Google to Acquire Urchin

Content, Content, Content:
Mark Cuban on content & technology

Urchin:
being acquired by Google. Wonder if they will include THAT in their free stats package. (found from SEG)

WebTrends:
Bought by Francisco Partners.

Find Profit:
recently had about a 15 page interview with Andrew Goodman talking about where search is headed. It comes free with a free trial or subscription to their site.

If You Snooze:
you lose. hehehe

FyberSearch:
Updated

Google Using Rotating Algorithms?

Google Video:
Jeff Dean talks about how Google works. Although he mentions nothing about rotating algorithms.

Google Rotating Relevancy Algorithms:
being discussed at SEW forums in this thread.

[update: NickW pointed to this post, which states that currently there are 3 main Google relevancy algorithms and that they use Agent Web Ranking to check their positioning.
McDar & WM Community also have tools that search multiple data centers at the same time.

in the SEW thread PhilC also points to a list of current active datacenter IP addresses.]

Google News Has a Few Problems

Google News:
has been in the news...

AFP, who sued Google, is no longer being syndicated in Google News
recently Google had Nazi news.
since Google does not list their sources people decided to scrape to find some of them (link via BuzzMachine)

Various Resources

Urchin:
Is apparently good stuff.

AutoLink:
48 minute IT Conversation w cory Doctorow, Robert Scoble & Marty Schwimmer

VC:
Venture Capital When You Need It When You Don't
ResearchBuzz posted that GigaBlast was looking for some funding. the VC page looks like it is no longer up though.

Books:
list of MBA resources.
Design thinking books
(both found on Seth's Blog)

FireFox Extensions:
the ones that DaveN uses

Getting Exposure:
how to get media coverage: create your own channels.

Another Blog about Google:
from News.com (found on Blogoscoped)

Flickr:
Jeremy Zawodny says Yahoo! bought them. Looks like Jeremy is getting into marketing too?

This is SEO:
Greg Boser, known for talking straight about SEO, gets a mention in Wired.
Xan states that he views the article as short sighted. I was going to post on his blog, but I did not feel like signing into my .net passport to do so.

LEGOs Rock:
and now, so does Batman.

TV B Gone:
brilliant

Website Dating:
My Density shows first and second degree relationships between websites.

The interface could be a bit cooler and smoother (perhaps if they used a bit of AJAX and ensured the text was easier to read on scroll overs if they are showing a ton of data in a small area), but it looks like a cool idea. more info about My Density and even more info here.

A9 OpenSearch:
I saw this mentioned a while ago, but I think I forgot to link to it. Essentially it allows search results to be reformatted & reappear elsewhere. Robin Good has more about why he feels it is important.

Amazon Ads:
Amazon textual ads hack. cool.

Google News Getting Sued, MSN Shopping Beta, Google AdSense Conference

This Just In:
Google News being sued by Agence France Presse for displaying subscriber only images

MSN Shopping:
Beta

Google AdSense:
Publisher Conference, reviewed. They highlighted a few sites and I think I know some of the people who may do some of the ads for some of them.

When my friend initially set up his personals page on AOL a long time ago (before he knew what a landing page was) he got so many leads that he was sending girls to his friends. Unfortunatly, I was not a friend of his at the time :(

Google Code, Pricing a Website & 302 Hijack Removal

Code:
Google Code. kinda funny to see them plugging Mark Pilgrim, who recently authored Butler.
found from SEW

State of the Media:
2005 version

Big Things:
How to Make Big Things Happen with Small Teams PDF - quick slides from SXSW presentation.

How Expensive is a Website?
tips to price a website.

LowJack:
How to deindex a 302 redirect hijack

ABC of SEO:
Brad Talmir reviews The ABC of SEO. I too bought it and have read a chunk of it so far. Thusfar I have similar thoughts as Brad. Good for learning what the jargon means, but I did not like the occassional accusatory overuse of the term black hat SEOers.

Google AdSense Ad Links, Google Local Business Center, The Butler, The Sandbox, New SEO Blogs

Ad Links by Google:
Peter D shows new AdSense change

Google Local Business Center:
wonder if the Yellow pages are feeling yellow? Andrew Goodman has the details. for now US only.

Wonder What Google thinks?
of a free product that strips out their published ads for the user

their response to autolink thusfur has been nothing short of pathetic. nice job Mark.

Ask Jeeves also recently created a FireFox toolbar.

Google Sandbox:
Does the sandbox only affect phrases containing popular words?
found on ThreadWatch

I have recently seen a site under a month old rank for some rather short query sets.

New SEO / SEM Blogs:
maybe not new, but at least new to me.
Got Ads? - seems to be more focused on the ad / ppc side of the search game. have not read it a ton yet but have seen John contribute many good posts on Andrew Goodman's SEM 2.0
Wolf Howl - should have mentioned and found this one a while ago as multiple friends have recommended it to me. his most recent post references Flatland, so it must be a cool blog :)

the conference I am at:
ended today. I could blog about a bunch of stuff but now find myself headed toward the closing party, which I suspect may give me more stuff to blog about.

Buying Links to Ban, Discount Directory Submission, Competition Equalizer

Buying Links to Ban a Competing Site:
Rumour has it that with the latest Google update a few people have started in on this practice...buying sitewide keyword rich links to help their competitors get blacklisted...surely SEO is going to get a bit more ugly here soon ;)

Directory Submission:
150 directories for $99. Not that long ago the price was $30 so there must be decent demand.

I tried the 50 blog for $10 package for a few sites a while ago, but something about that price makes me feel like the service quality has to be limited.

Price points also help people associate a value with the service, so even if the service is decent the person doing it should charge more to make people think they are getting something of value, which generally appears not to be the case right now.

I do a good bit of directory submissions from time to time. I usually submit to about the same number of directories as that package except I do both free and paid directories. I do not mind paying for links because it means that the directory is more likely to have a functional business model and the links will not go away as quick.

Directory registration is exceptionally effective in MSN and Yahoo! right now.

Competition Equalizer:
other than having a different name what the hell does this software do that AdWords Analyzer does not? Wouldn't it have been better to release any additional AdWords related features as an upgrade to the AdWords Analyzer program?