Traffic Flow SEO

In case you did not know already, Alexa and Quantcast both offer their own free lists of the top one million sites on the Web based on traffic volumes. While these lists may be interesting to compare and contrast, it is hard to find any real value in lists like these. They appear to be used to reinforce brand awareness and essentially as 'link bait' - (it is working).

Below are the links in case you want to check these out for yourself:




Quantcast 1,000,000 Top Websites List

and




Alexa 1,000,000 Top Websites List

The problem with so many free online SEO/SEM tools is that they quickly become out of date or worse, just plain broken. That is why I was happy to recently find the Domain Evaluation Tool website. This tools covers (currently accurately):

* Location of where the site is hosted
* Google PageRank
* Alexa Rank
* Domain Age
* Backlinks by engine (Google, Yahoo, AltaVista and AlltheWeb)
* Indexed pages by engine (Google, Yahoo, AltaVista and AlltheWeb)
* Bookmarks (Digg, StumbleUpon, Propeller and reddit)
* Directory listings (DMOZ and Yahoo Directory)
* Alexa stats (chart)
* Compete stats (chart)

Check it out now at - Domain Evaluation Tool

From Google newsletter:

Did you know that 20% of the queries Google receives each day are ones that have not been seen in the last 90 days, if at all?

What does that mean?

By my back of the napkin calculations, based on comScore monthly search volume estimates for Google.com (not entire Google network, just Google.com) of around 8 billion searches (around 266,666,667 searches a day) that means there is over:

53 million new search terms entered in to Google every single day!

Please note that most of these are for NEW advertisers only:

Primary Search Engines:

Yahoo! Search Marketing Coupon - $100 credit
Google Adwords Coupon - $50 credit
Ask Sponsored Listings - $50 credit

Secondary Search Engines:

Search 123 Coupon - Fund $50 and get an additional $20 for free
adhere (by Marchex) - Sign up and get $25 in free clicks
Miva - Sign up and get $25 in free clicks
Bidvertiser - $20 in free clicks
ABC Search - Match initial deposit up to $100 upon sign up
7search - 20% match on initial deposit (must use code - WM2008)

Additional Contextual Ad Placements:

Facebook Ads - $25 credit

How to layoff 1,500 employees in one day - the Yahoo! guide.

or

How to say Happy Holidays as you are pushing someone to the curb - please let them know it was difficult business decision supported by senior management (who just happens to not want to get their hands dirty) and the decision is final.

All images courtesy of ValleyWag - Yahoo's secret layoff doublespeak revealed!

If you have never heard of Directory Maximizer before, it is basically an inexpensive way to handle and track all your directory submissions. The service provides an updated list of quality, free web directories that they will submit your site to for only .14 cents per submission. The list of web directories is constantly updated and the system keeps track of what directories you have submitted to in the past. Usually there are around 1,000 web directories in the list (it fluctuates between 900 and 1,100). It is a service that I would highly recommend if you are looking for an easy way to build some quality backlinks to your site.

Currently they are running a special (they have NEVER run a special before - just an FYI). There special is listed below in detail, but ends soon, so if you are going to try them out do it while they are offering these discounts.

Also, for those that are interested, they have a small collection of very high quality paid web directories that provide discounts and other incentives if you submit your site to them via the interface in Directory Maximizer (please note that these directories include - Aviva Directory and their special is your $49.95 is a PERMANENT price for a standard listing where if you go to the site you will notice that the $49.95 is an annual payment for a standard listing).

Special Offer Details

Submit to the Entire List of Free Directories - Save up to $40!

Get an 18% Discount (save up to $25) + A Free Listing in a Paid PR4 Directory (value: $15) + 15% Discount to Submit to our Other Paid Directories
For Orders of $50 & above per site to our List of Free Directories

Get a 15% Discount + 15% Discount to submit to our Paid Directories!

For Orders of $20 & above per site to our List of Free Directories

Get a 10% Discount + 10% Discount to submit to our Paid Directories!

All offers valid only till 15th Dec’08

Check it out today at - Directory Maximizer Holiday Offer

Serph is an interesting search engine. When you type a query into Serph, it goes out and searches online social media to find the latest buzz. After it gathers the results, they are sorted and organized so the most recent buzz appears first. Serph gathers these results from blog search engines, social media websites, social news websites and social bookmarking websites. This allows Serph to show you exactly what people are saying on the web right now.

