Google has taken the personalized homepage concept a step further down the development path and released an API for creating homepage modules.

The first session I attended today, the third day of the Chicago SES conference, was the Linking Strategies track. This particular session had a number of speakers, many of which you all are familiar with like Greg Boser of WebGuerilla.com, Eric Ward of EricWard.com, and Mike Grehan. SearchEngineWatch’s Chris Sherman moderated.

Dr. Evil would be impressed with the debut of the Million Dollar Homepage. Alex Tew, an entrepreneurial young man in the U.K. created the site in order to raise a little money, a cool million to be specific and he’s got a unique method to his million dollar madness, one pixel at a time.

Innovation in the competitive search engine and directory markets: how the internet is the perfect medium for David to take on Goliath. The pursuit of online information has become an increasingly dynamic and competitive marketplace during the past three years.

Google has added new content to its personalized homepage at google.com/ig, but most people will be excited to hear that it is now an RSS reader. Just click add content to try the nifty slide-out side panel which allows you to choose from dozens of sources and type in RSS feeds.

Whether you are an experienced web programmer or a complete novice attempting to provide data interactivity with your web site, MyQSL is an easy to use and free database solution that can allow you to store and configure data to be displayed on your web site.

A couple days ago, it was widely reported a certain Google result had been hijacked by another site using redirect technology. However, the site owner responsible for the presumed hijack disagreed with the assessment and would like to offer an explanation.

The act of page hijacking with concerns to the search engine world can produce long ranging results, especially for the web site or page targeted by the attack.

The basic Google homepage, a clean, minimalist setting with the occasional logo change for holidays, can now be tweaked.

Yahoo! 360 the new blog meets social network service from Yahoo! get’s sent up beautifully by SixFoo 660, in fact, it quite litterally had me laughing out loud.

So Google changed their homepage again, they added the “Local” tab to the search interface.

Quickly following up to their purchase of digital photograph software company Picasa, Google has introduced a link on their homepage inviting visitors to download the software for free. That is, the ad/link is appearing for some.

MSN has rolled out a new look for their search engine. MSN Search is now featuring a newly designed home page, as well as redesigned search results pages. Not only equipped with a new look, Microsoft has also altered the method in which they deliver information to the user.

CARFAX (http://www.carfax.com) specializes in selling vehicle history reports on used cars. After spending some time browsing around the site, I’ve identified three major areas in which the site could be improved.

So your web site’s online and you’ve got high rankings in the search engines attracting lots of visitors. But the statistics tell you most of them are leaving after viewing just one page, what’s gone wrong?

Want to know what the worst thing to say on a homepage is? ” Welcome to our homepage.” And yet, time after time, we all come across such homepages on the Internet. The reason that this is such a poor opening gambit is the fact that the visitor already knows he / she is looking at your homepage, what’s the point in teaching them to suck eggs?

Everyone who has a website struggles at one time or another with how to improve their home page. Although many visitors enter through pages deeper in your site, your home page is often a visitor’s first introduction to your company or organization. For that reason, it’s important to start off on the right foot.

As a web designer and/or developer you need tools that help you save time in your everyday online routine. One resourceful tool we have used for many years is a custom quickie browser home page that resides on our system (or shared drive for those who use a network).

All websites have a homepage. It is the most important page of your site. It acts as the main gateway to the entire site. Most of your prospective customers will enter through it. Its vital to get it right. You dont want them to just turn around and go away again.

Where would we be today without vacuums? Think about it: The vacuum is a brilliant invention. It sucks up your household dirt and puts it exactly where you want it to go – off your floor and into that little bag.

A successful homepage acts exactly like a “digital vacuum” – it sucks users in, away from the homepage, and straight to important content within the rest of the site.

Is your site’s home page search engine friendly? Think so, eh? The vast majority of websites, even those belonging to Fortune 500 companies, are far from optimized. I use a simple four-step process to find the most common errors. Using this to do a quick tune-up on your homepage takes about 10 minutes, and it will pay off for years to come.