Whatever the cause, today my focus seems to be shifting from one story to the next as a number of big headlines come hurtling down the social stream. You know what that means. It’s time for some delectable search marketing news bites.

Imminent Partnership between Bing and Yahoo Finds SEM Industry Support

Six weeks after the launch of Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing, search market share estimations are showing some normalizing as the initial-launch frenzy dies down. And while it looks like Bing saw a gain in momentum, rumor is Microsoft will soon be announcing a partnership with Yahoo!. Obviously, many questions remain. For instance, what might the deal mean for the Yahoo! Search Submit program? Will they do away with it or integrate it into Bing?

A poll conducted by Search Engine Journal suggests that the search engine optimization community is overwhelmingly in support of a Yahoo!-Bing partnership.

And with the early buzz of the launch now fading, analysts have been able to observe some trends in users’ behavior on Bing. One such observation comes from the ad network Chikita, which found that Bing users are 50 percent more likely than Google users to click on ads on the destination site.

Horizon Realty Sues Twitter User for Libel

In May, Twitter user Amanda Bonnen tweeted that property management company Horizon Realty was doing little to remedy a mold problem at her apartment. Today Horizon Realty took legal action against Bonnen, asking for $50,000 in reparations.

Never one to accept an attack lying down, the Twitterverse has rallied in support of the former Twitter user (Bonnen has since deleted her Twitter account). As if we didn’t already know this, the scorn of the Twitterverse should be avoided at all costs.

The social media savvy have pointed out that Twitter has proven to be a valuable tool for resolving customer dissatisfaction issues, with @comcastcares being an example that comes to mind. Instead, some believe Horizon Realty took the sue-now-ask-questions-later approach. It just may backfire as Horizon Realty becomes synonymous with a company that just doesn’t understand how to treat customers right.

On the flip side, Horizon Realty (pdf) says that Bonnen was suing them first. Curiouser and curiouser. I’m beginning to think Lisa’s right when she says the whole consumer empowerment thing is going too far.

Time Warner Buys Back Google’s Stake in AOL, Signaling an AOL Spin Off

In what could be the first step towards an AOL IPO, Time Warner purchased Google’s five percent stake in AOL for $283 million. The Time Warner board voted to spin off AOL as a separate company last May, with a prerequisite being a buy back of Google’s shares. The sale was a loss for Google, which purchased its stake for $1 billion in 2005.

Earlier this month, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, formerly of Google, shared his vision for the future of AOL following his first 100 days with the company. In interviews, Armstrong suggested that AOL would be shopping around for a search partner when its deal with Google comes up next year.

Buckle your seat belts, ladies and gentlemen. We’re in for a fast ride!

Today on Bruce Clay, Inc.’s weekly podcast, SEM Synergy, Yahoo!’s Search Submit program was the subject of the show. Of course, in light of the Binghoo development, strategies aimed at search engine optimization for Yahoo! search may be reevaluated.

Editor’s note: Amy’s perspective on how the partnership might affect SSP is included in the update below.

That’s the drawback of recording a show beforehand. If I could re-interview Amy Figliuolo, vice president, sales at search marketing firm Position Technologies and an expert in managing Yahoo! Search Submit campaigns, I’d probably ask a few different questions knowing what I know now.

For instance, does Figliuolo believe the Search Submit program will continue once Bing completely powers Yahoo! search? I’d think a profitable program like Search Submit would be integrated into the newly combined Binghoo search platform.

As a supporter of the advantages offered by Yahoo! Search Submit, Amy hopes to see the program continued in the combined Yahoo!-Bing search platform. She feels that, currently, Search Submit makes search on Yahoo! much more efficient for advertisers in terms of ROI thanks to the flat CPC. Amy consistently receives positive feedback about the performance of SSP, often times hearing that it performs better than paid search not only on Yahoo! but on Google as well.

