For newbies the world of SEO can be a daunting and challenging place. Often a company rep looking to get their organization onboard the optimization train will want to be able to sell it back to the folks at the home office by quantifying exactly what they'll be getting for their optimization bucks. Unfortunately that's often where the SEO baddies step in.

Who would have thought that the least healthy thing on McDonald's menus might end up being the tomatoes? Certainly not Mickey D's, which ended up on the griddle during this week's tomato scare.

Ripely aged Republican Presidential candidate John McCain jested yesterday that he would be using Google to study up on potential running mates. "You know, basically it's a Google'what you can find out now on the Internet " it's remarkable." Yes, remarkable. Still, there is a lesson here for all you whippersnappers on the importance of search reputation management. Let's take a look at some potential McCain veeps using what President Bush calls "The Google.

Those of you lucky enough to be attending Federated Media's 2008 CM Summit : New Brand Way in New York are in for a treat as Reprise Media's very own Managing Director Josh Stylman will be a featured panelist tomorrow at 11:00 AM. He'll be on the on the panel Search and Brand: The Missing Link )which I'm told has nothing to do with Sasquatch( moderated by John Battelle, Chairman and CEO, Federated Media .

Cast your minds back to the primordial past â€" you know, ten years ago when the 'net was poised to deliver the most personalized user experience imaginable with targeted, relevant advertising at every new page. What happened? I'm still being subjected to ads about stuff that I'm totally uninterested in.

Yesterday we touched on the importance of making your site habit-forming for search marketing and optimization. One of the many things I learned from watching HBO's The Wire is that if you give your potential clients a taste of the good stuff they'll come back for more. Even better, you create converts and we all know how annoyingly persistent they can be about getting others to try something new, whether it be the latest web app, crazy cult religion,

So you've done everything right to get noticed by your potential customers. They search for relevant terms on Live Search or Google or Yahoo! and - bang-o! Your site is number one. But when you look at your data for returning visitors your heart sinks. How do you keep them coming back? Reuters had a story yesterday about researchers at Northeastern University in Boston who used cell-phone signals to track people's everyday travel patterns.

In 1963 John F. Kennedy was considered by some to be the first President elected through the power of television, due to his youthful good looks in contrast to a sweaty Richard M. Nixon in their televised debate )many radio listeners thought Nixon had won(. In 2008 Barack Obama may become the first President elected in part through the power of search marketing.

Filthy robots! There you are at the bar, just trying to lock eyes with a potential customer and those robots keep sliding their mecha-tendrils all over your back pages. At least it can feel that way sometimes in the online world. So much attention is paid to getting the attention of those 'bots and droids that getting the right kind of attention is sometimes overlooked.

Bo Diddley, the pioneering rock n' roll genius who died yesterday knew a thing or two about marketing and branding. Consider this: Ellas McDaniel re-dubbed himself as Diddley, had his first hit record with a song called "Bo Diddley" )the first of many times he would work his new name into a song title and lyrics( and made sure that the ubiquitous shave-and-a-haircut beat that was his trademark was referred to far and wide as "the Bo Diddley beat.

In 1963 John F. Kennedy was considered by some to be the first President elected through the power of television, due to his youthful good looks in contrast to a sweaty Richard M. Nixon in their televised debate )many radio listeners thought Nixon had won(. In 2008 Barack Obama may become the first President elected in part through the power of search marketing.

Is Facebook going open source? Today Techcrunch leaked rumors that Facebook will soon open it's application platform, the aptly titled Facebook Platform, to cross-channel integration. In other words, applications created exclusively for Facebook will now be compatible with other social networks. This concept isn't revolutionary; Google, backed by MySpace and Yahoo, launched OpenSocial last November to provide an open platform for cross-network application development.

It is estimated that advertisers will spend $1.4 billion on advertising within social networks this year )eMarketer, 2008(. As marketers begin to realize the benefits of social media, an increasing number of companies have experimented with developing profiles in Myspace, Facebook, and other social media sites. As a marketing vehicle, social profiles have played an integral role in a number of ground-breaking cross-media campaigns,

Our very own Brooklahn, aka Reprise Media Director of Marketing Anthony Iaffaldano, is attending the Search Insider Summit , held at lovely Captiva Island till Wednesday. With attendees from across the industry, the summit provides some great debate and discussion on search marketing. Follow all the action from Anthony's twitter feed or get the digested session notes here .

The big news this morning is )surprise surprise( Microsoft's return to the bargaining table in its bid for some or all of Yahoo. The "some" part represents Yahoo's search advertising business, which when acquired by or partnered with Microsoft would certainly help Microsoft capture more market share, although still be a far cry from a short-term threat to Google . Indeed,

In the last week, we've seen a host of announcements relating to data portability. MySpace kicked things off by revealing a data partnership with Twitter. Facebook followed with Facebook Connect, and Google got in the act with Google Friend Connect . Essentially, it's an arms race between these three groups with two objectives: to get the most users to store their data centrally,

How many times have you seen a seasonal-ad on TV, forgotten about it for a few days )or weeks( and then gone to research it on the Internet only to find that, well, it's impossible to find? There's a perception among many marketers that once a campaign's objectives have been met, it's time to dial back the presence until they have another benchmark to hit, missing out on a chunk of their potential customers who search for their products during this downtime.

A very slow search news day, unfortunately. Here are some stories in the technology and online space that got coverage today: Microsoft hosts its 12th annual CEO summit , with Warren Buffet and Michael Arrington among the 115 executives invited Hitwise releases data stating what we all knew: Google is dominating search engine market share eMarketer revises down its estimates for ad spending on social networks , cutting it from $1.6 billion to $1.

A lot of talk on Google today, probably spawned in the wake of the failed Microsoft-Yahoo )MicroHoo?( merger . First up is a fantastic Financial Times article written by Richard Waters that discusses Google's business outlook now that the company's greatest short-term threat is out of the picture. From the article: "The scale of Google's victory over Microsoft in online advertising, sealed by the failure of the Yahoo takeover approach, is hard to exaggerate.

Last week we discussed MySpace's move to position itself as a central web hub by allowing the portability of user data to a host of other social networking sites. Facebook quickly responded with Facebook Connect and its partnership with Digg, and today Google has revealed a similar feature, aptly called Google Friend Connect. From the release at the Google Press Center : "Websites that are not social networks may still want to be social - and now they can be, easily.