WebProNews

Love Letters from Googlebot

In a mildly weird fashion, Google answered some questions regarding HTTP status codes and "if-modified-since" from users who were either made up or had their names changed to protect their anonymity. Names like Little Jimmy, Temp O'Rary, Janet Crinklenose, and Frankie O'Fore (my apologies to any Janet Crinklenoses who may be out there, but I think I'm safe in my assumption that the name is fictitious).

Ex-AOL CEO May Have A Mind To Buy Yahoo

Jon Miller knows a few things about Internet companies and large amounts of money; he was the CEO of AOL for around four years, and is a founding partner of the Velocity Interactive Group investment firm.  So try to at least not fall out of your chair laughing when we say he might attempt to buy Yahoo.

Microsoft Aims to Make Up for Black Friday Rip Offs

On Black Friday, Microsoft Live Search along with HP promised a 40% refund on items purchased in HP's online store. The only problem was that the site for what was called Microsoft Live Search Cashback experienced an outage and then started delivering 3% refunds instead of 40%. Obviously, there were some unhappy campers as a result.

The Great Google Adsense Side Effect

If the Internet consisted of real brick and mortar buildings there would be a construction boom going on right now like the world has never seen. The Internet is not in a recession or on the road to a depression, rather it is experiencing an economic and social explosion of activity.

Google Launches Gmail Desktop Gadget

Google has launched a Gmail gadget for users running Google Desktop in Windows.

Convenience Draws Holiday Shoppers Online

Consumers are more engaged this holiday season partly due to online promotions over Thanksgiving week, which offered discounts from 30 to 70 percent off products along with free shipping.What's different is how early the season started, and the level of promotional activity driven by social marketing.

YouTube Gets Tougher On Sexual Content

Marketers, young men, and YouTube's many bikini-clad seductresses are about to get an unpleasant surprise.  As part of what appears to be a crackdown on both sexual content and more general attempts to mislead users, the video-sharing site is pushing the pretty ladies off some of its most popular pages.

The Year in Online Video

Now that we are in December, the final month of the year, I thought it would be fun to go back through our archives and take a look at some of the highlights of different sectors of our industry, and reflect on everything that has happen over the year 2008. January seems so long ago. So much has happened.

Blogspot's Content Warning Blocking Spiders

Edgy bloggers using Google’s Blogspot might have been miffed already—but likely also understood—at Google slapping content warnings over their adult-oriented material and demanding age verification. But what might deter (poorly) minors from viewing is also preventing search crawlers from accessing the content at all.

Mobile Tuesday Meets Inevitability

Truth be told, advertisers never met a bandwagon they didn’t like. Enter the first Mobile Tuesday, an extension, of course, of Black Friday and recently created Cyber Monday. If you’re one of 18,000 who signed up via Black Friday leak sites, you should be receiving promotional offers from McDonald’s, Finish Line, and RedTag.