Check it out here - Serph

Aviva, another quality directory is running a holiday special. In order to celebrate the season, for the month of December, Aviva is offering clients $20 off all new submissions - both regular and featured (you can use this code for multiple submissions).

The Aviva Directory coupon code is: xmas2008

Click here to visit - Aviva Directory

Just found a fun new tool that lets you easily compare up to 5 websites to each other across data from:

* Compete.com
* Qauntcast
* Google Trends/Insights (coming soon)
* Alexa
* Technorati

For more information or to check it out click here - AttentionMeter

Reminds me of the people behind - SiteVolume

Just got an email with Best of the Web's (BOTW) promo discount code for 25% off any of their services in December including:

* Directory Submissions - Discount on both the annually recurring and/or the one-time review fee.
* Blog Directory Submissions - Save on the one-time review fee for blogs.
* Monthly Sponsorship Ads - Save on the monthly rate for all new sponsorship ads.
* Blog Advertising - Discount on all new sponsorship ads in the Blog Directory.
* Local Premium Listings – Save on the already low monthly cost.
* Sponsored Local Listings – Maximum exposure at a great monthly discount.

The promo code you use at checkout is: BLIZZARD

Click here to get started - Best of the Web 20% Off Discount Link

Google has a cool new search-based keyword tool. I just started playing with it, so I am going to provide some insight from the actual site.

As per Google's website:

The Search-based Keyword Tool generates keyword and landing page ideas highly relevant and specific to your website. In doing so, the tool helps you identify additional advertising opportunities that aren't currently being used in your AdWords ad campaigns.

Based on your URLs, the Search-based Keyword Tool displays a list of relevant user queries that have occurred on Google.com (and on other Google search properties, such as google.co.uk) with some frequency over the past year; these suggestions can be found under the Keywords tab, in the New keywords related to (site) section. In the Keywords related to your search section, you can see a broad list of keyword ideas that are also relevant, but aren't necessarily based on your site.

The keywords are also organized by category. Click any category to expand and view its subcategories. If applicable, you'll also see the keywords organized by brand names.

Also, Aaron Wall at SEO Book had a great blog post that compared this new service to one that he has a lot of respect for - Compete.com (which I also like). His article is here - Google Launches a Sweet Competitive Research & Keyword Research Tool, but what he said that made this new service from Google different than Compete.com is:

* This tool is free
* Google has more search data than Compete.com does
* This shows bid prices and search volume estimates next to keywords (like the Google Traffic Estimator)
* This shows your current page titles and keywords
* This shows the % of organic and paid traffic going to a URL


You can learn more here - Google's Search-based Keyword Tool

Alexa just released their new Hot URLs or 'What's Hot on the Web' within the last 5 minutes monitor. It is a lot of fun to check out what people are looking at and provides what Alexa calls 'The hottest pages on the web right now'...according to the Alexa Toolbar.

You can check it out here - Hot URLs

I think the well publicized upcoming Yahoo layoffs (up to 10% of their workforce starting December 10th) have been expected, but little has been said about Google's current and upcoming layoffs, which I find much more interesting.

Google has also been laying off people, a lot of people. A great article from WebGuild points out:

Google has been quietly laying off staff and up to 10,000 jobs could be on the chopping block according to sources. Since August, hundreds of employees have been laid off and there are reports that about 500 of them were recruiters for Google.

10,000 jobs on the chopping block in additional to all the previous layoffs? Wow, what does that mean? Is the search giant starting to show some weakness? What does this mean to the search space?

There are a lot of questions that will be resolved in the next couple of months and about all we can do is just wait and see what happenes. Good luck to everyone out there with their jobs on the line. It is never fun to lose your job, but even less fun if it happens during the holidays.

Google layoffs - WebGuild article

Yahoo! layoffs - Search Engine Land article

An interesting article has been pieced together indicating a theory that Microsoft may be re-branding MSN Live Search to Kumo (or KUMO). While this is interesting what will a re-branding actually provide? If this re-brand takes place as they start to add in the Powerset technology they acquired in August of 2008 this could get interesting. With a new name and new back-end technologies, will Microsoft become a true competitor or do they still need to buy some marketshare (i.e. buy Yahoo! search and/or AOL or Ask.com) to actually provide a challenger to Google.

