Their employees are hitting each other in the faces with balls. Which I guess is better office conduct than the other way around, but it’s still a scandal.

I’m not kidding. It was leaked on one of their blogs. Click the image below to learn more.

Step One: Find something to write/pod/vlog about that you really care about and can talk about over and over until the end of time as we know it.

Step Two: Start up a blog/podcast/vlog, put your ads in place, incorporate some light keyword research, and start cranking out content. Tip for Vloggers – Blip.TV pays cash money by inserting ads in/around your vid shows. Blogger tip – there’s more ways to monetize blogs than I’ll currently speak of. Maybe another day. Okay, I’ll make a show about it on our Blip channel, which I currently feel is hideous, so why did I just link to it?

Step Three: Have such extraordinary content that everyone in the free world links to you instead of painstakingly optimizing your site.

Step Four: Make super-phat big Dollas so you can pay someone else to do your SEO.

The News

There’s an article over at Yeald.com that raises an interesting point: Since A9.com uses Google results, and is a Google partner, doesn’t it stand to reason that Google would be studying customer behavoir data through them?

The Gossip

Logically, it makes sense.

Some people start with the privacy concerns, and in a way I agree with you, but think about this.

How much do we mere mortals study our client base to make our products better and more useful to them? Are we out towards some Big Brother end? No. So why do we think that the big corporations have any other intention besides making money.

I’m not saying give your information out willy-nilly – there are still spammers out there.

I just think some of us are getting a little too shaken by the whole cookie/privacy thing. If you don’t want your specific details revealed, make another Amazon profile. You can have as many as you want, from any email. They get the needed information to make the web easier/better and you get your privacy.

And if you’re going to reveal yourself, vote with your identity. If you’ve got an Amazon profile, and you buy from Amazon, tell them what they’re doing right and what sucks. For one thing, I hate that little Gold box. If you want me to click on it, put some cashback in there. I don’t want just a coupon. As much money as I spend at Amazon, I should have my own line of credit. Partner up with Visa and give it to me.

Whoops. Tangent.

Back with more Google news n tools n stuff in a few. Watch the Trackback link for more….

And comment. You can put your link in there you know.

The Gossip

I’m sure you read the New York Post story stating that they might be launching their own browser.

And some people scoff – “please. The New York Post? Like they’re a credible paper. I’ll believe that when I see it on Google Tuesdays.”

Well guess what….

The News

A little bird told me that Google has registered the domain name GBrowser.com. It’s a matter of public record. (Be sure to check my trackback links later for where I got this juicy little tidbit.) This was registered back in April.

My Own Wild Theories and Speculations

Honestly, do we really need a Google Browser? What would make it the best thing since Mozilla Firefox?

I’ll tell you what.

#1 Gmail in my browser.

How curse-word-ing sweet would that be? instead of a Gmail tab dedicated to Gmail like the one my work necessitates, they could have a sidebar, or give Thunderbird users special sidebar access that behaves like POP email which we can read offline if we so desire.

#2 A Google version of Mozilla Firefox. Mozilla could use the backing, and Mozilla Firefox is the best damn browser on the planet. It is perfect? Hell no. But they listen to their user base and make appropriate changes quickly.

For example, with version .92, my browser froze when I went to work on the beta version of one of my RSS Sites. Now, with version 1.0, I have absolutely no problems with it.

And it’s open-source – snatch up the code and make your own modifications. Or join the bug team and help them spruce it up.

#2B Easy feeds.

I’m a sucker for a creative man or a really smart one. If Mozilla falls under the wing of Google, that would keep me from the need to have two husbands and a fiancee.

Why am I so excited?

Mozilla Firefox makes feed reading as easy as Bookmarks. Here’s what happens. I have a folder called Feeds in my bookmarks. I browse to a site like Echievements.com. Well looky, looky, in the bottom left hand corner of my browser, an orange button labeled “RSS” appears. I click it and all the available feeds for that site pops up. i subscribe to the one I want (There’s only one right now.)

So far, sounds a lot like subscribing with a reader right?

Watch this.

I go back to the folder where I bookmark the feeds – and Mozilla Firefox has already made me a folder and fetched my feeds for the day AND I can click on open in tabs and read all my news.

In my GD browser. I LOVE this feature.

So what does that have to do with Google and a possible browser?

Are you kidding me? Picture this.

Google.

Plus the power of feeds.

Equals bliss.

What if, in my browser address bar, I could type google investment feeds, and I would automatically be subscribed to the top 30 feeds for investments, all in a nice little folder? If the top 50 sites for investments didn’t have feeds, maybe it could keep searching until it found 30 sites with feeds.

Google my love… I implore you to throw some money at Firefox and make this happen. I’ll be your love slave. I’ll plaster my entire site with AdSense ads. I’ll name our son Google junior. Just do this one thing for me.

Okay…. I’m back from fantasy land… sorry…

#3 The Google technology attached to my browser period.

If a site was down I could click a browser button and fetch the Google cache, if there was one, and browse that instead. If I was at a site before looking for a certain page, maybe Google would already have crawled the site ahead of me and I could Google the pages they found for exacly what I was looking for. I know, I can do all those things from Google itself, but at all times I’m either busy or lazy. Make my life easier.

I’ve got a dozen more ideas, but I have other news to get to – maybe a Google browser wouldn’t be a bad thing, maybe I’m overlooking some way in which it’s inherently evil. Why don’t you tell me what you guys think?

