interesting thread discussing the pros and cons of writing expert articles and using  these to gain more incoming links. main points:

teaser articles can work well - keep the full article on your site but promote a shorter version with a link back

unless your site is brand new, it is better to host the articles and then promote them. there is less benefit to be gained from linking directly.

read more about article submission on the high rankings forum.

Some great tips from a recent summit. Don’t jump on the bandwagon of new marketing tactics. Sometimes the old tried and tested work best. Get inbound links from within authoritative text. Make sure you market to your user base as well as the decision makers. Network and leave work on time.

Read the b-to-b lessons from MarketingSherpa

although i hate to admit it, microsoft seem to come up with about the best way to search for images that i’ve seen.

the image search on windows live really is a joy to use. the usability guys seem to have put in overtime. roll over images and they bulge, displaying more info about the dimensions and file size. click on the image and see it on the page on which it exists. nothing new here. but the searched images move onto a side frame making it easier to move on.

but the killer app for me has to be the scratchpad. just drag items onto this area and you can revisit at will. just pick out the items that interest you and hold onto them for perusal whenever you decide.

so, go ahead and delve into a tool that really brings the web’s images alive.

not a big fan ever since he sent out his email newsletter in about 40 point ariel, but here the usability curmudgeon has his say on the overlap between paid search and usability.

as the marketplace gets more saturated, the only way you can outbid your competition is if you can convert more visitors. and for this end usability is useful. Nielsen claims that this requires user testing to determine the ‘why’ - a valid point, however gains can be made through simple A/B testing.

nielsen on usability, ajax, paid search..

report by e-marketer into online activity in india brings up the disparities between the high-tech reputation and the number of people connected to the internet.

read more about india online

maybe everyone is down the internet cafe, sharing computer…at least that’s what it appeared like in goa last time i visited.

so, just over a year ago murdoch bought myspace for 580m. a couple of months ago google paid myspace 900m for the rights to advertise on the network.

today, google has paid 1.6bn (numbers are in dollars) for youtube, a service playing young upstart to the likes of myspace (the company only started in 2005 and is already one of the most-viewed sites on the internet). i guess that saves google having to work out some advertising deal. all in the same month the much-loved tech house moved into madison ave.

so, are all these actions related? possibly, if you were to lay down the game plan for a company that started with technology, discovered a potent internet advertising model  and then decided it wanted to spread that model to every available channel. from the humble beginnings with search, there’s been forays into the world of email (gmail), blogging (blogger), radio (dMarc) and mobile advertising (google local).

but the youtube purchase should send a warning bell to the television networks (and possibly film as well?) - the days of internet distribution of multimedia content to the mass market may not be that far off. what does that mean? possibly a sharp drop in primetime viewing figures. the kind of myrrh the music and newspaper industry are finding themselves in.

what will the new networks look like? essentially although there will still be the core channels that usurp much of the audience, there’s room for just about every niche you can think of. add global coverage to that and all of a sudden you have a whole new broadcast market looking at you. step up the b2b world. step up the minority interest companies. you will soon have a brave new world.

or is it just brin and page throwing a tissy fit with their wallets after losing out to murdoch with myspace?

there are a bunch of them but in case you’re as forgetful as i am, you can find a refresher list of google search shortcuts.

my favourites:

45 celsius in Fahrenheit

info:www.websearch.about.com

inurl:chewbacca

google sitemaps has been rolled out of beta with a number of new services.

a great way to check that the big g is picking up the pages you want it to, see what search terms your site is being listed for and find out how often your site is crawled.

more info on google webmaster central