For companies, there are plenty of reasons to maintain an active Twitter presence. Once you establish yourself on the network and begin to accumulate followers, you can use it for publicity purposes – to give your customers news and information …

It looks like the Windows Live Search Club, the puzzle game promotion that seemed so successful for Microsoft at first, is quickly turning into a PR disaster for the company.

The Club, which had searchers play puzzle games in order to win prizes, originally gave Microsoft a huge boost in search engine market share, a gain which has slowly dissapeared entirely in the last few months. Even worse, though, is the anger the Club’s fans are now turning towards the company.

Ron Paul fared a little too well in a post-Republican debate poll run by CNBC, prompting the news site’s managing editor to believe astroturfing had taken place, forcing them to take down the poll.

Street View is one of Google’s most popular programs, and it just got a lot more inclusive.  Users can now take a virtual stroll through Chicago, Pittsburgh, Portland, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Tucson, which brings the total number of Street View cities up to 15.

When it comes to taking care of customers, there are no mysteries; only the desire to invest in and support an effective customer service presence stands between companies like Google, and the joy they can deliver to people.

A growing number of disgruntled Google users have filed complaints with the Federal Trade Commission concerning a range of issues.

GoDaddy will inherit some 850,000 of the domains originally registered by RegisterFly according to this week’s ICANN agreement. RegisterFly has been struggling for some time. Last month, a federal judge issued an injunction enabling ICANN to terminate RegisterFly’s accreditation. This came after many different problems and customer complaints, not the least of which were fraud accusations.

Judging by one domain administrator’s experience with Google Apps and email, Google’s claims that it is not competing with Microsoft for the productivity space has a ring of truth.

Google recently announced they were updating the Adwords Quality Score, however it appears that there is a bug that raises the prices form any advertisers:

Google AdWords Quality Score Has Major Bug

Google AdWords Adds Quality Score Column & To Improved Quality Algorithm from Wednesday warned us of the new changes coming but apparently there is a bug that makes good performing ads prices spike through the roof.

UPDATE: It looks like Google’s pushed the button too early – and it could be the wrong button too. Lots of people are complaining that their Quality Score has gone crazy.

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I just got off the phone with Google’s Nick Fox, Senior Business Product Manager for Ad Quality, and got the scoop on the upcoming changes to the AdWords Quality Score.

It looks like Firefox plans to capitalize in its recent surge in popularity by airing fan-based television commercials, according to Read/WriteWeb.

No longer must the Cult of Mac look on wistfully while Windows users enjoy playing with Google Earth, as the search advertising company works on developing an Earth for Apple computer users.

India has followed South Korea in voicing national security concerns about the high-quality images on Google Earth.

Cracked screens and easily scratched screens appear to be two different issues, and that’s how Apple will handle them.

Apparently, through the use of a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) complaint, you can have sites thrown out of Yahoo’s search index. If you file a DMCA report against a site, Yahoo will remove the “offending” site from Yahoo Search altogether, leaving no trace of the site in its index.

Toyota has begun looking into claims its hot-selling hybrid engine Prius stalls or shuts down at high speeds.

ZDNet UK reports today that an online petition has been set up to put pressure on Apple to bring European prices for the new Mac mini in line with their US equivalents.

Yesterday, the U.S. and European Union agreed to talks on eliminating billions of dollars in aircraft subsidies, avoided legal conflict over Boeing and Airbus.

Spam filters are responsible for deleting a high percentage of legitimate business emails from people who have no wish to spam. Here are some tips to avoid spam complaints in your emails or ezine.

Nobody likes to get complaints. They make you question your judgment, they can ruin your day, and they almost always leave you in a bad mood. But what if I told you that complaints are actually a good thing?

What can be done to improve the image and reputation of SEM? With the recent Traffic-Power/black-hat SEO debacle, the article that detailed various ad agency SEM complaints, and numerous other articles that have questioned the need for SEO/SEM has helped give the industry a proverbial black eye.

How would you like to never receive a sp^am complaint again?