Gord Hotchkiss breaks down the recent predictions given by Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy.

It’s time to welcome another search engine into the family. This morning at 12:00 am, Microsoft removed the beta designation from MSN Search and officially launched, complete with an improved index and a redesigned MSN.com homepage.

It seems name-dropping search engines on hip TV shows, is the latest rage. This time round Ask get’s the nod from the producers of Arrested Development.

Danny Sullivan is clearly not impressed with the bold claims of the new search engine, Web’s Biggest.

I tried to convince my wife that I needed to read the Playboy issue that featured Google co-founders Page and Brin. After she gave me the “talk to the hand” speach, I gave up.

The Yahoo Search team is back from the WebmasterWorld conference in Las Vegas. It sounds like they had a great time conferencing.

We were a little perplexed when we saw iProspect’s announcement that all of their PPC staff had been given the new Google Advertising Professionals certification.

On Thursday, November 11, Microsoft is preparing to launch their search presence to the public again. A version of their search engine has been available on search.msn.com and on their sandbox site for some time now. This “release” is expected to be a media blitz that will announce MSN Search to the general public.

Last year’s SES San Jose marked the launch of the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, commonly known as SEMPO. Now, with the one-year anniversary rapidly approaching and the 2004 San Jose conference just days away, critics are stirring up controversy. In a recent article, Michael Grehan dared to criticize the organization. “Who needs SEMPO?” the Smart Interactive CEO asks.

Yes, we supposedly work on the World Wide Web, but localization and micromarketing (a term I learned from a Stuart Elliot column describing a marketing pitch by Sharper Image to one area of Soho in New York) increasingly segment and complicate results, especially across foreign search portals. So here are some suggestions – from the Search Engine Watch forums – for reaching potential clients who live in countries other than yours.

I was visiting Dan Thies’ revamped SEO Research Labs site and found a couple SEO tools he linked to that may help your efforts.

Danny Sullivan discussed his “Invisible Tabs” theory during his keynote speech at the Search Engine Strategies conference. Google’s recent release of their book search lends credibility to this theory, and points in the direction Google’s heading.

Sparks of Controversy. There was a substantial amount of controversy in the WebProWorld forums regarding what Marissa Mayer, the Director of Consumer Web Products at Google, told me at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in Chicago last week. She said, “If you dropped in rankings, go back and look at who you linked to and who’s linking to you. If any of these people are using spam techniques, they’re the reason your site no longer appears on Google.”

Are You Addicted to Google? Go ahead, admit it. You’re an addict, too. This morning at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in Chicago, Danny Sullivan gave a Keynote speech titled “Google Anonymous” — the joke is many people seem to be addicted to Google. Danny is considered one of the most prominent search engine marketing experts in the world. He offered a step-by-step process to help people overcome this “addiction.”

Keywords
Know what you want to be found for. You should know the top two or three terms that are most important to your Web site and have incorporated them into a 25-word description that doesn’t use marketing hype, which can then be submitted to human powered directories. You should also know a list of the top 10 to 100 terms you’d like to be found for and ensure that you have pages within your Web site with good, solid content for these terms to please the crawlers.
(Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch)