The Search Engine Blog

Archive for April, 2008

At first glance, Zenbe looks like just another web email client. Take a deeper look and you’ll see that this is much more. It offers the typical calendar, tasks, etc. in a nice sidebar and even updates you on Facebook friends. What makes this really special is the ability to collaborate and organize email messages into tasks. Rather than cc’ing everyone, they can all log in and see the messages. This is much more than just organizing email messages into folders and if it actually works like I think it does, takes email to the organizational level I’ve been longing for….and I’m sure many others.

So, what does this have to do with search? It’s the sharing social aspect of it. You can share messages with anyone and everyone. This is bound to have a lot to do with social marketing when used for good.

Zenbe: Welcome

Conquering all frontiers, Google will now index forums and other form sites to capture even more information. This can be beneficial for users searching how to information contained in various sites without having to visit each site. Google does state that they will avoid password protected pages. While many forums and form sites are already on Google, this new service will index even more by pretending to be a person. How will this impact your site? Will it start a flurry of activity on your server? Are you silly enough to be on a server that charges for bandwidth?

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Crawling through HTML forms

A good article on why big brands aren’t search friendly. Review the reasons and make certain you aren’t guilty as well. Do you have a big brand “competitor”? Take advantage if they are asleep at the wheel. It’s going to take them longer to turn the wheel than a smaller company.

SEM Insights » 4 Reasons Many Big Brands Downplay SEO

Microsoft’s second attempt to aggregate news is much improved. It’s a very simple interface with a useful sidebar containing local news. The local news uses your IP address to determine your location. While this saves having to enter a city and zipcode, it’s not terribly helpful if you live on the state line as I do. I’m getting the wrong state news with no clear way to change it permanently. There are only a few news sources at the moment and no RSS feed yet, but it does have promise to be an excellent service. The interface is clean and tidy and ….mmmmm…. looks like Google.

Live Search News

As part of the DoubleClick purchase, Google aquired Performics, a search marketing company. Wisely Google has announced that it is selling this company stating that it does not want to be in this market. Needless to say, owning this company would be a bit of a conflict of interest and a bit incestuous. Thank you Google.

Official Google Blog: Selling Performics Search Marketing

Ok, so apparently there are a number of Google April’s fools jokes. Now you can send email to arrive in the past. Can I warn myself about my first marriage….

Gmail: Google’s approach to email

Here’s another Google joke from downunder. Search tomorrow’s web today! Now this is a bit funnier.

gDay™ with MATE™

Geeks across the globe will traverse to Google today to check out their annual joke. I must say I was quite disappointed. They want to start a colony on mars. Didn’t they do this with the moon a few years back? Yawn.

Virgle: The Adventure of Many Lifetimes

A much funnier April fools joke is at The SEO RoundSquareTable.