Another reason why the marketing community may want to see Search Submit incorporated into Yahoo!-Bing search, is the opportunity it affords to marketers with sites in Flash. All-Flash sites have historically had indexing problems, so SSP is extremely valuable in this sense as well.

“I’m obviously biased,” Amy said, “but advertisers really value SSP so hopefully the program will continue to be offered.”

Bruce Clay is a firm believer in Search Submit as a way to manage a site’s Yahoo! search listings with control and flexibility while freeing up time to optimize a site for bot crawls. Figliuolo offers great information to help guide marketers to the best Search Submit fit. Despite the potentially game-changing partnership, it’s really not the time to abandon a Yahoo! search strategy — though it would be short-sighted not to consider how the deal will affect SEO and the search industry.

Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of the search marketing news site Search Engine Land, is conducting a poll, asking participants to answer “yes”, “no” and “don’t know” to the question: Do you think selling search will hurt Yahoo’s prospects of being a major web destination or not?

As of this morning Danny reported that two-thirds of respondents had answered “yes.” But I rather agree with Kevin Newcomb’s assessment that the deal will be good for Yahoo!, Bing, and even searchers.

I mean, why is it that in the marketing world we talk about finding what you’re good at and capitalizing on it, and yet when Yahoo! takes this approach, the plan is blasted as a death knell? Yahoo! has never been all about search. Yahoo! is a media company, a leading news portal, an online service provider and Internet property manager. Search has long played a large role in the company’s media mix, but I leave it up to Yahoo! to decide whether or not pursuing innovation in the search sector is the best strategy for their own future.

Also, who else sees this partnership as the industry’s best shot at a competitor to rival Google? As the process for antitrust approval gets underway, it’s clear that federal officials generally feel that “Competition is typically improved by having more competitors, not fewer.” But when it comes to this David and Goliath story, I think two heads are probably better than one when it comes to the best chance for the underdogs to compete.

I don’t think we should be writing off search’s number two and number three yet. We’ll have to wait to see if the deal will meet regulatory approval. And if they do, I think Yahoo! and Microsoft deserve a chance to show their true combined power. In the never-ending saga of search musical chairs, why designate the Binghoo deal as a death sentence when it could very well be the start of a beautiful marriage?

A few weeks ago, the article Is Most of SEO Just A Boondoggle? sparked some lively conversation within the SEO community. While I don’t often enter public debates online, this one gave me much pause for thought as it weighs on the future of search engine optimization and how our business will be conducted online.

As you all know, I have been doing SEO for many years. In that time I have seen the good, the bad and even some ugly excuses for search optimization services as they play out on Web sites both large and small.

But those points made in the article above suggest to me a different kind of confusion — this one between the objectives of SEO and the development of clean, spiderable code. I believe the remedy for this issue is to promote greater understanding through testing, observation and education.
HTML Constructs

Over the years, search engines have treated various tags in different ways. Take the Meta Keywords tag for instance. It was once an important ranking indicator. Today it holds little sway in the ranking algorithm.

This serves to illustrate just how fickle the search engines can be. Rather than trying to predict how important each HTML tag is to search engine rankings, I find more consistent results come from using HTML as intended.

It used to be that a site needed every Meta tag in order to rank. Now that’s not the case. No one element will cause a site to rank, but it’s crucial to remember that SEO is effective as a whole. When I read that an optimized H1 tag is a waste of time, I immediately wonder if an H1 tag can hurt your site. How could it ever be wrong to use a valid HTML construct the way it was supposed to be used? The search engines have certainly changed their minds before. Make your site all that it can be by using HTML as it was intended.
XML Sitemaps

As Vanessa Fox pointed out in her response to the article above, XML Sitemaps serve an important and necessary function. An XML file does not promote PageRank transfer since the search engine bot will not be brought to pages through a link; a crawlable site map is much better suited for this purpose. However, an XML file often causes pages to be added to the index, which is an important objective of search engine optimization.

