Hosted Content, The Quest for the Perfect Link

Ask Google, search engines love links. Of course, they love some links more than others. For example, a simple link exchange (reciprocal link) doesn’t have as much value to search engines and so, it doesn’t receive the same weight as a non-reciprocal (one-way) link – the theory being that a one-way, in-bound link is a recommendation from a site owner to visit this linked site. The link, itself, is testament to the quality of the site being referred.

Google Earth Adds Hiking Trails, GPS Data

The sun is setting, you’re surrounded by trees, and you just heard a noise that sounded like Jabba the Hut’s rancor monster.  Never fear – Google and Trimble will get you home.  Thanks to a new GPS content layer, they’ll also get you “a wide variety of multimedia data on fitness and outdoor adventures, including routes, points of interest, pictures, video and audio.”

Wikipedia SEO: Don’t Spam – Contribute

Because Wikipedia entries routinely show up in the top 5 search engine results at Google, some black hat SEO’s (and a few clueless beginners) realized the value of a link from the online encyclopedia and began link spamming blatantly. So recently Wikipedia posted the "nofollow" tag to all outbound links, purportedly to stop SEO Spam by reducing the value of those outbound links.

Google Pulls Imus Related Keywords?

It hasn’t been a good week for long-time shock jock Don Imus. After his controversial comments about the Rutgers women’s basketball team, his Imus in the Morning radio show was quickly dumped by both MSNBC and CBS. The events surrounding the scandal have had an interesting impact on the search world as well.

Prior to CBS axing the Imus program, several major sponsors pulled their advertising from the show, which no doubt was a major factor in the network’s decision to pull it from the airwaves.

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