so, it looks like Google is wasting no time in putting its deal with Myspace in place.

apparently Google ads are now appearing on Myspace searches. If your running paid search ads, you might want to check that you are not suddenly receiving a lot more inappropriate traffic through Myspace.

uc berkley is now offering a splattering of their introductory courses online.

if you’re interested in the search industry from the more technical perspective then check out this series of lectures:

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=owner%3Aucberkeley+is141&page=1&so=2

especially if you want to hear sergey rambling on about how google came about.

ah, again through the wonderful thinking aloud came across this new shopping idea from panic designs.

just drag a t-shirt onto the ‘cart’ bar for one of the most visual online shopping experiences you can imagine. could see it working well in the grocery shopping market. probably not so good for buying plasmas.

given google’s push with the wonderful ajax, interesting to see what others have been doing with this technology that’s slowly destroying the web’s page-by-page paradigm.

found a reference to snap on thinking aloud. interesting that snap builds up an image of the destination page as you search. look at this for usability search.

what if this could be worked into site navigation so that you can view a page on a site before you go there? could help eliminate all those dead ends? how much would that change visitor behaviour…

Some interesting research on the influence of blogs on B2B buying decisions.
“Blogs have made inroads into B2B technology companies with more than 53 percent of respondents saying the content they read in blogs has an impact on their work-related purchasing decisions. Some 80 percent of respondents say they read blogs, with 51 saying they read them at least once a week.”

as with all surveys, it’s worth taking with a pinch of salt - could be that those interviewed wanted to appear more tech-savvy then they really are. still, makes you think that there is a lot more that can be done in this area given the relatively small number of B2B companies blogging.

ok, what exactly goes in the link has always left me a bit baffled. mainly because i’ve always worked for companies who will put ‘click here to see the latest features’. hmm.

from an SEO point of view, that’s pretty much a given no-no: link text is too important in describing the page to search engines to include ‘click here’.

but the W3C goes a step further and recommends leaving out all verb-phrases from link text. this would be a good one to test…

doesn’t matter the industry, anyone can do this, apparently. as buying links becomes more and more problematic (finding the damn things, search engines getting more canny to spotting them), the search marketing community seems to be moving towards the idea of link baiting - creating appealing content that creates links automatically. you create the content, give it a little push and watch the links flood in.

so goes the theory. dont’ believe it? read these great examples of link baiting. my personal fave is the mentos/diet coke phenomenon.

one thing though. these tactics aren’t exactly new. there was a time when the swords were drawn between white hat and black hat seo. these debates seem to have subsided. and if generating good content, content that your audience/community want is the new mantra, then it seems like the white hats are coming out on top. 

now where did i put that blog…