Online Marketing Blog

Flickr, Del.icio.us, Technorati and Furl are four popular services that allow a user to bookmark sites, upload pictures, or mark blog posts with tags. Tagging is a form of organization, like categorizing information, that could become the next big thing and Yahoo could be the one to take it there. TopRank has been tagging for a while now, and we think it is a great idea.

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ZDNet news is reporting that Yahoo plans to increase the amount of free email space it gives its users to 1 gig. This will help it compete as Google’s Gmail may be going public April first.

Tags: Yahoo, Google, Gmail, email

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CNET News.com has started up a new blog to keep track of the web’s search king - Google. This Google blog is so new that there is only one post in it so far. Nonetheless, it might be a good place to watch for Google developments in the future.

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ZDNet reports that InterActiveCorp bought Ask Jeeves for $1.85 billion. This follows yesterday’s rumors of the ZDNet Web Technology article.

Tags: Ask Jeeves, IAC, InterActiveCorp

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Word is that Feedster is looking at excluding blogspot (blogger) blogs from it’s search. Users will need to check an option to include them. Unfortunately, there are so many spam-filled blogspot blogs, it hampers Feedster’s search to include them. Via Greg Linden and Inside Google

That sucks just a little for us, as this is a blogspot hosted blog. Although, we’re already in the process of moving to www.toprankblog.com.

Tags: Feedster, Blogger, Blogspot

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Google is under attack for using images and content without permission on Google News from a French news agency. AFP wants $17 million, an amount that would hardly phase Google.

Via Search Engine Watch Blog and many others (rss).

Tags: Google News, Google Sued, AFP, Agence France-Presse

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IAC and Ask Jeeves are not officially commenting yet, but plenty of media and blogs are in regard to a $2 billion stock deal for IAC to acquire Ask Jeeves.

New York Times: “IAC/Interactive Corp., the Internet company headed by Barry Diller, is close to an agreement to acquire Ask Jeeves Inc., the nation’s fourth-largest search engine company.”

Wall Street Journal:
“Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp last night was near a deal to purchase the fifth-largest Web-search service, Ask Jeeves Inc., for around $2 billion in stock, according to people familiar with the matter, marking an aggressive move by the electronic-commerce company into the Internet’s most competitive arena.”

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The Yahoo actually does acquire Flickr. So, what will happen to Flickr? According to Caterina:

“Flickr will be continuing on the path it’s on — to Flickr 1.0 and beyond. We’ll be working with a bunch of people that Totally Get Flickr and want to preserve the community and the flavor of what is here. We’re going to grow and change, but we’re in it for the long haul, with the same management and same team.”

Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo comments:

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“Yahoo said on Friday afternoon that a statement from the company’s Australian office on Tuesday, which claimed that all future products would be compatible with both the Firefox and Internet Explorer (IE) browsers, was inaccurate.”

A rep from Yahoo in the US clarified earlier comments made that there are so many different services offered by Yahoo, they really cannot guarantee that all will be compatible with Firefox.

Full article at ZDNet UK News

Tags: Yahoo, Firefox

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The odd situation with Google posting a link to Google X and then disabling the destination site has become even more interesting. Several clones of Google X have appeared. ablaze clone, Tech info blog clone and this one. Oh, and one more from SEJ.

It will be interesting to see how long they last. The feature is cool and it’s too bad Google had to take it down.

Google or Apple PR folks should really get off the pot and respond. It reflects poorly on both to do the “no comment” thing.

Via SEroundtable and Google Weblog (unofficial).

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One of the most common issues with making documents more search engine friendly is the introduction of text in place of, or in addition to, other forms of navigation.

JavaScript is a favorite for mouseovers and more often drop down and foldout menus. Links inside JavaScript are not indexed by most search engines. If a search engine cannot follow links it cannot find the rest of your web site.

Many times an alternative navigation method based on text links can provide a solution. Another option to JavaScript or DHTML foldout menus is a CSS based menu that performs much the same way. Via SEOConsultants.com, Tanfa offers code for vertical (read first) and horizontal menus. These are search engine friendly foldout menus - cool.

Tags: SEO, Search Engine Optimization

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Ask Jeeves has posted a toolbar for Firefox.

Features include saved locations, local news, the ability to save images, web pages and searches plus a search box for maps and business listings.

Tags: Ask Jeeves, Toolbar, Firefox

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