Once again we provide you with all the little weekly tidbits that are talked about at our summer search industry cocktail parties, golf outings, and yachting regattas. If one feels that they want to repeat these morsels amongst one's co-workers, superiors or )heaven forbid( inferiors, then we understand of course. One must do what one must do dahling. Just leave my name out of it.

IPG announced that they are acquiring a strategic interest in online business creator HUGE. It's with a great deal of pleasure that we welcome HUGE to the Interpublic Group family. We are big fans of their award-winning cutting edge websites for clients such as Ikea, JetBlue, and Scholastic among many others. Like HUGE,

I once worked with a client )major magazine( that had a very difficult website to navigate and understand. When I brought this to their attention they informed me that this was, in fact, by design. Their reasoning was simple: if the user can't find what they're looking for they will spend more time on the website and click on more pages in an effort to locate the information they sought. Clever, right? I regretfully informed them that this would not be the case.

The plug was finally pulled on the Scrabulous application on Facebook for North America yesterday. The Scrabble look-alike has been under pressure for months from Scrabble copyright holders Hasbro and their tardy Electronic Arts game development partners. The good news for addicts was that the official Scrabble® plug-in was up and'oh nevermind. A hacker disabled the Scrabble set-up on Facebook Tuesday , botching Hasbro's planned user migration.

SearchViews dealt with behavioral targeting a few weeks ago but the tide of bad publicity has now well and truly rolled in. There's nothing like an election year to bring on the misplaced outrage â€" in this case towards behavioral marketing and targeting online. What's even worse is that one numskull company has helped to paint everyone else with a broad brush. But first' Cast your mind back to 1985 )if indeed you were sentient back then(,

You would think that a cure for cancer had been announced this morning, what with all the attention that new search engine Cuil has garnered. You might even think it was the "Google-killer" that " Out-Googled Google " but you'd be wrong once again. The teeth-grindingly poor name aside )it's the tool that's pronounced like "cool", fool( as just about everyone who's tried it will tell you, it just doesn't work that well. At least not as well as Google.

Summer is blockbuster season at the multiplex: Long lines, stuff blowin' up onscreen real good, and $25 on snacks at the concession stand while you sit in air-conditioned comfort. This week's search industry news also brought some of the thrills of a summer blockbuster or at least perhaps we can spin them that way. To the SearchCave!

A great samurai warrior named Miyamoto Musashi wrote a book around 1645 on winning battles. The book was divided into five rings )scrolls( that dealt with different aspects of winning in combat. The teachings were applicable to any size engagement â€" from one-on-one to thousands. Just like Sun Tzu's The Art of War , Musashi's book is an ideal military book with a business strategy application. Well, I may not be writing a book, but I am writing a blog post.

I have a lot of friends who work for non-profit organizations, and I don't just mean the local Starbucks. When their organization receives a big grant it's a huge cause for celebration, especially if the grant can be used to seed other potential donation points. As part of Google's avoidance-of-evildoing philosophy ) see number 6 ( they have a program called Google Grants which they describe as "'a unique in-kind advertising program.

The popular conception of search marketing from a sales objective is a customer on a search result page clicking your link )paid or organic( and following it to an online point of purchase. There ain't nothing wrong with that, as Amazon.com and eBay can attest. Brick and mortar stores have also used this model to grow an online component to their offline biz as well )Barnes and Noble is an example of this(.

Recently MediaPost's Online Media Daily published a guide written by Reprise Media's Managing Partner Peter Hershberg on how best to manage your online brand reputation, inspired by taking part in a recent Business Wire panel discussion on social media. Some brand marketers continue to think that online brand management is secondary to their overall reputation management campaigns. Au contraire, mon frère.

Digg Kicking it Old School â€" De-Nerdification of the Net Continues A recent report shows that Digg is sending more traffic to traditional newsites, rather than the once prevalent techie sites. Listen up newsers â€" write headlines for the web when you're online â€" heed Dr. Naveel ! You'll get more Diggs that way. This also suggests that Digg has entered the mainstream where they can either ascend to Google-like dominance or age to elderly AOL-esque irrelevance.

Just like Google, we here at SearchViews understand the value of seeing someone else's good idea and running with it. Techcrunch had such an interesting post today on how Google is aping Digg that I felt compelled to blog on the same subject. In a nutshell,

Benjamin Franklin created the image you see on the left. Published in 1754 it was among the earliest political cartoons in North America . Although it's been reproduced throughout American history for different uses, the message has remained the same. You stand a better chance against whatever you're facing when you are united rather than divided.

You own a successful brick and mortar business. Everyone likes your store and you have lots of satisfied customers. You have an ideal location, at the crossroads of all the major routes in town. Business is good, but you feel it's time to update the look and feel of your store to give it a more modern flair. So, you embark on the challenging process of renovation. After finding the right people to do the job you decide to take a well-deserved vacation,

Reprise Media's Managing Partner Peter Hershberg has a commentary titled " Five Ways to Manage Your Brand Reputation " in today's Mediapost Online Media Daily. He was inspired by a recent Business Wire panel discussion on social media to look at how the relationship has changed between marketers and consumers thanks to the open forum of the online world. His five steps give a good blueprint on how to explore the world of social media, what can be learned there,

Once again, Reprise Media's SVP of Business Development Dan Kashman comes through with a great article on a Monday morning. This time its AdAge's Abbey Klaassen earning accolades around our office for her insightful take on the impact of quality score and its effect on Hollywood. She argues that because each film they market is a discrete short-term campaign and usually revolves around high volume keywords like "Angelina Jolie" or "Jack Black,

What are all us search marketers going to be discussing this weekend at our garden parties, club luaus, and intimate yacht rides? Probably Hellboy 2 but here are a few of the other topics that will be touched upon between canapés and badminton. Scrabble Scrambles to Squash Scrabulous â€" Still Needs a "u" to Spell Squash Hasbro, the makers of Scrabble, have been making an unhappy sound since earlier in the year over top Facebook app Scrabulous.

Ah, Summer. Here in New York that means soaring temperatures, dogs sticking to the sidewalks, and a distinctive pong emanating from the Port Authority region we locals call "Eau de oui oui." If you are Steve Harty you might escape to your house in the Hamptons for a little relief. My personal default setting is the Jersey shore. Either way, books and the beach go together like Amy Winehouse and liver damage,

The biggest SEO opportunity and challenge for any publishing website is to understand the difference in writing for print and writing for the web. Typically, publishing websites port over print headlines directly to the web unchanged. Sadly, this results in large amounts of great content that will never be clicked on or found through search engines. At the same time,