MSN search results have been found to contain the dubious Web Directory results in many search results.

For those who do not know the official MSN description of this category is "Within Web Directory results, there may also be links where the Web site owners have paid for the expedited review of their site or for clicks to their site. These sites are ranked using the normal algorithm applied to all links within each section, with no change in rank due to payment."

These are where the EVIL LookSmart listings appear. An example search for "dubious" shows a couple dubious web directory results.

MakeMeTop has stated that the offical contract MSN had with LookSmart allows them to use the LookSmart directory free of charge as it was when they dumped LookSmart. Those people appearing in LookSmart as it was 16 January are getting a ton of free distribution.

LookSmart stocks are on a slight bounce upward today (~5% when I looked), perhaps MSN does still find some value in their product?

Excruciating: The Lycos portal is dying a slow death... recently they announced they will be closing their chat and community services in an effort to streamline their core business.

"Beginning Feb. 1, Lycos' community sites, such as chat, message boards, clubs and images, will close. All content, such as text and photos, will be deleted, the notice states."

When a portal does not own its own search services, does not have the best news, and is giving little notice to the fact they are destroying their main asset, it is an ugly site.

They really could not have thought of a quicker way to sell of customer loyalty. Look for Lycos to disappear in the next year or two...

I keep reading these marketing books which say that markets are conversations and over at SearchGuild we recently had two distinctly different types of people come to the forums. Each came to represent their product and they fared way differently. Person 1: Dez from WebSearch.com.au spoke in a human voice about his search engine. He has even lended tips to some moderators on how to improve their sites...we think Dez is the bomb diggity!

Person 2: DirectorySearch from DirectorySearch announced his URL and basically bailed. In the process he alienated many of us and actually hurt his product. He never gave his name and failed to even fully answer the questions about his products.

DirectorySearch does have a good script, but product alone does not make or break you. It's how you use the product and how you communicate with the customer that helps build long term value.

Articles as links The fundamental base of the internet is not the page, but the link. A great way to accumulate links is to write articles and submit them to places interested in quality articles. Where do I submit articles in my field? Some places will accept articles automatically and some require editorial approval. If you know your industry well you should know some places that accept articles. I know within the search engine field I can submit articles to sites like Lil Engine, ISEDB, SearchGuild, and a variety of others.

Where do I submit general articles? There are also sites which take general articles such as Idea Marketers, Buzzle, Ebooks n Bytes, Article Central. The list goes on and on.

How do articles give me links? When you write articles for free you are typically given a by-line or author bio which you can link to your website.

How long should my articles be? Typically it is a good idea to review the editorial guidelines of websites before submitting articles. Most sites like articles around 600 to 900 words since the internet is a quick medium. Some sites like articles up to 1500 to 2000 words so they can split up the content to show more ads. Reading a few articles from the site should give you an idea what they are looking for.

Article resource location tips: A good tip to finding more might be to search for the name of a search engine copywriter. Karon Thackton is found on over 1,000 documents!

In addition to searching out people in your field you may want to use some of the Yahoo Announcement Groups and other article resources. Feel free to submit article resource locations in the comments :)

Submiting articles to Ezines is not something I generally do. I find that if you write an ok article and submit it to a few of these places people will just pick you up. You want to be careful about seeming spamy when trying to submit articles to ezines. A few good Ezine lists would be Ezine Universe, Topica, the Ezine Directory

Additional article resources from Jeremy Gossman are listed below.

http://goarticles.com/
http://ezinearticles.com/add_url.html
http://amazines.com
http://www.articlecity.com/
http://bpubs.com/
http://businessknowhow.com/
http://www.certificate.net/wwio/ideas.shtml
http://www.promotionworld.com/
http://promotenewz.com/

Yahoo Announcement Groups

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ArticlePublisher/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Free_eContent/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Free-Reprint-Articles/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FreeWrites/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freE-zinecontent/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/netwrite-publish-announce/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/publisher_network/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ReprintArticles-Paradise/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheWriteArticles
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aainet/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Free-Content/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aabusiness/

Eventually if you do a good enough job with your articles people who syndicate your artilces will have those same articles syndicated from there! Here is another small list of Ezine directories.

<update>here are a few more sites you can submit articles to:
www.purplepages.ie
www.stickysauce.com
www.certificate.net
www.freesticky.com
www.bullmarketer.com

Here is another free XLS articles checksheet which shows over 70 sites where you can submit articles. Thanks Zoran

[update: here is more article submission locations]

</update>

The search for "Google Sells Christmas" will show you that about 40 web pages reference my second article. Before I wrote those articles my site was not popular, now it kinda is.

You can also look at content provider networks in DMOZ or the Yahoo! Directory.

Also a while ago somebody spammed me trying to promote "marketing blaster" and "search engine geek." If people publish articles that were sent to them via spam then odds are they will likely want to publish your articles too, so you may want to search for a few variations of those names such as "marketing blaster" or "marketingblaster."

AOL and Playboy makeup and makeout...alright I know what your thinking "Playboy would never makeout with the ugly likes of AOL."

Your right! But Playboy did settle their keyword advertising case with AOL.

The entire revenue model of search goes in the toilet if they can not sell ads related to companies and products. Whie I personally am not a fan of AOL, this out of court settlement is a good deal for search in general.