I'm unashamed to pronounce Firefox as a superior browser, and with over 100 million downloads and market share now over 10%, it seems many are in agreement. As Firefox grows, it's been fascinating to watch the alliances and maneuvers of Mozilla. Yesterday, the final version of Firefox 1.5 launched, and with it another strong alliance. Yahoo has partnered with Mozilla to distribute Firefox 1.5 in China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan.

I believe its fair to say that Internet Explorer has a strong hold on the browser market in those countries. Our own analytics show over 12% of visitors to zunch.com use the Firefox browser, but only 4% of our zunch.cn visitors. Can Yahoo! and Alibaba make waves in the Asian browser market? My guess is yes. As the number two search provider in blosoming China, they seem to have quite the opportunity before them.

I'll follow up in a couple of months to see if our browser stats change significantly...

Here are just a few points taken from Barry's excellent coverage of PubCon:

• "SEO is not spam, its only when you go against guidelines, when it is spam."
  
  
• Redirects: "We are working towards a framework where we are indexing the destination."
  
  
• "some things in the algorithm that may be perceived as a sandbox..."
  
  
• "Splogs are bad."
  
  
• "Google does not have the ability to hand boost any site, or hand boost any pagerank."
  
  
• "Matt uses ancient versions of Netscape..."
  
  
• "...positioning text at top or bottom, is over rated."
  
  
• "Best links are earned, not sold or traded."

InternetRetailer shows us some interesting statistics for why people use one engine over another. Not surprisingly, a majority of AOL, Yahoo and MSN searchers use the service because its convenient; they are already there doing other things. What is surprising, however, is the fact that 24% of MSN searchers don't know why they use MSN! Hmm...

The chart also reinforces the idea that it really doesn't matter who has the most relevant results. As I've said before, search is all about convenience. The moment you start searching the goal is to STOP SEARCHING. This is why Google was busy building GMail and Google Local when webmasters across the world were crying "just focus on your results and perfect your algorithm...blah blah blah."

Another interesting note of interest will be the release of IE7. The integrated search bar will make it easier and more convenient than ever to choose an engine and get searching. We'll see how different this chart looks next November.

In what appears to be a new web portal, www.live.com appeared today. Although far from a finished product, Live is already featuring some improvements of start.com. For one, the Live search interface is much cleaner and natural feeling than the hovering layer used on start.com. Two, I can see my hotmail with Live, right next to my RRS feeds, stocks and weather. Very nice, Bill! My one complaint so far is the light blue color that is used on the SERP page for the links. They don't seem to provide enough contrast to make the links pop out.

More to come on this exciting development...

This morning it occurred to me how useful free software can be. In particular, I've found Xenu Link Sleuth to be incredibly time saving in the past few days. As any good search marketer knows, a poorly architected site structure can many times be the largest hurdle to conquer in an SEO campaign. Even the nicest looking, most comprehensive site in the world will suffer mightily if URL session IDs are present or if javascript navigation is predominantly used. Tools are needed to expedite the site evaluation process and quickly identify the culprit of a poor-performing site.

Link Sleuth very eloquently and graciously hammers a site with asynchronous requests, gathering information from thousands and ten thousands of links in a matter of minutes. Once finished, easy-to-read reports are produced that display 404 pages, orphaned pages, a sitemap and more. I've even built my own link crawler for our team to use, but I continue to go back to Link Sleuth.

As a side note, we are trying to do our part by offering ClickFraudDetective, our click fraud software, free of charge. The best things in life are free, right?

I guess MSN should work on their link building. A PR of 2!

http://www.msn.com

For most of 2005 now, it seems we cannot get through a work week without a new offering from Google. From GoogleMaps to GoogleTalk, Schmidt and his team are stretching further than ever before. And with its new partnership with Sun, there's little doubt Google wants to cast a colorful shadow across the world.

But I've heard many over the past year complain, saying Google should stick to search and just dominate the market. Some say Google should stick to its roots and let retail software companies worry about the consumer market.