There’s something to be said here about the difference between optimizing a small site versus a large site. While the methodology is much the same, there are special considerations that large sites have — a prominent one being the challenge of getting pages found and indexed by search engines. In these situations, nothing is as helpful as an XML Sitemap.

Also, consider the use of an XML Sitemap when redirecting one site to another. A 301 is great, but the old page needs to be spidered for the 301 to be found and for the new target page to acquire the PageRank. By submitting your old XML file the 301s will be found faster. That’s worth something to me!
Keywords in URLs and Image Links

In SEO, nothing is ever black and white. Keyword-rich URLs are helpful to ranking goals, and so is domain age. These two considerations must be considered and balanced before making any changes to a site. However, it would be misleading to say that keyword-rich URLs serve no purpose.

First of all, SEOs have a responsibility to make the best Web site possible, not just for search engines. Keyword-rich URLs stand out as relevant to human users scanning search results, thus serving a purpose for human users. Furthermore, when a link uses a URL as anchor text, any keywords included in that URL will add increased relevancy as a link value signal to the search engine. Keyword-rich URLs add value to a site in more than one way.

As for the point about image links, they are followed, but our research suggests that the anchor text may not be associated with that image ALT text. This topic requires a much longer explanation than this post would allow.
Page Copy

As the body copy makes up the majority of a page’s crawlable content, it makes sense that it would be an important consideration of the search engine optimization process. The inclusion of targeted keywords throughout the body copy is a signal of relevance for search engine rankings.

In the past, keyword density was used as a hard-line way of specifying keyword use objectives for a page. Today, keyword density is only valuable when characterizing populations of pages and determining the target for a specific phrase.

There is no magic density, but there are winning page footprints. Through keyword distribution analysis — which uses density as just one of many considerations — an SEO can compare their site’s page with a competitor’s page and understand how keyword usage on a page relates to rankings. Few people use keyword distribution and density metrics correctly or understand how to use it, and density alone is nearly useless, but it does have its place.
Linking Structure and Site Architecture

The proper use of the nofollow tag has been discussed at great length recently. Overall, nofollow links are a waste… unless you know when to use them. Selective nofollow use is reasonable if used to manage the dilution of theme-architected content; this is a technique used in the practice of siloing a site.

I think this is a nice opportunity to address arguments that theming a site is a waste. We have documented cases of tripling traffic within hours of uploading siloed, or themed, sites that are properly architected for SEO.

According to Google’s head of Web spam, Matt Cutts: “Spend your time on making good site architecture so PageRank just flows wherever you want.”

In our experience, using selective nofollow links has been shown to help support a theme-architectured site. Removing nofollow tags where the targeted page is link poor has also been known to help.

As always, there is no easy rule to follow to get successful SEO results. The best results require a skilled professional with background, experience and a strong ability to analyze a site’s strengths and weaknesses.
Education

Unfortunately, many SEOs do not understand how to perform the duties associated with the job. This young industry is gaining mainstream attention, attracting a number of new and inexperienced novices to the profession. Many are junior webmasters who claim to be SEOs, and clients simply do not know to challenge those claims.

Some of them go to forums, read posts that are ancient, and then take it as gospel. They seldom run their own experiments, they do not have firsthand knowledge gained through observing cause and effect, and they often regurgitate the “knowledge” gained by playing telephone.

As more and more new blood enters the SEO arena, the availability of high-quality education will become increasingly important. Do-it-yourself learning plays a critical role in the development and advancement of SEO methodology, but as with anything available on the Internet, credibility and reliability can be suspect. Knowledge transfer and sharing by those with trustworthy history and experience in the industry will contribute much to the ethical and educated growth of Internet marketing.

The uneducated, those that make a living guessing and doing only part of the job, and the few who teach but cannot do — these are the people aiming to knock down SEOs who succeed. Fear, uncertainty and doubt are great tools for the snake oil SEO. But trust that SEO does work. If it did not, so many people would not be so easily fooled.