Read more about the possible re-branding here - LiveSide.net article

An interesting article on Powerset technology (a little dated, but interesting information) - VentureBeat article

Have you ever wondered what key services a site may be using such as:
- What analytics program (i.e. Google Analytics)?
- What programming language is the site using (i.e. PHP)?
- What widgets or social bookmarks are being used (i.e. Digg, Reddit)?
- What server software is being used (i.e. Apache)?
- What affiliate marketing is being used (i.e. Amazon, Ebay affiliates)?
- What ad management is being used (i.e. DoubleClick)?
- Any many more!

Here is all the information from the site:

FAQ
What is Sitonomy?
Sitonomy is a free service that allows developers and designers to find out which technologies are used in a specific blog/site. Together with the provided statistic information of popular technologies, this service makes it easier to decide what technologies are suitable to your own site.

How to use it?
The best way to use it is to create bookmarklet that allows you in one click to get information about blog you are currently browsing.

How does it work?
Sitonomy service is analyzing over 1000 most popular blogs. Then, collected information is used to make a comprehensive analysis of the specific site.

Check it out now at - Sitonomy

I am a sucker for all-in-one tools that try to be the Swiss Army Knife of search engine optimization/marketing. Well I have a new free tool for you to check out. The site is called Quarkbase and I have found it to be quite helpful in collecting a lot of data about a site in a nice easy to digest format. Its initial interface looks a whole lot like a well known search engine (Google) when you first get started, but then unfolds into a data avalanche that is more like what I was expecting.

The site describes itself as such:

Quarkbase is a free tool to find complete information about a website.

It is a mashup of over 30 data sources and many algorithms gathering information from Internet on various topics like social popularity, traffic, associated people, etc.

Take it for a spin today at - Quarkbase

I have been looking for website or web page load time checker to make sure my pages were not taking to long to load as this is now a very important factor in your Google AdWords campaigns quality scores. While looking I found this incredible tool that not only provides the load time data it also gives me indepth knowledge of what components or code that may or may not be slowing up the overall load time and breaks it out into an easy to read graph.

Here is the official details as described on the their website:

About SiteTimer

Web Monitor allows you to monitor how long it takes for a user to download one or more of your web site pages.

It visits the page that your request and downloads all content that's directly linked from that page;

* Images
* Frames
* IFrames
* Script files
* It follows redirects

As the pages are downloaded, SiteTimer stores statistics on how long time each item takes to download, and how much data they contained. This information is then presented in a grid.

Web Monitor correctly handles http compressed material (see OctaGate Switch), and it also honors keep-alive requests to give an accurate indication of the times a real browser would spend downloading the content.
Optimizing your site

Your page shouldn't take too long to load, slow load speeds will lead to users leaving your pages even though they're interested in the material. Users are becoming less and less accepting when it comes to slow sites as internet maturity increases.

The size of the page is the main deciding factor for download times, coupled with bandwidth. Though you can influence the bandwidth of your webservers, you cannot influence the bandwidth of your users. So make sure that your pages are no larger than they need to be. To reduce the size of your pages, you can;

Decrease the size of your images:

* Use JPG instead of GIF or BMP. Sometimes PNG files are smaller than JPG files
* Use harder compression on your jpg images
* Make the images smaller in size
* Reduce the number of images
* Use HTTP compression on your web servers, which may compress code/text by up to 90%

If the first part of your page loads fast, and the parts that aren't visible yet take longer, than that's ok, because the users don't care about information that they're not ready to look at yet.
Reasons for slow load speeds

Pages can be slow to load for a number of reasons;

* As mentioned above, the pages are simply too large
* Your bandwidth is insufficient for the load that the users place on the page, in which case you'll need to upgrade your internet connection or migrate to a data center.
* Your servers are overloaded and can't cope with the load that's placed on them, even though there's bandwidth to spare. In this case, you'll need to invest in more or better hardware. You may also want to look into load balancing.
* Your users have low bandwidth - not all users have broadband, and even if they do, they may be located somewhere where internet connectivity is bad. Your only option here is to reduce the size of your page. Additionally, users may be on mobile devices such as cell phones, which have low bandwidth compared to broadband connections.

Check it out today for FREE at - OctaGate Site Timer

Just started to notice Yahoo breaking away from its sister search engines, AltaVista and AlltheWeb. Since they all use the same master database to identify pages indexed and backlinks found for any particular site you would usually find very similiar numbers across all of these engines. So, for example, if you had 10,000 backlinks to your site all three engines would usually present that data give or take 10%, but now I am starting to see Yahoo break away and show drastically different results. I just tested Discover Directory (www.discoverdirectory.com) and found a big discrepency. For reference when I checked my backlinks (link popularity) today (Monday October 27th) here is what I found (as per AskMe backlink checker).