I say that is a very near-sighted opinion. The problem is this: Average web searchers don't use an engine primarily because of its relevancy, but because of its simplicity. They simply take the path of less resistance. Google designed a simple, easy-to-use interface that was straightforward and effective, and people came.

Now, Google realizes that Microsoft has every opportunity in the world to make a search interface that is quick and easy (we're already seeing some of this in Windows Vista and Office 12). Currently, Google relies on the browser; people opening IE or Firefox and navigating. But what if the browser, as we know it, disappears?

Google has to get in front of your nose in a proactive way if they want to survive. They have no other option.

The long time commercial browser Opera is now free of charge and free of ads, giving users yet another option in the expanding browser market. Although Opera's market share is small, the browser is widely regarded as a very mature and intuitive product. The big news in my mind, however, is what makes it free...

Opera software, following the path of Mozilla's Firefox, has levereged deals with internet giants like Google, eBay and Amazon to receive kickbacks from users who purchase using the built-in search bar.

So after years and years of rumors regarding gBrowser, Google is apparently satisfied to strike deals with current browser makers. Ofcourse we all know of one company who will not be signing papers with Google. To that end, check out this screenshot:

Google the term 'miserable failure' and you'll find the biography of George W. Bush from whitehouse.gov.  That is, until recently.  The oldest and greatest example of link bombing has been usurped, and it appears the staff at the Whitehouse is to blame. 

For years, the first result for 'miserable failure' was this URL:  http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html.  Checking the source on this URL today reveals this interesting code:

<meta HTTP-EQUIV=Refresh CONTENT="0; URL=http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/">

This is a client-side meta redirect, so it does not return a 301 or 302 server code. 

While some are speculating that this is strategic on the part of the Whitehouse to remove this embarrasment, it looks to me just to be a crude attempt with little strategy.  Why do I say that?  Well, for starters, the page that you end up on links to the Bio page, which loops back through the redirect.  If the Whitehouse staff wanted to strategically eliminate the ranking, they would have changed the URL of the bio page and refrained from using any redirects at all.  As it is now, it is possible that Google will end up treating this meta redirect as if it were a 301 redirect, and all the bomber links will be credited to whitehouse.gov/president.

Now that I think of it, that scenario could be strategic if the Whitehouse is anticipating a democrat in office next year.

If you haven't heard about AJAX yet, you at least have used it. In just a year or two, AJAX has become the talk of the town thanks to snazzy new web implementations by folks like Google, Oddpost and Microsoft. For the non-techies among us, AJAX is a method of displaying dynamic content on-the-fly, that is, without a page refresh.

Obviously the emergence of this type of technology has huge implications for search engine marketers everywhere. So far, AJAX is mainly limited to specialty applications (mapping and email, most notably), which do not present a problem. As this technology continues to inspire and grow popular, though, how long until Mike's Electronics website wants an AJAXed navigation? While we would like to offer users an interface that is more "desktop" like, the thought of not having content crawled an indexed just doesn't fly.

This brings me to my point. With Google, Microsoft and others playing a large role in the escalation of this technology, shouldn't we expect them to support it from a search standpoint? I'm looking for one of these companies to step up and pioneer a method for new technologies like AJAX to be search compatible. I don't know if that's a new markup tag with special instructions for spiders, a new document similar to the sitemap.xml file, or something completely different.

With the contiguous maturation of the Internet and Search, I think it would be a shame if either one was held back unnecessarily. I see that happening with AJAX...but I hope I'm wrong.

Earlier this week, MSN Search official rebranded as Live Search.  Live.com and search.live.com have been in beta for most of the year now.  In March I posted about live.search.com not including search phrases in the referring URL.  It appears that once again, Live Search is proving to be problematic.  This morning Barry posted at SERoundtable and SEW about Live.com not passing any referer information at all.