Search engine optimization is only a boondoggle and a waste if done by someone lacking SEO skills.
The Big Picture

In a very competitive space, every little thing can make a difference. There is no HTML element too small or tactic too insignificant when the strength of SEO comes down to the combined whole.

I often say that optimization is about making a site the least imperfect, a strategy which must take into account every last bit of a site. Why object to on-page code optimization when doing it right can’t hurt you?

Education and experimentation will prove the most reliable road to SEO success. And you can’t seek to understand SEO only as it is today — you must also try to predict the SEO of the future. Every week SEO is a new industry. In the end it comes down to this: SEO is not the blind application of hard-and-fast rules, but rather SEO aims to make every page the best it can be.

Today’s pop, rock, and rap stars owe more to William Bunch than they could ever realize. Bunch recognized way back in the 1920s that creating a bad-ass persona would do wonders for record sales, and drawing on a shady character from Black folklore, he re-christened himself Peetie Wheatstraw, claiming (long before Robert Johnson thought of it) that he had sold his soul to the devil down at the crossroads in exchange for success as a musician. It was a great calling card, and success he had, cutting upwards of 170 tracks for the ARC, Bluebird, and Decca labels before his death in 1941, and at his peak in the 1930s, he was the equivalent of a superstar.

A down and dirty pianist and a surprisingly innovative singer (his frequent use of “oh well well” as a verbal punctuation device led to all sorts of variations by other singers), Wheatstraw was in essence the first gangsta, and his songs covered amazingly modern song topics like drug use (mostly alcohol), murder, suicide, unemployment, poverty and, of course, sex, and he was a pivotal figure in the conversion of country blues to urban themes. Wheatstraw seldom varied from his chosen template on sides like the jazz-inflected “Gangster Blues,” “Chicago Mill Blues,” and the jaunty (and ultimately ironic, given the terms of his demise) “Trucking Thru Traffic,” which features Lonnie Johnson on guitar. Even Wheatstraw’s tragic early death (he was 39 when he died) had rock star cinema written all over it, as he and his friends tried unsuccessfully to race their car through a train crossing with a train bearing down on them, finally giving, as the legend goes, the devil his due.

The actor and former model — who is married to Hollywood star Demi Moore — admits his good looks and charm have got him where he is.

“I’ve had a decent run going on my charm and good looks,” he said. “Because God knows I’m not talented.

“I had a teacher when I was in school, and I used to screw around in class a little bit, and she pulled me off to the side one day and said, ‘Listen, I don’t know who you think you are, but you’re not going to be able to get by on your charm and good looks for too long.’

“Was she ever wrong.”

Adam Sandler’s serious side has caught on with audiences. Universal Pictures’ Funny People, with Sandler trading adolescent humour for an adult story about a terminally ill comedy star, debuted as the top weekend movie with $23.4 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.

It was a modest weekend for Hollywood, with the shadow of last summer’s juggernaut The Dark Knight hanging over the current blockbuster season. Overall summer revenues, which had been running ahead of last year’s since early May, dipped below those of 2008, when The Dark Knight was packing theaters for weeks on end.

“It’s staggering how strong The Dark Knight was last year. At this point last year, The Dark Knight had added nearly $400 million to the summer box office. How can you compete with that?” said Paul Dergarabedian, box-office analyst for Hollywood.com.

Revenues this weekend came in at $122 million, down 20 percent from a year ago, when The Dark Knight led with $42.7 million, followed by The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor with $40.5 million.

The Dark Knight went on to a $533 million domestic haul, the biggest hit since Titanic.

Since the summer season opened the first week of May, Hollywood’s domestic receipts total $3.34 billion, off 0.8 percent through the same weekend last summer, according to figures compiled by Hollywood.com.

Factoring in this year’s higher ticket prices, movie attendance this season is down 4.4 percent compared with summer 2008.

Next weekend’s new action tale, Paramount’s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, has great fan buzz and could help set Hollywood back on track to break last summer’s domestic revenue record of $4.2 billion, Dergarabedian said.

