On Search Engine Journal, Loren Baker shows us how Google redirected him to iGoogle. that hasn’t happened to me, but here’s Loren’s video on it.

The full story is called Google.com Redirecting to iGoogle Personalized Homepage : Video Capture – don’t forget to Sphinn it while you’re on that page, you’ll see the button. And see the comments for how to turn this back off.

Here’s news from Search Engine Journal published today about Google News. I noticed the changes and never got around to writing about it. I’ll have some related news about another one of my favorte Google tools soon, most likely next Tuesday.

This will likely conclude today’s Google day – whatever else I post today, if anything, will be later on in the day, marked as an extra.Thanks for coming by!

Search Engine Giving Away $5 Million in Advertising

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.

Yet another great article from Search Engine Journal tells you about a feature in Yahoo that you may not have noticed – adding Yahoo News Search results to your My Yahoo RSS Headlines module.

Haven’t tried it with my Gmail account – it’s easier for me to read it on the web. But apparently if you have Gmail, you can use this tool to use your Gmail as a POP account.