Discover Directory Backlinks:
AllTheWeb 3,160
Altavista 3,240
Yahoo 8,778

You will notice the big difference between Yahoo and AlltheWeb and AltaVista. What does this mean? Well, with limited resources it appears that Yahoo is starting to focus its attention on its own search engine (as also obvious from its new search only marketing campaign) and is letting some of its smaller properties fade away. Will these engines be turned off? Most likely not because Yahoo has a way of keeping anything alive that generates ANY positive cashflow (i.e. Search Submit Pro/Paid Inclusion, Yahoo Directory, etc.) even if the search industry has moved past these technologies.

I am not a big fan of most of the online keyword ranking services, but ExactFactor is different. It has a great interface that is very easy to use and even provides email alerts as changes happen within your rankings. The service covers Google, Yahoo and MSN and also will track competing sites positioning relative to your website.

Currently the service if free as stated on the website, but I am sure that a more robust version that includes additional services will be avaialbe soon for some additional monthly amount.

Check it out today at - ExactFactor

I just upgraded my AT&T DSL Internet service from 1.5MB to 3.0MB only to find I am still running at around 1.5MB. As I was testing my connection I thought I might share my favorite site for speed testing for all to use (if you haven't already have been lucky enough to find it on your own) - Speedtest.net

From it's absolutely incredible Flash interface it not only provides the coolest dashboard, it is also one of the most robust tools of its type allowing you to:
- Download/upload your stats
- Compare your country or global rank
- Keep your history online for later review or comparison
- Global stats for almost any area down to the city for comparison of performance between service provides.

Check it out today at - Speedtest.net

Just found a great little free online article spinner. The site is not much to look at and all the data I can gather about it is summed up below (as copied from the site):

This Free Article Spinner is a small weekend project. I am learning affiliate marketing, which sometimes require submitting articles. Article spinner is a great help. This kind of software basically replaces words with their synonyms. As cheap as I am, I have been looking for a real free article spinner, and have trouble finding one. So I decided to write my own.

Check it out here - FREE ARTICLE SPINNER

Just saw an interesting article on CNET about the upcoming deadline looming next week for federal antitrust regulators to approve or challenge Yahoo and Google's controversial search advertising partnership, the search giant has apparently been busy trying to drum up large advertisers to provide public testimonials in support of the deal, according to a report in TechCrunch.

Let me make this perfectly clear - THIS IS NOT A GOOD PARTNERSHIP! Usually I am pretty open-minded and am willing to understand and see both sides of an issue, but in this case there really is only one side. If Yahoo and Google go through with this partnership here is what I see:

- Increased prices for Yahoo ads - one of the main reasons Yahoo gets part of my ad budgets is because its lower costs offset some of my higher priced Google ads - have to use Google for volume.

- Less insight into my ad performance - Google does not share separate performance levels of search partner sites, it just rolls it all up together, so you will no longer have a clear picture on how your Yahoo ads are performing as they have a slightly different search audience.

- Google will no longer have a large search competitor and may not have the incentive to continually update their engine at the current rate and it will become harder to have any discussions with Google over their lack of relevancy within their paid search algorithm since they will really be the only game in town.

The best solution, which I originally did not embrace would be for MSN and Yahoo to merge and/or for Yahoo to buy AOL. So, if you are approached by Google as seen in the TechCrunch article I hope you just say 'no'.

Keyword research is difficult, so why make it harder with difficult to use and mostly inaccurate tools. There are so many keyword research tools on the web that are really just worthless, they track only a minimal amount of keywords and have very questionable sources of data. There are just a few that really shine and provide real insight and ease of use while providing accurate data from reliable sources.

While I love Keyword Discovery, I have to tell you Wordpot is my new next favorite keyword research tool (replacing Wordtracker). It is absolutely incredible and easy to use (and understand). There free version offers a lot of value for those who just want to test it out and the paid version provides a lot of extras.

Check it out today at - Wordpot

Content is king on the Internet and that is especially true when it comes to the way search engines value a website. If that website has a lot of content, that content is updated often and that content is unique, then a website has a great chance of ranking well within the engines as it is considered a valuable resources.

While it may not be easy to create content and it may not be easy to update that content, you definitely do not want someone stealing that unique content you worked so hard for in order to prop up their own website. What may happen is that Google might index the other site before yours and they will get the credit for originating that content and all the search engine goodwill that comes with it.

