Adobe is providing optimized Adobe® Flash® Player technology to Google and Yahoo! to enhance search engine indexing of the Flash file format (SWF) and uncover information that is currently undiscoverable by search engines. This will provide more relevant automatic search rankings of the millions of RIAs and other dynamic content that run in Adobe Flash Player.

Although search engines already index static text and links within SWF files, RIAs and dynamic Web content have been generally difficult to fully expose to search engines because of their changing states — a problem also inherent in other RIA technologies.

David Wadhwani, General manager and vice president of the Platform Business Unit at Adobe. “We are initially working with Google and Yahoo! to significantly improve search of this rich content on the Web, and we intend to broaden the availability of this capability to benefit all content publishers, developers and end users.”

Bill Coughran, senior vice president of engineering at Google. “Through our recent collaboration with Adobe, we now help Web site owners that choose to design sites with Adobe Flash software by indexing this content better. Improving how we crawl dynamic content will ultimately enhance the search experience for our users.”

Source :
Adobe Flash Technology Enhances Search Results for Dynamic Content and Rich Internet Applications

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Email marketing are the two best bets for your marketing dollar, according to a new report from UK Based eConsultancy in conjunction with Clash-Media. “Viral marketing” landed on the other end of the spectrum based on the feedback of 600 companies.

* A greater proportion of lead generation budget is being spent on online (on
average, 53%) than offline (44%).

* Compared to 2007, PPC is getting a bigger proportion of online lead generation
budgets even though natural search is perceived to be better value for the money.

* PPC now gets a third of this budget (33%) compared to 28% in 2007. Meanwhile, SEO
now only gets 15% of the budget compared to 18% last year.

* Companies are now investing more in their in-house email marketing. The average
proportion of budget devoted to this has increased from 10% to 15%.

* The biggest fallers since 2007 are affiliate
marketing (from 50% to 43%), email marketing - rented lists (from 33% to 28%) and viral marketing (from 35% to 22%).

Read Full Detail News at - B2C Lead Report. Good News For SEO’s and Email Marketers.

Google consider mobile internet to be the next major advertising platform. Google CEO Eric Schmidt predict that mobile advertising will generate more revenue than advertising on the normal web. Schmidt was less enthusiastic about the advertising possibilities of online video portal YouTube and DoubleClick.

Cloud Computing was another trend the Google boss considered "very interesting". Google would also be going head to head with Microsoft and Yahoo in the management of large computer centers.

Source : Google boss has high hopes for the mobile internet

Google has rolled out Website Optimizer, a tool that Webmasters can use to test variations of a site's content and design to increase conversions. The free tool is available at www.google.com/websiteoptimizer, and the search giant has also launched an accompanying blog, tutorial and discussion board.

Source : Google Brings Free Website Optimizer Tool Out Of Beta

Alexa has changed their rating system - their official news announcement says that NOW more sources will be used to come to a rating, also they claim to be using NEW algorithms that will determine the rating even better.

Read More at Alexa rating system has changed

To compete Google, Yahoo will be making some changes to their crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms. Read more at Yahoo! Search Index Update

Yahoo Blog says "The Yahoo! Local team had that in mind when they rolled out a new feature to help everyone from the consummate explorer to the geographically-challenged find local businesses quicker and more easily"

Benchmarking only works if people can opt to share their data into the system, so google also introduce a new data-sharing settings page. On this page, customers can choose whether to opt in or opt out of sharing their Analytics data.

Benchmarking lets you compare your metrics against industry verticals.

To enable this optional new feature, an administrator on Google analytics account will need to make the following selections on the Google Analytics data sharing settings page:

1. Log into your account. You'll see the yellow data sharing settings box on
the Analytics Settings page.

2. Click the "More data sharing options" link within the yellow box.

3. Select the second checkbox to specify that you want to share your data
"Anonymously with Google products and the benchmarking service". You can
also choose to share your data "With Google products only" to take advantage
of advanced Google advertising products and services as they become
available.

Read More at
: Benchmarking now available plus additional opt-in settings

Yahoo says it has increased its excluded keyword limits from 50 to 250 to improve relevance in search results.

On the Yahoo Search Marketing Blog it explains what words types of keywords to exclude. "Identify the keywords that do not apply to your business but may be commonly used by potential customers."

Read More about this SEO SEM News at Yahoo Raises Limits On Excluded Keywords

Baidu.com Inc led China's search engine market in last year's fourth quarter with a 60.1 percent share, research firm Analysys International said on Friday.

Google Inc came second with a 25.9 percent share, followed by Yahoo China with 9.6 percent, it said in a statement

China's search engine market reached 946.6 million yuan ($131.3 million) in the fourth quarter -- almost double from a year earlier -- and was dominated by Baidu, Google and Yahoo China with a combined share of nearly 96 percent.

Source / Read More : Baidu leads China Web search market in Q4

Position 6 Penalty : When your website come at 1 or 2 Rank on a keyword shift downwards to rank position number 6 in Google search engine. Lots of webmaster saw this penalty in mid of December month.

My Website is effected with Position 6 Penalty ?

Tedster on webmasterworld says

Here are the main signs --

1. Well established site with a long history.
2. Long time good rankings for a big search term - usually #1
3. Other searches that returned the same url at #1 may also be sent to #6, but not all of them
4. Some reports of a #2 result going to #6.

What we can identify so far

A. It's search term specific (usually the biggest and best converting phrase)
B. Therefore, not a url or domain-wide penalty on all terms
C. A little testing on one site seems to show it's not an on-page problem
D. That leaves off-page but on-site, or off-site, or posibly backlink issues

If your website was facing position 6 penalty a lot of keywords then you need to read How I Got My Google Ranking #6 Filter Removed.