For the year, movies have rung up $6.43 billion, on pace to break the revenue record of $9.68 billion set in 2007.

Coming in second for the weekend was the Warner Bros. fantasy adventure Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince with $17.7 million, raising its domestic total to $255.5 million.

Disney’s family action tale “G-Force*, the previous weekend’s top movie, slipped to third with $17.1 million, lifting its total to $66.5 million.

The weekend’s other new wide release, 20th Century Fox’s family flick Aliens in the Attic, opened at No. 5 with $7.8 million.

Funny People debuted well below most of Sandler’s comedies, which typically start with $30 million to $40 million opening weekends. Universal is counting on good word of mouth to keep it alive for a long run at the box office.

The movie pairs Sandler as the dying comic with Seth Rogen as his new assistant and joke writer. It also reunites Rogen with his Knocked Up director Judd Apatow, a longtime friend and former roommate of Sandler.

Nikki Rocco, head of distribution for Universal, compared the shift in tone for Sandler to Tom Cruise’s turn as a hit man in Collateral, a film that opened in the same range then held on to become a $100 million hit.

“This is Adam and even Judd to an extent stretching out in their careers to something that’s a bit out of the norm,” Rocco said. “A big movie star in a different kind of role.”

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theatres, according to Hollywood.com.

North American Top Ten

1. Funny People, $23.4 million.

2. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, $17.7 million.

3. G-Force, $17.1 million.

4. “The Ugly Truth,” $13 million.

5. Aliens in the Attic, $7.8 million.

6. Orphan, $7.3 million.

7. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, $5.3 million.

8. The Hangover, $5.1 million.

9. The Proposal, $4.8 million.

10. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, $4.6 million.

It was, ‘Which of the following species of birds does not build its own nest but instead lays its eggs in the nests of other birds?

Is it:
A) The condor

B) The buzzard

C) The cuckoo

D) The vulture

The woman was on the spot. She did not know the answer. She had used up her 50/50 Lifeline and her Ask the Audience Lifeline.

All that remained was her Phone-a-Friend Lifeline.

She hoped she would not have to use it because….Well, her friend was, well, a blonde. But she had no alternative.

She called her friend and gave her the question and the four choices. The blonde responded unhesitatingly: ‘That’s easy. The answer is C: the cuckoo.’

The contestant had to make a decision and make it fast… She considered employing a reverse strategy and giving any answer except the one that
her friend had given her. And considering her friend was a blonde that would seem to be the logical thing to do. But her friend had responded
with such confidence, such certitude, that the contestant could not help but be convinced.

Crossing her fingers, the contestant said, ‘C: The cuckoo.’

‘Is that your final answer?’

‘Yes, that is my final answer.’

‘That answer is absolutely correct! You are now a millionaire!’

Three days later, the contestant hosted a party for her family and friends, including the blonde who had helped her win the million dollars.

‘Jeni, I just do not know how to thank you, ‘ said the contestant.

‘How did you happen to know the right answer?’

‘Oh, come on,’ said the blonde ‘Everybody knows that cuckoos don’t build nests. They live in clocks.’

Sally fainted.

This INCREDIBLE picture was taken in 1918. It is 18,000 men preparing for war in a training camp at Camp Dodge, in Iowa. EIGHTEEN THOUSAND MEN!!!!!

What a priceless gift from our grandfather

Few FACTS to Notice: Base to Shoulder: 150 feet; Right Arm: 340 feet; Widest part of arm holding torch: 12 1/2 feet; Right thumb: 35 feet; Thickest part of body: 29
feet; Left hand length: 30 feet; Face: 60 feet; Nose: 21 feet; Longest spike of head piece: 70 feet; Torch and flame combined: 980 feet; Number of men in
flame of torch: 12,000; Number of men in torch: 2,800; Number of men in right arm: 1,200; Number of men in body, head and balance of figure only: 2,000