So, you say, what is a webmaster to do? Well you can scour the Internet for years looking for copied content or you can use a service like Copyscape to track down offenders quickly and easily.

Chedk out the FREE version of Copyscape here - Copyscape Website

Ask has always struggled to get more marketshare. First they ditched their trusty mascot, Jeeves (retiring him in 2006). Then they moved into Ask 3D (early universal search - way ahead of the competition) which was incredible for the time. During that time they ran ads that ranged from chimps using the engine (maybe a bad association of its users) saying it was very simple, to a short run campaign called, "Its the Algorithm" which I think very few people really understood to crazy ads that covered equally crazy subjects. Below are a few of my favorites for your enjoyment:





Rescent research (via comsScore) has shown that people really still think of Ask as the engine you go to, to ask questions. Well it appears what is old is new again. Ask.com (as of today) is going to focus on this audience and have recently updated their site to reflect that (US - October 6 / UK October 20) change. While I think that may be a great idea, what I am saddened to see is their abandonment of many things I liked about Ask. I really enjoyed their Ask 3D search results as I thought they were much more advanced than any universal search results coming from any other engine. Below is a commercial that really shows those advanced search results (as they are no longer on the site):



What I am seeing now is still a good search engine, but with the focus now on answering questions the search results are starting reflect that and look more and more like Google results (integrating the universal search results within results, not next to them). What they lose here are the users who really enjoyed that benefit. They could have included their new Q/A results next to their search results without losing most of what Ask 3D included and held on to users like myself - just my 2 cents.

For more on what is new click here - Welcome to the New Ask.com

I just stumbled upon W3Optimizer and quickly come to love it. It is a great tool to get a high-level on-site SEO review of your webpage. While I have other tools that do the same thing (i.e. WebCEO and others) this one is online and free. It includes reviews of the:

- File name
- Page title
- Meta Refresh
- Meta Keywords
- Meta Description
- Headline (H1 tags)
- Keyword Density on the Page

In addition, they offer an interesting button you can put on your site that reveals your on-site ranking as per W3Optimizer.

Check it out here - W3Optimizer website link

Just got an email with Best of the Web's (BOTW) promo discount code for 20% off any of their services in October including:

* Directory Submissions - Discount on both the annually recurring and/or the one-time review fee.
* Blog Directory Submissions - Save on the one-time review fee for blogs.
* Monthly Sponsorship Ads - Save on the monthly rate for all new sponsorship ads.
* Blog Advertising - Discount on all new sponsorship ads in the Blog Directory.
* Local Premium Listings – Save on the already low monthly cost.
* Sponsored Local Listings – Maximum exposure at a great monthly discount.

The promo code you use at checkout is: ZOMBIE

Click here to get started - Best of the Web 20% Off Discount Link

Recently Google changed their guidelines in reference to web directories, especially the Yahoo! Directory and the DMOZ (or Open Directory). These directories have long held a lot of credibility with Google (Google even uses the DMOZ data for its own directory - Google Directory - just reorganizes it based on PageRank), but recently they appear to have lost that credibility. Google has updated the copy within their Webmaster Guidelines.

Below is the before and after as to how the text read and now reads:

Used to say:

* Have other relevant sites link to yours.
* Submit it to Google at http://www.google.co.uk/addurl.html.
* Submit a Sitemap as part of our Google Webmaster Tools. Google uses your Sitemap to learn about the structure of your site and to
increase our coverage of your web pages.
* Make sure that all the sites that should know about your pages
are aware that your site is online.
* Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open
Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites.

Now says:

When your site is ready:
* Submit it to Google at http://www.google.com/addurl.html.
* Submit a Sitemap using Google Webmaster Tools. Google uses your Sitemap to learn about the structure of your site and to increase our coverage of your webpages.
* Make sure all the sites that should know about your pages are
aware your site is online.

The interesting part is that on a recent posting in Google Groups - Google Webmaster Help that John Mueller (from Google) posted a reply to this change. His response as to why it was changed is below:

I wouldn't necessarily assume that we're devaluing Yahoo's links, I
just think it's not one of the things we really need to recommend. If
people think that a directory is going to bring them lots of visitors
(I had a visitor from the DMOZ once), then it's obviously fine to get
listed there. It's not something that people have to do though :-).

What do you think - does it make sense? :-)

What else should we change / add / remove?

