A recent change at Google had a lot of people in the SEM industry puzzled. Last Thursday, the tool that measures the PageRank Google assigns a page or document went blank, showing a gray PR0 for every site in its index. The bar remained blank until early this afternoon when PageRank values became visible to searchers on the east coast of North America. It is expected to be fully active everywhere in the next 24-hours. Read more…

Bill Gates is blowing smoke at Google again. Twice this week Gates has said nasty things about Google. Yesterday he was sounding sort of high-school churlish with his statement, “Google is still perfect; the bubble is floating, and they can do everything. You should buy their stock at any price. We had a 10-year period just like that.” Read more…

Is the Butler finally being dismissed now that Ask has been purchased by InterActiveCorp? Rumour has it Barry Diller, IAC CEO is preparing to rename the Ask Jeeves search engine, paring its name down to a single word, ASK. This wouldn’t be the first time the jovial Butler has been dumped in Ask Jeeves’ history. Just after the dot-com crash of 2000 Jeeves was laid-off. He was brought back after former Ask CEO Skip Battle found him drinking by the Oakland docks, slumped over his last remaining friend, the Pets.com sock puppet mascot.

They say that everything old becomes new again. This adage is proving true in the search engine world as well with Google adopting a personalization plan that makes it look a lot like Yahoo and other search portals. Designed to allow Google users access to its various search tools, the portal displays Gmail, Google News, and Google Maps (labeled Driving Directions). It also calls US Movie Listings (by zip code), stock tickers, weather information, Wired News headlines, a quote of the day (from The Quotes Page), word of the day (from Dictionary.Com), and headlines from the NYTimes, Slashdot and the BBC. There are currently no selections following subscribed Google Groups or Google News Alerts. Read more…

The Open Directory Project is the largest human edited directory of web sites and documents existing online at this time. While many search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Ask and MSN maintain larger databases of electronically spidered sites, the volunteer editors at the ODP read, sort and classify all submitted content before it is added to their search-database. Started in 1998 in reaction to difficulties webmasters had getting their content into Yahoo’s then human edited directory, the Open Directory Project was a simple and effective idea. Read more…

The Butler is growing bigger again. This morning, Ask Jeeves announced the acquisition of the Excite European network from Italy’s Tiscali SpA., giving Ask open access to the rapidly expanding European search market.

“This deal is a next step in Ask Jeeves’ European expansion strategy,” said Steve Berkowitz, CEO of Ask Jeeves, Inc. “Access to Excite’s pan-European operational infrastructure and market knowledge will accelerate our European growth initiative and provide an instant revenue stream from additional users and advertisers.” Read more…

Working out a marketing plan for new and evolving websites is a bit more complicated than it used to be. There are a few new things to be considered before embarking on a search marketing campaign than in previous years. Search marketing has become more important and is thus becoming more professional. With growing acceptance of online communication tools, and a number of alterations to the faces of search engines themselves, the marketing arena has been upgraded from a three-ring circus venue to a Super Bowl sized stadium. Read more…

Click Fraud is the greatest threat to the rapid growth of the paid-search marketing sector. Speaking about click fraud to an investor conference in December, Google CFO George Reyes stated, “I think something has to be done about this really, really quickly, because I think, potentially, it threatens our business model.” Accounting for an estimated 5 – 15 percent of all PPC clicks (estimates differ by sector), click fraud is assumed to cost advertisers tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars per year. The problem has become so pervasive the April 7 edition of Wall Street Journal ran a front-page center column story titled, “In Click Fraud, Web Outfits Have A Costly Problem“. (subscription req.) Read more…

Is MSN better than Google? How does Ask Jeeves stack up against Yahoo? Which of the Big4 search firms produces the most relevant results? Those questions are difficult to answer as what is relevant to one searcher might not be particularly relevant to another. Search engines are the tools we use to thread the eye of the needles found in the universal haystack we know as the Net. Read more…

Search Engine Marketing is a sensible vocation. Driven by many of the same basic tenets that inform the traditional marketing sector, the goal is to be sure one’s clients’ products are among the first people think of when looking for that certain something those clients create. In the olden days it was all about placement, positioning and repetition. Elaborate campaigns involving radio, television and print would be conceived and executed with the goal of establishing a foothold for new products in the households of the nation or solidifying the stability of a pre-existing brand. Those olden days may be, like so ’80′s, in relation to the crazed new world that search brings however, humans being humans, the ideas of an older generation often remain the ones that play best on the Internet today. Read more…