collected curated links to all kinds of services in 16 categories: people, email, global, paid people search, people metasearch, alumni, biography,

You find it easy to search the web using Google or Bing. But what do you when you want to search your own information: the data found on on your company web site, the intranet, in the document management system, in emails, in house databases and other types of content? We have all experienced how completely useless some web site search engines are for finding information on a company web site. Personally we prefer to use Google,

Here are some of the search engine news headlines that caught our eyes this week: Google to drop support for old browsers techradar: Google is abandoning support for IE6 and 7, Safari 3 and Firefox 3.5. Bing, Google and Yahoo Collaborate on a Single Search Language Marketing Pilgrim: Schema is a way of telling all search engines that Supernatural is a TV show but supernatural is a word to describe a paranormal event. Then it goes one better,

Here are some recent interesting posts and articles about search engine optimization and marketing. Twitter Launches Follow Button: Do You "Like" It? Twitter has announced their new Follow Button. The follow button will allow users logged into Twitter to follow you directly on third-party sites by clicking the button, for users not logged in, you will be taken to the Twitter profile. See als o Twitter Blog. Can Google Correlate be used as a PPC tool?

Here are some recent articles and post of relevance to search engine marketing and search engine optimization. News Editors Still Don't Want Journalists to Be Human GigaOM: The American Society of News Editors has come out with an overview of social-media policies at news organizations across the U.S. The Myth of 'Professional' Twitter Accounts Outspoken Media: ' can we stop pretending that it's possible to have a corporate Twitter account? Because it's not.

According to highly unreliable sources the world is going to end today. Given that it is soon 3 PM local time and the sun is still shining in Oslo, there is a chance, however, that this will not be the last search engine news review from our side. Google Should Keep Feeding Facebook Rope to Hang Itself Google Watch: Facebook fessed up to hiring Burson-Marstellar to plant stories about Google infringing on user privacy with Social Circle,

You can now keep up to date and learn inside tricks by browsing or searching links from over 100 SEO experts using trunk.ly. The links are aggregated from across their social networks " Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Pinboard, Tumblr, Posterous and more. Trunk.ly A couple of weeks ago, we shared the best bookmarking tools right now and trunk.ly was among them. Trunk.ly connects to your social network and monitors and collects the links you share across the social web.