As an example, when you go to Google or Yahoo or ASK and search for Callaway Golf Clubs, that phrase is embeded in the referring URL that is passed through the server headers.  A line would be passed to the browser such as this:

Referer: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=callaway+golf+clubs&btnG=Google+Search

Web analytics programs like zWebTulz and others use this referring URL to determine which search engine the user came from and what their specific query was.  This is a basic function of web analytics, performed by even the most basic packages like Analog or Statcounter.  I'm almost certain that this will be corrected in the near future by Microsoft. 

Jason Burby wrote a nice piece for ClickZ about the changing nature of web bahavior and analytics as tabbed browsers like Firefox (and soon to be released IE7) become the norm.  Jason identifies several aspects of analytics which are affected because of tabbed browsing, including the use of cookies, path analysis and time spent on site. 

While I'm not ashamed of being a Firefox-freak, I'm quite sure that I have wreaked havoc on web analytics specialists all around the world.  I typically open links in new tabs, and it's not uncommon for me to have 10-20 tabs open at a time.  Of course I also have to explain that type of behavior almost weekly when asked, "What's a good bounce rate?". 

We have given Google way too much credit lately. 

A collegue and I were doing some research this morning, and we were both appalled at the pages which were ranking for some relatively non-competitive terms.  It wasn't the pages in the SERPs themselves that were spammy, but rather the backlinks of these pages.  It appears that while the SERPs themselves may be somewhat free from spammy pages, scraper sites and link farms still push legitimate pages up the SERPs. 

In an effort to compete, we've given our entire squad a challenge.  The employee who creates the most scraper SPAM sites by Friday gets an extra week of vacation.  OK, I made up the part about the vacation.

No, no, of course we didn't do that.  But if the engines don't get their act together and start picking up on this crap we're all going to have to band together.  Is is that hard to identify a scraper page and devalue all the links?

Google seems to be adding words to the title links for some pages contained in the supplemental index.  I've seen this occur on four separate domains now in the past three days.  In all of these cases, the title appearing in the search results does not match the title appearing in the cache of the page, nor does it match a title tag that was ever present. 

Followup:  There is a thread on WMW that details some of the issues being seen.  Halfdeck also has a nice writeup about it on his blog.

We know with the recent story about the five million junk pages indexed in Google that the folks at the 'plex are having some issues.  Hopefully they'll figure it out sooner than later.

This is the first time I've seen this.  Funny thing is, I got distracted and forgot to click on the Learn More link.  Haven't been able to reproduce the message either.  Oh well...

You must have already seen the array of blogs and news articles today about Google's new online spreadsheet program.  I personally haven't used it yet, so I have no opinions on the functionality of the tool.  I'm speaking more to the general consensus I'm seeing on the blogosphere, which can basically be summed up like this:  "Google is trying to really tick Bill Gates off, and they just might have done it, but what does this have to do with Search?  Has Google really lost focus?"

Notwithstanding the Forbes report this week, I think Google is right on course.  I wrote this post last fall which talked about the underlying reasons why people use one engine over another.  I maintain my position that people use an engine for its convenience and ease-of-use moreso that it's relevancy.  I think this will be particularly true in 12-24 months, around the time Windows Vista launches.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, Google has to become a mainstay in multiple areas of computing or they will become irrelevant.

P.S.  I also think Google likes you to be logged in with your Google account as much as possible, so this aids that goal as well.  Between GMail, Analytics, Adwords, Notebook and Adsense, I'm having trouble staying logged out while I search, which I'm sure is exactly the goal.

I'm quite impressed with the folks over at Yahoo Search after using the new Livesearch on AlltheWeb.  It's similar to Google Suggest or some of the other tools that Danny mentions, but surpasses all of them because it actually returns results as your type.  That's right, forget about pressing enter or clicking a search button; results come back automatically, on-the-fly.  Talk about fast searching...I love it! 

