Well, socially speaking, there being more interest in First Lady-Elect Michelle Obama than in Britney Spears or Paris Hilton is a positive change, one that bodes well for society. On the flip side, as Inauguration Day nears, spammers are rewarding that renewed interest in affairs of state with an onslaught of junk mail. Of the 1.4 million spam emails analyzed by SPAMfighter in December, Michelle Obama was the subject nearly five times as much as Britney Spears was, nearly six times as often as Paris Hilton, and ten times as much as Angelina Jolie. read more

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Ask.com has partnered with NASCAR and Hall of Fame of Racing to become the official search engine for the sport."As part of our strategy to go deeper into the highest-volume categories and provide the best answer, the first time, every time, we want to be the first place fans search online for NASCAR information," said Ask.com Chief Executive Officer Jim Safka.read more

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Google has introduced a new Sitemap Generator for webmasters to help them create better sitemap files. Google had previously introduced one back in 2005, and watched many other people make their own, but this one is different they say. read more

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 UPDATE: Cutts has tallied the demands so far and shares them in a list here.read more

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Remember all that hype about a pair of Google searches being equivalent to heating a teakettle to boiling? Yeah, never mind. It seems the Times Online did a little fuzzy math and the Harvard source credited with providing that little tidbit says they didn’t hear that from him. read more

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How long do you think it will take Google to corner a full three-fourths of the search market? According to the latest Hitwise report, not long. Does April or May sound too conservative? read more

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Okay knuckleheads, you can’t rely on a website to make sure a girl’s 18. And when you get in trouble because she’s actually 14, it’s not the website’s fault, even if their age verification process is ridiculous. read more

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Yahoo has provided a look at how Americans have been searching for economic data in recent times. One query they specifically look at is "Obama stimulus package," which has quadrupled the number of searches over the last week, when compared to the week before. read more

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Google has released a Quick Search Box tool for Macs that it hopes will make searching easier outside of the browser.The Google Mac Blog offers more details. "One of our goals at Google is to make your search experience as fluid as possible. While much of our work is focused on Google.com, we're trying to make it just as easy to search outside your browser."read more

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It’s not just about clicks and easily measured click-through-rates. Search marketers shouldn’t forget about the power of branding, or presence as I’ve called it previously, in the search results. Just because a consumer sees the brand but doesn’t click right away, it doesn’t mean that appearance was without worth.read more

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Times Online ran an article citing several studies about Internet use and the consumption of energy. Information used for this report suggested that Google searches are responsible for a large amount of CO2 emissions.  The article reads: read more

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There is no question that blogging can help improve your search engine optimization efforts. Stephan Spencer, Founder & President Netconcepts talked about some of the reasons why in the following video, but he also said he favors some platforms over others for SEO purposes. Namely, he recommends WordPress or b2evolution as opposed to Google-owned Blogger.read more

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The Googleplex already has a reputation as being a kind of Emerald City within Mountain View—pet friendly, masseurs on staff, Lego-topian mindsets—but the best company to work for has kept one perk relatively quiet: Google University’s School of Personal Growth. read more

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Encyclopedia Britannica is finally giving in to user-generated crowd wisdom—to an extent but not without some harsh fightin’ words aimed toward Google and Wikipedia. read more

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Online video is consuming the web as we know it whether you like it or not. Some prefer text content over video in most cases, and that's ok too. I don't think text is going anywhere, but demand for video is on the rise from both consumers, and businesses looking to stay on top of their marketing. Just like not all text is great, not all video is great, but when done well, I think you will find that it offers plenty of reward. Content and Reputation read more

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On Wikipedia’s eight birthday, Yahoo has set its Wikipedia Searchmonkey app on by default. The application pulls more information from Wikipedia and makes it viewable in the search results.Wikipedia results will appear with deep links to as many as four sections of the article about the searched-for topic, a photo if one appears in the corresponding article, and a snippet from the top of the article. For example, if one were to conduct a search on Cyrus the Great of Persia, the result would appear like this: read more

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So here’s the question; are behavioural metrics being used in modern search? You do remember them right? Those warm and fuzzy little signals such as bounce rates that there all the rage in late 2008 in the search engine optimization world? Sure you do… but let’s take one last look.read more

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If you haven’t heard of Katrina Darrell yet, she’s probably incredibly disappointed, and so are her, ahem, handlers. After all, her name is currently at the top of Google Hot Trends’ top search gainer list. She’s also known as “bikini girl,” in case you didn’t catch her name for all the, well, distraction. read more

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Dave Desvousges has skills. Not nunchuk skills or bow hunting skills (he might, I don’t know) but mad SEO skills and a ton of entrepreneurial spirit. Turns out, he’s also the manager and agent for “international superstar” Renaldo Lapuz. Who?read more

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Google is now showing text ads in image searches regularly. This is not the first time people have noticed such ads, but it is probably so for this frequency. "Since 2005, we have reported signs of Google placing ads on their image search service," notes Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable. "In May 2008, Google said they would run ads on image search and then signs of text ads on image search back in December. But it has really not stuck and people saw the ads on and off."read more

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Bill Slawski at SEO By the Sea talked about a very interesting concept today regarding a social fashion search engine in which you would submit measurements and create a 3D model of your body to create a profile. You would then more easily be able to shop for clothes and shoes online based on a variety of variables.read more

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Knol is a service from Google that lets people write "authoritative articles about specific topics." Recently, the 100,000th "knol" was published since the service's launch in July.read more

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Google looks to be taking another step forward on the path towards personalized search.  Some users have been given access to a new option that allows them to identify sites they'd like to see more often on their results pages.read more

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Last week, Google announced the end of some of its services, and among them was the ability for users to upload videos to Google Video. They said they would be refocusing their attention on building a more comprehensive video search engine, and why not? They've already got YouTube.read more

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Google held onto its search advertising market lead during the fourth quarter with 76 percent market share while Yahoo gained 3 percent share year-over-year, according to a report from Efficient Frontier.The search marketing firm based its report on analysis of 92 million impressions and 600 million clicks across a portion of its customers.read more

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AOL has updated its video search engine Truveo with a new application for the iPhone that includes new features and additional videos.The new features for the iPhone application includes "Intelligent Query Completion" which assists users by suggesting keywords or television shows. Users can also search for videos by length.read more

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If the outgoing Bush Administration was thought to run a secretive, bubble-icious type of White House, the Obama Administration so far is proving to be the opposite. The Whitehouse.gov redesign for greater transparency has already been widely noted—Presidential blog and all—but the website is now much more open to a new kind of visitor: the search engine spider. read more

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The future of search engine optimization is uncertain right now. Google is experimenting with personalization, and the need for quality, engaging, and usable content is becoming more important than ever. One part of a site's usability is the ease with which a user can find desired content. A common way to make this easier, is site search, which Google itself happily provides.read more

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Google is set to release its Q4 2008 earnings report tomorrow, and the company will likely set the tone for the entire search marketing industry and the online economy going into 2009. According to a recent market report, Google’s got a tough sell on Thursday. read more

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Forestle is a search engine with the goal of saving the Rain Forests. It was built on Google Custom Search, but Google revoked the site's search functionality claiming that Forestle offered "incentives to click artificially on sponsored links," which is not compliant with Google's policies. read more

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