MSN Local

I like this... though you have to find it in the dropdown menu the search result page is better laid out and simplier to use.
If this continues maybe MSN will backdoor their way into challenging Google.

Democracy is Banned by Microsoft in China

The Reporters Without Borders came out strongly against the actions of Microsoft which adopted the Chinese censorship policies and flagged the word 'democracy' and other terms on its blog.

Apparently "when a Chinese blogger (at MSN) attempts to post a message containing terms such as "democracy", "Dalai Lama", "Falungong", "4 June" (the date of the Tiananmen Square massacre), "China + corruption", or "human rights", a warning displays saying, "This message contains a banned expression, please delete this expression."

The argument has to be 'get inside the system and then work for change' and one that all the major players (Google, Yahoo and now MSN) seem to be adopting.

Tracking Codes Knocking Organic Results Out

I have been having problems recently with our websites getting dropped out of the SERPs because the spiders are seeing banner links or text links as the index page instead of our actual sites.

I have had one site dropped from Google and now three from Yahoo each engine attaching to different sources.

In essence, they see www.domainname.com/?engine=advertiser&keyword=link, as the canonical domain... but the real domain is the one with all the inbound links and it gets pushed out as dupliacte content.

I have the two tracking/analytic companies we use see what can be done with this, but a straight 301 redirect strips the tracking code so I lose that...

Anyone else experiencing this???

AOL choosing Search over TV ads

Seems AOL is showing some faith in its own medium.

According to a New York Times article yesterday, they have decided to put the bulk of their $50 million advertising budget for the push of their new open-access portal into web advertising.

Interestingly they are using Google and Yahoo for PPCD and have actually earmarked some of the money for developing optimized pages and improving the ones that exist right now.

Guess the SEO world is smiling right now... I know I am!

The Many Faces of Internet Moves in China

Funny I followed Danny Sullivan's link to an article about the big internet players moving into the Chinese market to keep on top of what was happening in the Asian search market. Business Week no less covering search moves into China... impressive.

But later in the day I come across a nugget at Yahoo about websites and blogs having to be registered in China. Guess the multinationals are registered and can overlook the curtailling of freedoms in pursuit of profits.

What they have to consider, however, is that sooner or later the censors will limit them as well. Seems Google has forgotten they had their news in China censored not to long ago.

Newspaper Sites Looking to Grab Local Search

According to a report in the NY Post yesterday, "a handful of U.S. newspapers are trying to break the grip Google and Yahoo! have on the lucrative online advertising business by launching their own services."

New York newspaper, Newsday now offers its own PPC program with the option of picking the sections of their online edition the ads appears. The choices and spaces can be seen here.

Since newspapers are some of the largest traffic providers on the web right now, as Melinda Gipson of the Newspaper Association of America stated, it could be an interesting way for local search to finally take shape.

Hey Google, Yahoo! and MSN have the global stage, if they want to really grab the local one they may have to go back to basics and become paparboys!!!

Sensis: Australian Search Marketing National Pride

I use www.sensis.com.au and thus received their latest PR release touting national pride. "View the World Wide Web through Australian eyes" is a catchy slogan to pull at the nationalistic pride of Australians have.

The other thing I like is the way the search results are presented. Two columns, left are Aussie pages, right are global results. Moving forward this would be a great tool for global engines to use... pick a country and compare it with global results.

I check the sites I work on through them regularly and I must say they have solid relevant results, both locally and globally.