Bloggers Battle Over Sponsored Conversations

A Forrester report released yesterday kicked off once again the debate over paying bloggers to write about products and companies. Blogging purists, new media marketing experts, and Google’s Matt Cutts have all weighed in, indicating this is hardly a debate that will soon be put to rest.

Google to Serve Ads Based on Browsing History

Google has announced the launch of "Interest-based" advertising as a beta test for the company's partner sites and on YouTube. In other words, Google will be serving ads based on sites users visit.

Democrats.org Becomes Parasite Host

Google’s trust of Democrats.org, the Democrat National Party’s official website, is being abused by cybercrooks to spread spam and malware via search results. Criminals are able to achieve high ranking for their sites in the search results simply by setting up a blog at the DNC website and passing on link juice from there.

Microsoft’s Kumo Will Only Come with Minor Tweaks

What can you expect from Microsoft's rebranded search engine? A new name, and not a whole lot else from the sound of it. As you've probably read by now, Kumo is the name that is most commonly associated with the search engine, though Microsoft has not officially named it.