Oh, and don’t forget to check back when the Trackback link below this post starts to show numbers to see any updates and links I have.

Man, have I got some Google Gossip for you folks today! This will be the most fun I’ve had with Google Tuesdays in a minute.

Two notes before we continue: – We had server problems this morning while I was asleep but we’re all fixed now.

Secondly, if you’re not popping through to the site to read the posts, you’re missing out on the comments feature and the trackback links, where I often post additional information and links that are related to the story I’m covering. I know a minority of you subscribe to the full summary version, but you should still stop by once a week. I’m saying this now so you won’t be asking me “where’s the link?”.

There are some early speculations that perhaps a change in Google’s algorithms could take place soon. I didn’t pay as much attention to them, until i saw it in SEO Scoop, a fairly consistent source.

Yes, it’s from Search Engine Journal again.

The News
Domain Names Still Important Despite Search Engine Popularity

My Own Wild Speculations and Gossip
The average webmaster will continue to feel important if those of us struggling to stay content focused and relevant were rewarded with consistent, fair listings that the average search engine hacker can’t crack.

And again, continue to buy my love, in a way where they can not only survive short term, but thrive long term from the prospect of supplying a constant stream of good content.

I’ve got one friend who got his legitimate site knocked off the top listings by spam sites who somehow manage to benefit from the very algorithm change that was rumored to have been intended to punish them and not real sites like his.

Yeah, his site is climbing back in the results with some tweaking, but it shouldn’t have to be that way. Make it easier for folks like him to focus on providing content instead of playing this game where his site is only naturally relevant if he hops on his left foot during full moon Tuesdays.

While you’re at it, give surfers a vote that factors into the equation – an Amazon-style message like “surfers who like this site also like.”

I’m lucky. I was able to learn a consistent, ethical system for getting into the search engines, based on the things about them that don’t change. When I start new sites, I’ve been able to stay out of places like the Google sandbox. (So far!)

With that, I get consistent results that don’t vary from one of the best and most targeted sources of first-click traffic, and I’m grateful for the boost. Getting consistent results from search engines should be more of a time saver, for the average webmaster though.

I just think we saw a lot more purely content-driven sites when the hobbyist webmasters and time-pressed small business owner were focused on content-only, not what it takes to rank well.

News

Internet Week counts Yahoo, MSN and Amazon among Google’s rivals. Among the rivals is an issue of loyalty, as the article states, Yahoo and MSN don’t really have any personality.

My Own Wild Speculations and Gossip

I think that if the search engine game turns out to hinge on an issue of loyalty, two interesting things become a factor…. Amazon’s new search engine, and the only other group of people besides every day searchers who really have a reason to be loyal to any search engine.

Webmasters.

I’ll come back to the webmaster thing in a minute.

But if Amazon.com would really put a face on their corporate image, they’ve already got trust the size of eBay, and lots of research. The a9.com search engine could become the search engine of the intellectual, the reader, the smart guy, the bookworm.

At least, they can win surfers that way. If they want me as a webmaster, they’ve got to make the proceess of being a great affiliate a little bit easier. I mean I do great when I have the time. But who really has the time?

But back to the webmasters. Who else cares how they get their search results, so long as they’re relevant and convenient. I say we matter. And we’ve really been a little quieter on the whole matter than we should be. Without sites, where the heck would people on the internet go?

Google is my one true love, you all know that. But while I’m being a bigamist, and having an affair with Yahoo anyway, there’s more than enough of my site to go around. If Yahoo, MSN and Amazon make it easier for me to make money off their names and features, while promoting my own site, hell, I’ll be there with bells on. Please direct your attention to Exhibit A at the top of this page – you think that banner is there because I love Google?

Well. You’re right.

But my love is Totally conditional.

I love Google because they’ve been good to me, the extra small business owner who got more traffic to her site by playing by the rules. Then, after I made money from just selling my wares, they throw more money at me.

And I would quickly build and direct traffic to new, completely free resource sites for the same purpose again.

Dear other major search engines – if the limits to my love is a problem, throw money at me. I can and will be bought, so long as no one gets cheated or hurt. So buy my love.

Please?

If you haven’t heard, Yahoo has a blog. That part is pretty much old news. It’s been up since the 18th I think.

What I haven’t really seen anyone talking about is the fact that 1- It’s feed enabled – and B, it’s surprisingly easy to comment on, and you can also leave your link. If you say something useful, it seems like they are willing to incorporate your suggestions. I don’t know… I get more warm and fuzzy feelings from Yahoo’s Blog right now than I do from Google’s. Looks like Yahoo uses moveable type, which, though I love Blogger to death, I have to say Moveable Type uses more of the popular blog functions…

All in all, seems a lot friendlier than Google’s Official Blog, which Yahoo links to as a source. Classy.

Wonder if we’ll see any changes at Google’s Blog as a response.Course, there is the other Google Blog, though it’s not endorsed by Google.

But I ain’t one to gossip. So you didn’t hear that from me.

Since the 23rd, I’ve been seeing a new bot on my site, which is likely to be MSN’s special RSS feed bot. It’s unconfirmed whether or not this bot is new, or it’s just new to me, but I’ve only seen 16 references to it on the Web so far. It lists on my server as msnbot-rss/0.11 , and gives the regular information page as a reference, though there is no specific info on that page or any of the links from it. (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm).

But I ain’t one to gossip, so you didn’t hear that from me.