John

In addition, he later posted to the same thread:

This line was removed because we feel that you should not "force"
other sites to link to yours. Obviously it's good that sites link to
each other, it's fine to encourage that on your sites to link out and
to make it easy for them to link to yours. However, I don't think we
need to make it a part of the guidelines that you should "have other
sites link to yours" -- they should be willing to do that on their
own, it should be their decision not yours.

I hope that makes sense.

John

What does all this mean? Well, it basically boils down to the idea that web directories still have SEO value, but Google is slowly distancing themselves from them as a quality back link source. When will this happen? The reality is that it will not happen anytime in the near future and is really just a long-term strategy for Google. So until then - keep submitting.

Accoona started out in the search marketplace in 2004 with a boom and a lot of promise. Heck, they even had Bill Clinton as their pitchman for the new engine. Today when I went to visit the engine I saw this notice (may have been up for awhile as I don;t visit all that often):

Dear Accoona search users,

Due to an overwhelmingly competitive search market, Accoona.com and Accoona.cn will no longer be active.

We thank you for your previous support.

Sincerely,

Accoona Management

This news saddens me as I believe we need more competition in the search space as Google becomes more and more dominant. While I do not believe that any single upstart search engine may beat Google in the in the near future, I do believe that some of the larger players (i.e. Yahoo!, MSN and Ask.com) could acquire these smaller engines and integrate their best technologies and add their smaller market shares to increase the overall market share of the larger engine.

Not that Accoona ever achieved that much marketshare, it is just representative of a larger trend of search engines with a lot of potential, like WiseNut becoming a casualty in the search engine wars.

To check out Accoona's final goodbye visit the site here - Accoona

This is the best image I was able to find of Google's upcoming 10th anniversary logo.

Happy Birthday Google!

For more information check out this post on Vnunet.com - Google Unveils 10th Anniversary Logo

As unbelievable as it may sound, there is a Google PageRank (PR) 9 Web directory for sale on SitePoint. It is going for $300,000 and the reserve has not been met (yet). It currently, as of today has 29 days left in the auction. This one will be interesting to follow.

Check it out here:
- BrainTrack University Index Hompage
- BrainTrack University Index Auction on SitePoint

I think we have a candidate for next years - People Magazines 'Sexiest Man Alive' contest! Enjoy...:-)

Interesting new research has recently been released from Cone that says:

According to the survey, 93 percent of Americans believe a company should have a presence in social media, while an overwhelming 85 percent believe a company should not only be present but also interact with its consumers via social media. In fact, 56 percent of American consumers feel both a stronger connection with and better served by companies when they can interact with them in a social media environment.

What does this mean to average businesses? It means that consumers are not requesting, but expecting businesses to communciate and be involved in online communities if they wish to better communciate with them. The winners will be the businesses that best embrace this concept.

A great example of this was recently discussed on National Public Radio (NPR) when a consumer bought an expensive flat screen LCD TV to watch a specific sports game, but when he went to plug it in it would not configure properly to his cable service. It was after hours for customer service, so he jumped on Twitter to deperately ask friends for help and low and behold someone from his cable company responded within minutes and he later had someone show up for onsite installation help. This example of rapid response and being where the customer is, is the future of communciations if your company wants to be a player in the new media world.

Check out the full research report here - Americans Expect Companies to Have a Presence in Social Media

SiteVolume is a free new online service that allows you to enter one to five keywords (or phrases) into its interface and see, with a click of a button how many mentions of that keyword appear on any of these sites:

- Flickr
- Facebook
- MySpace
- Digg
- YouTube

This is a great tool to allow you to easily gather insight into keywords beyond the search engines.

You can check it out here - SiteVolume

Google recently announced a new website that allows you a centralized place to upload your content to Google Web Search, Maps, Product Search and iGoogle. Below is a list of what you are able to currently upload:

- Submit a URL for inclusion in Google's index
- Submit a Sitemap through Webmaster tools
- List your business in the Local Business Center
- Upload your products for sale in Product Search


The site is located here - Submit Your Content Website.

In addition, they have also released a new Blog in conjunction with this new site and it is located here - Content Central Blog

On Tuesday, Yahoo's new board cleared the way for a new round of talks with Time Warner over the future of AOL, potentially restarting negotiations for a combination of the two businesses that stalled out earlier this year.

This combination would make sense for the two as Yahoo is trying to strengthen its display ad platform and AOL has been in trouble and in need of direction for some time. Early indications say that Yahoo shareholders also agree with the possible merger as the stock has been slightly increasing today.

Yahoo Stock Tracking