SeoAlchemist

As I woke up this morning to greet the last day of 2007, I started thinking to myself the things I want to change for next year.

2007 was an interesting and successful year for me and for Search Engine Journal, as I grew as a person and Search Engine Journal grew as a search marketing resource. We have an excellent set of contributing writers and authors like Julie Kent and Arnold Zafra, and still have guest spots from the ultra opinionated Carsten Cumbrowski along with deeper looks into SEO from Eric Lander.

Personally, I’ve also expanded my SEO consulting and link building services, bringing on some incredible clients and running successful campaigns. In addition, I’ll also be a partner in three upcoming ventures which have taken a bit of my time as of late, but should be well worth the effort in due time. Over the past year I’ve also relocated to a new city, made some good friends both inside and outside of search and am finally settling down and focusing 8 years of online marketing experience into a planned and proactive future for me, my family and the Search Engine Journal team.

So, thinking about the tradition of laying down New Year’s Resolutions, I’ve been mulling over one or two personal resolutions for 2008, but thought it would be nice to put forth some New Years Resolutions for SEJ in 2008, and mix them up a little.

• Less Noise. Instead of trying to cover all of the search news which comes out daily, perhaps writing more opinion and tutorial will be of greater value to our readers. In October and November I started publishing more link building and SEO tutorials and lists, and these attracted a good deal of positive reader response, bookmarks and interest; so I’m thinking that this is a good sign.
• Try other search engines more often. We cover a good deal of the search engines beyond the Big Four, but personally I do not use them much. I generally use Google and Ask.com for research and Yahoo for local, maps, travel and entertainment. When I’m introduced to a new engine I’ll use it a bit that day, and go through my favorite client keyterms, then cast it off to the side. Perhaps randomizing which search engine is powering my Firefox search box would be a cool way to figure this out.
• Use Spellcheck more often. I blog using w.bloggar which has a horrible Spell Checker which misses a lot of terms. I really need to work on my spelling and not rush some of the posts I’m getting together in the morning.
• Try Yoga and start doing Aikido again. Injuries from lifting, football and car accidents in my younger years, including some major broken bones, have left me a wreck, especially being 6′5 and generally an awkward guy. I used to practice Aikido religiously for about 2 years and was in the best shape of my life at the time so I think I’m going to get into that again, and I think I’ll try yoga. The end result should be enhanced flexibility and strength, less injuries, balanced chi, and a drop in weight. All good.
• Network more online. I love to blog and email, but I do not participate in the forums or social network groups as much as I should, or can. When it comes to forums I find myself posting more in the Baltimore Orioles forums and not in search ones. In the past I tried picking one or two forums and keeping up in the conversations, and back in the day I was all over Sitepoint and other forums, but have not really had the time of late.
• Walk more, drink more water, stretch three times a day and get more massages.

I’ll think of some others later and possibly add them to the comments, but I have to get some other work done before picking up my suit from the tailor and buying some shoe polish.

So, what are your New Year’s Resolutions? Personal or professional, please feel free to share them below.

Baidu.com says CFO killed in China accident from the AFP reports Shawn Wang, Baidu’s CFO died on December 27. Wang was in a fatal accident during a holiday vacation in China.

He joined Baidu in 2004 and helped Baidu with their extremely successful IPO and NASDAQ listing.

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There’s a new kid on the online block named Knol and even this early in the development stage, some people are already predicting that it could bring about yet another significant change to the way we share information on the Internet.

Knol is a new Web service being developed by Google that is meant to serve as a virtual storehouse of knowledge on the Internet. With content being contributed by various experts on different topics, it will behave much in the same way that Wikipedia does currently. In fact many industry experts have made the suggestion that Knol is set to become a direct competitor to Wikipedia and other similar types of web sites.

Google is of course the go to web site as far as search engines go, being the most popular search engine web site today by far. If Knol is as successful in drawing a widespread following as the developers hope, it could bring about the Google’s transition from a search engine into a company that creates and publishes Web content. (more…)

Gary Price reports Google has applied to trademark several terms this year, including Knol, Android, OpenSocial, Open Handset Alliance, Panoramio, Dalvik and more.

These trademark applications are common for companies wanting to protect their new product releases.

Steve Souders, Yahoo’s Chief Performance expert and writer of the Firefox add-on YSlow announced on his site he is joining Google on January 7, 2008.

It is not clear what Sounders will be doing at Google exactly. It appears that he will be working with Dion Almaer at Google. Almaer currently is working on Google Code, Google Gears, and related Google projects. Almaer is very excited to see Sounders is joining Google.

This is the second part of my series about bugs and usability issues with various Google services. My previous post was about Google Picasa and Google Checkout and also included some general comments to Google Storage, which is a paid service provided by Google to increase the amount of data you can have in your account and use for files and other things. Part II talks about the general Google Account, Google Desktop Search and Gmail (Hosted and Regular) as well is the migration of Emails from platforms like MS Outlook into Gmail. (more…)

It’s the end of the year and I have a little gift for Google for the year 2008. It’s a summary of issues and bugs I found in the various Google services, free and paid ones as well. Some are fresh and triggered this post and some others are older where I already send a feedback to Google in the past.

Google is obviously not used to deal with people and their best people for web usability must all be busy with the organic web search page. Okay, it is not easy to manage all the different new services and offerings that are partially in-house developed products and partially products and services that were acquired over the past few years. However, fundamental mistakes and errors should not happen, even under those circumstances. I was lucky today to bump into a whole chain of bugs and usability issues with Google’s Picasa, Google Checkout and Gmail. I also include some older issues, including ones with other Google services while I am at it. It comes down in total to SEVEN usability issues and FIVE real bugs for Picasa and Google Checkout alone.

It’s a long post, broken down into multiple parts and it is primarily written for Google.

If you encountered the same, similar or completely different issues, feel free to use this opportunity to let Google know about it by commenting to this post via the form provided at the end of this post. (more…)

A PEW/Internet and American Life study out today finds that the place Americans turn to most for answers is the internet. The study, which surveyed 2,796 Americans, found that 76% have internet access and that 58% turn to the internet when they have questions about things like health, school, careers, and government issues. The project focused on how people use the internet, libraries, and government resources when they need to solve problems and found that those without high-speed internet access (no access or dial-up only) were less satisfied with their ability to get the answers they were seeking.

Overall, people tend to consult two to three sources for information and are generally satisfied with the results. 77% of internet users (55% of Americans) have high-speed access; whereas 18% are still on dial-up. The speed of access seems to make a big difference in whether a searcher turns to the internet or some other source for answers. Those with broadband access spend more time online and are happier with their online experiences. 77% of those with broadband access at home used the internet for answers, compared to 57% of those with dial-up access.

Below, more findings on internet usage, particularly in researching health and government related issues.

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Google’s plan to socialize its various applications continues. Google
Operating System has

spotted code in Gmail that may lead to a
Facebook-style news feed
of status updates from your Gmail contacts. More about this and Google’s
continued "stealth social network" moves below.

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Previous chapters have covered how the growth of Google and fears of how it
was reshaping the communication landscape led to the application of existing
anti-trust laws along with new ones to force a Google breakup in 2010. This
chapter looks at the immediate aftermath: the "Baby Googles" or "Googlets" that
were formed in the name of greater competition and consumer choice.

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