Via the Google Analytics Blog, Microsoft will reportedly announce the acquisition of DeepMetrix, a long-time player in the web analytics market.  In a move remanicent of Google's purchase of Urchin one year ago, Microsoft will integrate analytics into their AdCenter engine.  This just reinforces the fact that if you're running a PPC campaign, you MUST have an analytics suite to track success.  Viewing the bounce rate, visit paths and conversion rate of your PPC is impossible without analytics. 

Plug:  The Zunch PPC team uses zWebTulz extensively to track our clients PPC spend from every engine. 

Scott blogged on the IE7 Beta, which was released last week to the public.  Now Google is belly-aching about the search bar and which engine is set to default.  Without question, no one expected Microsoft to do anything but set MSN as the default search provider on its own browser.  But Google and everyone else knows these few hundred square pixels on the toolbar could mean big swings in search engine market share toward the end of this year and into 2007.  With IE still at 85% market share, and Firefox losing steam, Google might be getting desperate. 

Incidently, you didn't hear a peep from Google when Firefox and Opera, both Google allies, set Google as the default search engine in their browser.  But now, Google would be happy to open those up if MSN will reciprocate.  Yeah, right...

This goes back to something I wrote about last fall.  In order to Google to survive, they cannot count on users typing in google.com in the web browser.  This will be an archaic practice in a matter of months.  Since most users will take the path of least resistance, Google must get in front of your face proactively.  They seem to be doing well on some fronts, but the browser / operating system battle could pose problems.  

Myself and our insanely talented creative director Gina Hamm just finished up a usability report. One of our larger SEO clients had asked us to provide an analysis on the traffic reports and usability of the site. Naturally, Gina handled most of the design aspects and usability, and I spent most of my time interpreting the site metrics. Together we were able to provide a report with a ton of useful information and recommendations to improve the website experience for every user. For a large website, it only takes a small improvement to make drastic differences. (Example: Raising the conversion rate of a site just a fraction of a percentage could equal tens of thousands of dollars in revenue.)

I was also reminded how effective SEO and good usability are sometimes one in the same. Focusing the content of a page and adding textual navigation links were some of the items included in Gina's report. Of course these are helpful to a typical user, but they can also have great benefits toward an SEO program.

Working together to make sites successful...that's what Zunch is all about!

I was reminded this morning how important it is to involve an SEO consultant in the very beginning stages of a website. If you're building a large website and you expect to hire an SEO once the site launches to optimize it....STOP! Spend the money upfront to have the consultant give recommendations on engineering the database, sitemap and site structure to work for you, not against you, with regards to SEO. With an optimized website structure already in place, adding the proper keywords and content in the right place is easy.

Trust me, having to reconstruct a website after it's built is no fun. And you'll be thankful when you have rankings in three months instead of nine. ;-)

There's been much said about http://search.live.com in the past couple of weeks, both negative and positive. As the Zunch "analytics guru", I'm not as concerned about the interface as I am about the absence of key phrases in the URL. From what I'm seeing so far, when as user clicks on a result in the SERPs, the referring URL that is passed looks just like this: http://search.live.com. There are no query string variables for tracking programs like zWebTulz to extrapolate keywords from, meaning marketers can't determine which keywords perform better than others.

Hmm...I guess this may be the one time in my life where I'm recommending dynamic URLs over static. :-)

It was just over a year ago that I remember standing in the SES NY expo hall talking with a guy (forgot his name) about personal search and its implications for SEOs like myself. I told him at that time that it was my belief that personalized search results en masse were not going to appear as quickly as one might think. "Within the year?" he asked. "No, I doubt it," I replied.

For the most part, personalized search has been slow to appear. But I can't help but notice that Google routinely provides personalized search results for me now when I'm logged in. Of course I'm always interested in the difference between personalized results and normal results, and typically there's not much difference. But how much information am I willing to give Google, Yahoo or MSN in return for "better results"? As a user, I prefer the idea of three independent, objective entities giving me their best shots as opposed to one entity knowing my deepest thoughts and anticipating my next move. I suspect I'm not alone in this one, either. With all that these companies are trying to build, there's no questioning their end goal. Just this week we hear more news that Google wants to host all of my computer files. Every website we visit must have an account with a profile,user preferences, favorite foods and, oh yeah...how do you like your coffee?

