I believe it is time to introduce an additional topic into the standards dialogue that to date has been largely ignored. Currently there is no recognized standard for assessing the skills and knowledge level of the search marketing professional. This not only increases the difficulty for employers to accurately identify the talent level of the professional workforce, but also impacts the ability of our industry to achieve its forecasted growth. In the next several years,

I've always said that instead of getting angry with black hat SEOs , we should learn from them. Working and often succeeding in really competitive verticals, these people are just forced to be creative. We've had a number of discussions recently on how black-hats take advantage of trusted domains to promote their websites. Here is a quick example: #4 for [viagra] in Google )!(.

Powerset launches today to an overzealous amount of fanfare, as the mysterious new semantic search technology will open its doors for the first time to the public. The public must understand however, that Powerset is not a finished product, as search and technology is an evolving discipline. Consider today's launch Powerset's first Powerstep. Over the past year or so,

In an effort to help the victims of the cyclones in Myanmar )Burma( which resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and after effects of widespread diseases and famine, Google has set up a special Myanmar Cyclone donation page . According to the Associated Press, United Nations death toll estimates from last weekend's Cyclone Nargis ranges from 63,000 to 100,000, which is above the Myanmar government's estimate of about 22,000.

Facebook's 23 year old CTO, Adam D'Angelo, is leaving the company to take some time off according to Facebook and BoomTown . The 23-year-old D'Angelo, the top tech exec for the social networking site, will be leaving the company to take some time off. He has known Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg since high school. But, according to sources close to the company, D'Angelo felt his responsibilities no longer fit well with his skills and interests.

Yahoo is extending its search clout towards Mac users, as it acquired Safari browser plug-in, Inquisitor . This plug-in works similarly to Yahoo's Search Assist which help users with their search by suggesting possible queries and related concepts in real-time. If you're a Safari browser user, you would either find this pretty helpful or annoyingly obtrusive when you conduct your search.

Google is getting serious about its push into the enterprise arena. On Thursday the company announced the launch of a new comprehensive security offering geared towards the mobile enterprise environment - an mobile add-on to their existing Google Web Security for Enterprise product. Google Web Security for Enterprise is an all-inclusive package designed to protect enterprise networks from various malicious web threats, including viruses, spyware, adware, botnets,

Google really wants to make sure that Microsoft won't get their hands on rival Yahoo. So much so that they're willing to enter and expand an advertising partnership with Yahoo, that may prevent Microsoft from renewing any bids for the company in the future. By making sure that Yahoo does well, Google is ensuring that it won't fall into the hands of Microsoft, who is eager to take over Yahoo in an attempt to seriously compete with Google.

Everyone seems to like twitter these days which is a really cool way of staying in touch with your customers, friends & colleagues. Basically twitter has presented itself as a micro-blogging platform where a user can shout out anything they want to his 'followers' within the limit of 140 characters. I have just started twittering since last month )*yes I'm pretty late starter!( because initially by looking at it for the very first time,

Google Maps has added a very Flickrish feature which serves photos and popular searches along wth specific Google Maps local search results. The photos are served by Panaramio )and some by Picasa(,

Dave Naylor posts this screenshot of Yahoo Answers serving Ads by Google above answers search results. According to the screenshot, which was sent in by a DaveN reader, it looks like the Google Ads are being served along with the Yahoo Search Marketing ads. I don't know, something smells fishy here. A photoshop mock-up perhaps? I'd assume that the Google and Yahoo results would be blended in together, like Ask.com does with Google or Microsoft did with Yahoo Ads.

I came across this video podcast episode of PBS's Wired Science with Luis von Ahn, the guy who came up with " Captcha ", those fuzzy looking words that you have to enter on websites sometimes as proof that you are human. " Captcha " was developed to prevent automation )usually via scripting( of a process, such as the creation of a user account. "Captcha" images are not readable by computers.

Microsoft's failed attempt at taking over Yahoo might be one of the best things that could have happened for one of both companies' rival - Google. Having wasted months of talking and negotiations, neither Yahoo or Microsoft is any better off today then they were when Microsoft first made their bid in late January. Google, however, has every reason to celebrate. Amidst the chaotic speculation and talks between Microsoft and Yahoo,

If on-page optimization is the meat of SEO, relevant and quality linking is the bread, butter and dish it is served on. Together, the mix of quality site optimization, targeted inbound linking, press relations, provocative content and social participation can transform a mid-level site into an authority destination within 3 to 6 months, changing the overall direction of your business, saving you money on paid search and jacking up your search driven sales.

Microsoft just can't stay put, can they? Instead of being content pumping billions into improving their own proprietary search engine and Internet presence, they poked their beaks down in Yahoo, tearing apart one of their largest online competitors and sending Yahoo into a frenzy which may make it dependent upon Google for its future finances )or may make it stronger than ever(. After their failed attempt of a Yahoo takeover / makeover,

Yahoo has just launched its search portal in India a couple of days ago. And to coincide with the launch, it is being reported that Yahoo India has been displaying a new search result that combines text, image and video results in one search results page. The new search results run alongside the usual search results on search results page. Reports also say that this new search results page is called as Glue Pages Beta,

A good amount of new names and faces have been popping up on Search Engine Journal over the past few weeks. This is because we are currently running a guest blogging competition where we are offering the most popular guest blogger )based on liks, traffic, sphinns ..etc.( different prizes from Search Engine Journal Sponsors adding up to over $10,000 in search marketing services.

Google has teamed up with a number of partners investing in a new venture to develop and deliver high-speed WiMAX internet access for mobile devices. The venture, which is being led by Sprint, also includes including Clearwire, Sprint, Comcast, Time Warner, and Intel, amongst others. Thus far, deploying a nationwide Mobile WiMAX network has proven to be quite a difficult task. With new partners involved, however, it is hoped that the task will be easier to complete.

Besides the overall domain strength, there are quite a number of ways to evaluate a site page power . Even if that's not your site and you have no access to its internal statistics, you still can find out a bunch about it )eg. its ranking potential and even estimated traffic(.

The good thing when you're into the search engine business and you're up against only two competitors is that you can do away with copying their site's format. And it looks like, that's just what the Live Search team is doing when they redesigned the Live Search site.