http://www.google.com/support/news/bin/answer.py?answer=150415

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/blogs/gear-up/bing-grabs-30-percent-of-online-searches-at-googles-expense-20110418

http://www.pcworld.com/article/225368/why_google_doesnt_want_the_iphone_to_die.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/mobile-phones/8459137/Google-Android-confirms-smartphone-dominance.html

http://searchengineland.com/7-google-quality-score-ppc-myths-73336

http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/04/the-layered-look-how-google-news-is-integrating-the-social-web/

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/04/18/google.chrome.wired/

Here’s a Google Sitemap validator.

Maybe I missed it, but I find it strange that Google Webmaster Tools asks you to run your sitemap through a validator, but then there isn’t one in the Tools section. 

If you find one in the Webmaster Tools section, do let me know.

And according to the New York Daily News, so  does Mark Zuckerberg.

The popular social networking site is in talks with potential partners about how to enter the market in the Communist country, Bloomberg.com reported late Friday.

“We are currently studying and learning about China, as part of evaluating any possible approaches that could benefit our users, developers and advertisers,” the California company said in an emailed statement to the news service.

Facebook is currently banned in China.

So who cares?

What if Facebook DOES figure out how to get all up in China? Well, if your business has global appeal (looking at you, information marketers/entertainment bloggers/consulting), that could open a whole new market for you. A report from about a year ago said there were over 384 million people online in China, the world’s largest online community. And according to the latest data on world cell phone use by population, 17 out of 100 Chinese people have cell phones.

Could be big – watch that story.

From an announcement on the main Google Blog and on the Google Places blog:

It’s been incredibly exciting to watch Hotpot grow—the community has quickly expanded to millions of users who are rating more than one million times per month and enjoying a truly personalized view of the world. Based on this success, we’ve decided to graduate Hotpot to be a permanent part of our core local product offering, Google Places.

Hotpot originally had its own blog, which was fine for their initial visibility. But add to that the weird name, which I was never a fan of, and the fact that they had to explain what it meant, and that it seemed like a product that was supposed to be an enhancement to either Google Maps, Google Places, or Google Latitude (or all of the above), it seems like a smart move to just make it an official Google Places feature.

And yes, I still think Google HotPot is going to be HUGE for your business – Google already says they’ve passed 1 million checkins, and I think that’s just the beginning.

In this three minute audio, I talk about why all links are not created equally.

[download the mp3]