I've always said, the goal of every search is to stop searching. I'm just not willing to give up more personal info to cut down the time on my searches. With more practice, I'll become a better searcher on my own!

I just spent a half-hour listening to Barry Diller from Ask.com give his keynote at SES (thanks to www.webmasterradio.fm). I've got to tell you, I'm really impressed with the upgrades Ask.com received last night. I'm sure other Zunchers will go into more detail throughout the week, but here's a quick list of changes:

- Simple homepage
- AJAXed toolbox bar
- Web-based desktop search
- Less PPC ads (Organic above the fold!)
- Nice mapping at http://maps.ask.com, complete with driving/walking directions and aerial fly-by photographs (not satellite)

Read Chris Sherman's complete SearchDay write-up of Ask.com here.

What a wild ride! Late last week MSN rolled out a new index that included major changes across the board. Initial reaction was mixed, but it didn't take long for folks across the 'Net to voice their disappointment (WMW, SEW). Two days later, MSN sucked it back in and reverted to the older, more accepted index.

From MSN:

We rolled back to the old net after only about 48 hours. The new one might have been up considerably longer if you guys hadn’t been so vocal so quickly.

So...we've spent the morning emailing some clients and explaining why their MSN traffic plumetted at the end of last week, why blogs, subdomains and press releases were overtaking the rankings, and how everything should be status quo again.

Interesting to note that the MSN quality testers apparently missed this one.

Well this is an interesting idea.

Actually, I love it! Last night I built a web spider script and it's been working that engine over for a few hours now. So far I've won a $50 Amex card, two Best Buy gift cards, an xBox game and a Canon Powershot 5.0MP digital camera.

OK, not really, but I wonder if I could?

OK, follow up time. It looks like quite a few people have been hammering MSN, possibly causing MSN to change the way the Search and Win program works. From the website...

If a link appears on the search results page with the words MSN Search & Win, click the link to see if you instantly won.

But it looks like MSN is mixing up the words on the SERPs to foil the automated queries. Here's two screen shots with examples:





As you can see, one search has the words "Win what you search for" and the other has "Use MSN Search...and Win!".

Barry points out a thread this morning from WMW that goes back to a discussion Jeff and I had earlier this year about anchor tags in URLs (www.domain.com/index.html#footer). How do the search engines handle such links? Our experience has been that Google drops all pound signs from URLs.

Wizard from WMW seems to agree:

I'd say #anchor is not a part of URL actually, browser doesn't send it to server with HTTP request.


Google doesn't treat /page.html#anchor as different URL than /page.html. It might be possible that keywords after # mark matter a little, but in Google links database everything after # is stripped.

This seems like the logical thing to do in my opinion, since there would in fact be huge duplicate content problems.

So, what? Here's what: You need an affiliate program? Build it to craft your affiliate links to read like http://www.zunch.com#affid1074 instead of using question marks. Parse the URL at the server level for the ID, and set the cookie or whatever it is you do. It should work just as well as using a question mark, and you get the added benefit of every affiliate link pointing directly to your home page. That is, to the search engines, the link looks like a typical backlink, with no affiliate tracking variable. Nice!

I remember mentioning to some co-workers about 18 months ago about how I think an SEM / SEO magazine would do pretty well. Well...say hello to Search Marketing Standard.

From the press release:

"Search Marketing Standard will cover pay per click advertising, search engine optimization, web analytics, click fraud, local and contextual search, and other search-related topics. Each publication will feature articles and advice from leading experts in the field, interviews with the who’s-who of the industry, reviews of the most popular tools and services, latest news and trends, and much more."

Just another sign of the growth of our industry. Go get 'em!

According to a story on ClickZ, Google is working on methods to deliver ads to audiences searching with mobile phones. The "call-on-select" functionality would initiate a phone call when selected as opposed to opening a landing page. A scoring algorithm would determine whether to offer the click-to-call link or a traditional web page link based on factors including limitations of the device, relevance, price, user preference and other parameters.