For 2007, Search Engine Roundtable’s team of Barry Schwartz and Tamar Weinberg continuously bring excellent coverage of SEO and webmaster issues as discussed in the various search marketing forums that they cover.

Search Engine Roundtable does an excellent job of covering SEO, SEM and Contextual Publishing...

Source / Read more at Search Engine Roundtable : Best SEO Blog of 2007

With the recent admission by Matt Cutts to Stephan Spencer that Google is using Adobe Systems' Search Engine SDK technology, a new set of optimization opportunities opened up.

That fairly definite confirmation of how Google reads text within Flash files makes it possible to create Flash .swf files with some level of search engine optimization.

"It used to be the case that we had our own, home-brew code to pull the text out of Flash, but I think that we have moved to the Search Engine SDK tool that Adobe Macromedia offers," Cutts said. "So my hunch is that most of the search engines will standardize on using that Search Engine SDK tool to pull out the text."

Source / Read more at Google reads Flash text, so optimize it | Searchlight

The canvas page of Facebook pages can now be made accessible to the public.

There are two main benefits to this:

(1) If your app runs exclusively on Facebook (aka – it’s not an extension of your existing site) you now have a page you can use to promote it that doesn’t require someone to login to Facebook.

(2) Search engines will now be able to index your apps. So, if someone types into Google “music apps for Facebook,” they might get a link to iLike or Pandora’s canvas page.

Google prevent feeds from being returned in Google's search results.
Reasoning behind Google dropping RSS feeds from the results according to Official Google Webmaster Central Blog are --

. Feeds increase the likelihood that users see duplicate search results.
. Users clicking on a feed may miss valuable content available only in the HTML page.

Read more at :
Google Webmaster Central Blog
Search Engine Land

Google may be the best search engine when it comes to matching a user’s intent with the right results for general searches. But as with other forms of research, a user may want something more specific than a general encyclopedia to answer his questions. Sure, you can find apple pie recipes on Google, but can you find one that will satisfy Uncle Martin’s sweet tooth AND cousin Kate’s allergies? That takes a bit more digging, and some search engines are prepared to use a number of approaches to make the search a little less painful.

Some analysts think that the trend to which Google is most vulnerable, however, is the vertical search engines that are cropping up. If you have a medical problem, you can search for information about it at a health-focused search engine; if you want to buy someone a gift, you can check out a shopping search engine; and on and on. Others think that social networking and social search engines will chip away at Google’s market share.

The Google Blog announced the latest version of Google Toolbar . Features of this google toolbar are --

• save your settings online
• get all of your bookmarks
• custom buttons
• AutoFill information from your different computers
• clipping content using Google Notebook
• support many Google Gadgets

If search-engine rankings are supposed to represent a kind of democracy--a reflection of what Internet users collectively think is most useful--then search-engine optimizers like Fishkin are the Web's lobbyists. High-priced and in some cases slyly unethical, SEOs try to manipulate the unpaid search results that help users navigate the Internet. Their goal is to boost their clients' (and in some cases their own) sites to the top of unpaid search-engine rankings--even if their true popularity doesn't warrant that elevated status.

As online shopping grows, search-engine rankings can make a difference between success and failure on the Internet. This holiday season, 10.8 percent of shoppers will find their way to online retailers via Google alone, according to research firm Hitwise. And SEO firm Enquiro reports that the links on the very top of a search-results page--what users see without scrolling down--capture 70 percent of all users' mouseclicks. That's why the SEO profession has taken off, from a few hundred practitioners in the mid-'90s to thousands today, with many of them working inside big firms like Intel and IBM. "Having an SEO either in-house or as a consult-ant is now considered a necessity," says Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch.com, who notes that the companies are partly motivated by keeping their critics off all relevant search-results pages.

Experts in Search Engine Optimisation dismissed PPC as far less likely to bring about results in a debate last night (11 December).

The "B2B Marketing Debate" saw SEO exponents and Pay Per Click champions clash over effectiveness and results.

The debate, at The English Speaking Union in London, saw head of search at Bigmouth Media Andrew Girdwood argue that organic results were often perceived as more directly relevant, with a lower overall cost. He said: "“People don’t want to put more money in. For B2B campaigns SEO has a definite advantage over PPC.”"

Periscopex co-founder Simon Norris defended PPC as a marketing tool and said that its plus points were that it was easy to change, start, stop and completely transparent. He asserted that PPC was a better, more targeted way to gain leads.

Stuart Small, industry leader, business and industrial markets at Google, backed up the argument and said that with 85% of all B2B purchases starting in a search engine, paid search ads were vital to any business. He added that Google sees 80% of searchers clicking on organic results, with 20% clicking on search ads.

Source /Read More : PPC shot down by SEO experts

Google Inc is looking to more advertising technology partnerships outside of its proposed purchase of DoubleClick Ltd as it expands beyond Internet search advertising, a top executive said on Tuesday.

Read more at Google looking to ad partners beyond DoubleClick

Search Engine Strategies (SES) San Jose, the Premier Silicon Valley Event, On Roster in 2008 for 10th Year Popular Marketing Event Has Already Broken Record for Attendee and Sponsor/Exhibitor Registration NumbersSAN JOSE, Calif.--(Business Wire)--Savvy search engine marketers are awaiting the return of SearchEngine Strategies (SES) San Jose, the interactive searchmarketing event of the year where delegates learn first hand thestrategies and tactics available to them to grow their businessonline.

The event, to be held at the San Jose Convention Center,August 18-21, 2008, is already drawing unprecedented interest fromattendees and exhibitors alike.

Source / Read more : Search Engine Strategies (SES) San Jose