Fun stuff I say. I could have used this a month or two ago when I was out searching for a Donut shop to be open on a Holiday. I was using the Google SMS service, but had to call each store to see if they were open or closed. It would have been easier to do a web search, view the local results and click-to-call.

Yahoo announced last night a decision to trim down the size of its paid listings beginning January 18. Paid ads will be "automatically shortened" for the change, but advertisers are encouraged to optimize ads by bringing inportant information inside of the 70 character count. See the full announcement from YahooSarah at the SEW forums.

Yahoo says to expect an increase in click-thrus, but I'm not so sure. For many users who browse with an 800x600 resolution, sponsored listings currently make up the majority (if not all) of the real estate. Smaller sponsored listings would obviously provide more impressions for organic listings, unless Yahoo decided to increase the number of paid listings at the top of the SERPs. But surely they wouldn't...

At least that's the latest report from the Wall Street Journal. I think Microsoft really missed an opportunity here. All year we've heard how they are pumping money into search. First it was the huge ad campaign, then the API, and this and that...but the market share has remained stable, if not dropped a bit. I really hope Microsoft is not just banking on IE7 and Vista alone.

For all the predictions about SEO in 2006, how about some affirmations? May your 2006 be the year...

• you have more sites come out of the sandbox than go in.
  
• you see the fruit of your labor from 2005
• you enter the black before Black Friday
• your ROI increases

Happy New Year from the SEO team at Zunch!

Joining in on what Mayer at Yahoo has been doing for a while, Matt Cutts has agreed to give Google weather reports when a major update is blowing through.

Current Conditions: Just a PR / Backlink update.

Oh yeah...happy birthday Google. You're the largest seven year-old I know (but still crawling ;-).

Man there's some good topics out this morning...another day to be thankful to work in a dynamic industry that's always fresh (sorry to Jeese and his fellow accounting friends).

Microsoft unveiled the new start.com page today, and I've just spent about 30 minutes playing with it. Very cool...I'm giving it 3 stars. I only have one major complaint, and I've already seen others say the same: Make the article title a link so I don't have to find the tiny "more >>" link at the end.

Check it out for yourself.

Just stumbled across this a minute ago...

All I want to know is, how long until you're able to choose your own background color?

Your thoughts??

Search engine market shares in July 2005: Google - 59.2%, Yahoo! - 28.8%, MSN - 5.5% by ZDNet's ZDNet Research -- HitWise says Google, Yahoo! Search and MSN Search accounted for 93.5% of US searches in July 2005. Google garnered 59.2% of searches. Yahoo! Search and MSN Search captured 28.8% and 5.5% shares, respectively.

That's right...Danny is wielding his power to promote Search Marketing Day. I don't care who you are, please go and vote for this holiday. Myself and zunchers like me work countless hours, 364 days a year to promote other people's websites (we do get Columbus day off). We slave over keyword research, competitve analysis and website analytics day in and day out for mere pennies on the dollar, while the lion's share of the profit goes to support John's Starbucks addiction. Please...from the bottom of my heart I'm pleading for you to help make this dream become reality. We need a day for ourselves!

Just a little fun on this slow Thursday. Back to the foosball table...

There's a very interesting thread over at SEW that discusses how search engine's should handle redirects. As anyone in the industry knows, the search engines have been giving SEM professionals headaches for years now on this issue. The main problem is that Google behaves differently than Yahoo, and MSN differently then Ask...you get the picture. No standards.

Fact is, URLs change. Just this week one of my accounts (large e-commerce site) converted to a completely new backend system, totally changing every URL on the site. We're doing our best to use 301 redirects in order to match the old URLs with the corresponding new URLs, but there will be a fallout. To them, the benefits of the bew backend were worth the loss of traffic for a time.

Tony and I are already preparing for another battle (read: headache) later this year when a client (a nationwide bank) will change domains. We've delivered to them a risk assesment regarding the potential negative impact to their SEM program, as well as recommendations for making the transition as smooth as possible. Do we blame them for wanting to change domains? Absolutely not. By all accounts, in the long run they will be much better off for changing. We just wish it weren't so difficult for the search engines to recognize and adjust accordingly.

Hopefully Danny and his crew will spark major progress in this regard. I'd love to be able to throw away the bottle of Aspirin that sits on my desk labelled "redirection painkiller".

I was reminded of the benefits of both types of marketing earlier this month while composing a monthly summary report for a client. My jaw dropped as I viewed the analytics report that showed a significant decrease in organic traffic from Google, AOL and Ask Jeeves. This was after 6 straight months of solid increases, with no hints of looking back. I then suspected, and after talking with Laura, confirmed that this client had begun a PPC campaign (managed with expertise by Zunch, of course).

Based on our recommendations, the PPC campaign included very specific, branding keywords which were ranking #1 in the organic listings already (ex. "company name store"). As expected, some visitors clicked on the paid result who would have otherwise clicked on the natual result. So now we have a huge, inter-departmental feud because the PPC team stole traffic from the SEO team, right? Not quite. You see, overall traffic for those keywords were up across the board. And the low cost made it a no-brainer to bid on, even if some visitors would find the site organically anyways. The extra sales far outweigh the pennies it took to acquire them.

In the end, this client ends up on top because of their willingness to use as much real estate as possible in the SERPs.

According to InsideGoogle, Google is set to release its Toolbar for the Firefox browser. While I know this will warm the heart of a few of my Toolbar-lovin' colleagues, I really question the motives of this move for the following reasons:

First, aren't toolbars a thing of the past already? Firefox already has an integrated search bar and popup blocking. IE7 is bound to have the same. The Google Toolbar wouldn't bring an enhanced browser experience to Firefox.

Oh yeah...that little green bar. But do people really care about PageRank as much now as they used to (please say no)? Besides, there are several extensions available for Firefox that display PageRank already. Was there a huge outcry for Google to deliver a Toolbar for Firefox?

We all know that Firefox is a growing phenomenon. Latest statistics show the browser almost to the 10% mark in saturation, and increasing every month. Could it be that Google wants the click-thru data from FireFox users just as it is "possibly" using Toolbar data now from IE users?

Seriously, get back to work. Six new products in one week, is that all you got?

OK...maybe I'm the one who needs to get back to work after being distracted all week by Google Earth, the Google Maps API, the Google Personalized Search, Yahoo's MyWeb2, Google Earth, Google Video, A9's maps, oh and did I mention Google Earth. Yeah...I love it (and so does my space-loving, science-teaching wife).

So while the big news from Zunch might get overlooked this week, it appears that we're not the only ones traveling "full speed ahead".

I just returned from New Orleans where I was able to attend the "Meet the Google Engineers" mixer. First, thanks to the management at Zunch for the opportunity to attend. While I certainly didn't learn anything earth-shattering, I believe it was a worthwhile trip. Here's a rundown...

The engineers were obviously briefed like covert agents beforehand on what to say, what not to say and how to dodge questions. To be fair, I did feel like a majority of the questions were handled pretty well, although some questions were answered with a redundant "google uses over 100 factors in its algorithm...".

They pushed using the new Google Sitemap program and stressed that new features were going to be added in the future for better communication between webmasters. They also stressed reading the "webmaster guidelines" before developing a site.

Of course everyone and their mother asked one question: "Is there a sandbox?" Here's the answer: "There is no official Google Sandbox. There are many forms of data that cycle at different times, which may lead to the assumption of a sandbox. "

When asked about the recent patent that made news a few months ago, Google said: "Back at the time of that patent, our competitors were patenting everything. It was more of a defensive move than anything. We were told to go out and find anything and everything that could be used for historical information in order to patent it. We have many technologies which we have chosen not to patent for the sake of secrecy. We just hope that no one else discovers the same methods and tries to sue us!".

It was also interesting to note that the engineer that I spoke to claimed he had never heard of SEOInc, or what has happened to them recently. Yeah...

As expected, the session ended with the admonishon to create sites for users, not search engines. Words which fall on deaf ears at this geek-fest.

Ask Jeeves continues to solidify its stance as a legitimate contender with two new features this week. Here's my thoughts on "Focus" and "Web Answers"...

First, I must say that I like Focus. Frequently when I search unseccessfully, I change one word in the query to try and adjust my angle. Focus goes a step further and peaks my interest with queries that I otherwise would not have thought of. For instance, I've been looking recently for a very particular set of golf irons. The Focus feature helps me use the engine's full potential by suggestion queries related to 'Cobra SS-I Oversized Irons'.

Now...Web Answers. First, let me say that the technology behind it is impressive. Give credit to the scientists and engineers at AJ who have compiled such a strong product. However, I do see Web Answers causing more problems that it solves.

First and foremost, there is a legitimate possibility that the Web Answer given back may be inaccurate. I was reminded of my friends remark many years ago, noting that the Internet is about as reliable as the "men's room wall". While things have improved, web sources are still regarded as inferior to paper or quoted sources. AJ does no verification of the accuracy of each Web Answer, so please corroborate your answers. I can just envision a bunch of 7th grade Michael Isokoffs typing in a question and then quoting the answer in their papers as "anonymous Internet source". As a veteran print journalist told me on Monday, "reporters are lazy". Hey dude...it's not just reporters.

Secondly, this continues to transform search engines into super-membranes, satisfying every need of the searcher instead of being a gateway between the searcher and web publisher. This is destined to continue as new mediums like blackberrys and mobile phones become standard equipment. Future users will not want to click-thru to a publisher's site, and so the 'Web Answers' phenomenon will grow. Before long, web publishers (and I am one) will just be used by the engines for the information they provide, and less and less visitors will be forwarded through. Not that I'm pessimistic or anything...

There you go...two new features to play with. Your thoughts are welcome, as always.

You know...Iron Butterfly, the '97 Marlins, Right Said Fred...and Google?

Yep. Atleast according to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, speaking at Stanford last week. Ballmer, whose search engine is fresh out of spring training, told students the fall of rival Google is no more than 5 years away.

Is this just more marketing hype from Gates and crew, or does Microsoft truly have what it takes to topple the search leader? Merely one year after the famous "Google kicked out butts" statement from Gates, team butterfly seems as proud as ever. With $100 million less and 1 percent more (market share since Jan 05), there's no question Microsoft is embracing the long road ahead.

Maybe Longhorn will revolutionize the way we search. I doubt it, but I've doubted Microsoft before. They certainly don't lack the resouces or talent. Or attitude, for that matter.

Can Google hang on over time to hit for the cycle? Only time will tell. For now, they have earned the right to bat clean-up.

Google announced last week that pricing for its recently acquired analytics product, Urchin, is being lowered significantly (news release). While lower prices are great for everyone, the real gem for marketers was buried deep in the release and hasn't garnered much attention. Urchin users now have the ability to directly import Adwords data into their Urchin reports, revealing true ROI metrics within the reporting interface.

"So what? Can't you import that data already with others solutions like ClickTracks?" Yes. But in the time it takes you to login to Adwords, select the reporting period, export the data to a CSV file, log back in to ClickTracks, upload the file...you see my point.

To my knowledge, Urchin is now the only full analytics suite that provides this seamless integration to PPC data. Login, see you visitor stats, take a look at your current PPC ROI, grab a cup of coffee and get back to work.

Myself and others at Zunch have been working on this exact integration for zWebTulz, our analytics solution, for some time now. If Google doesn't beat us to it, we hope to be the first with seamless PPC integration to Google Adwords and Yahoo SM (the artist formerly known as Overture). This capability will allow online marketers to spend more time making decisions and less time pulling data, and that's a good thing.