August 7, 2008

Roundup Thursday for the Week of 8/3/08

The author's views are entirely their own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

Stories, news, and other notable items from the past week:

Three star links:

Gmail got 302 hijacked. Oh, the humanity!
Lisa Ditlefsen nerds it up by introducing SEO Wars. Rand is "Rand Link Walker." Need I say more?
Live Search Webmaster Center has been updated to offer crawl issue reports, backlinks data, and download functionality. Hooray for new features!
Searchlight Digital disputes a recent YOUmoz entry that displayed SERP clickthrough rates (the post is linked to in the YOUmoz roundup below) and releases their own ultimate guide to SERP clickthrough rates.
Want to know how magicians can control your mind?
Eiso Kant expresses his frustrations when a startup launches an idea you've been working on, and he talks about how he bounces back from it to thrive amidst competition.
Slate provides a nice, simple explanation of what FriendFeed is and why it's so darn cool.
Man, no love for Generation Y lately. First MSN has an article of why Generation Y is broke (for me it's those damn triathlons--it ain't a cheap sport, that's for damn sure) and then the message boards debate whether we're just dumb or lazy. Geez, that's...the opposite of fair. What's the word I'm looking for...should probably look it up...ah, fuck it.
Bloom Media's inaugural blog post examines when it's time to adopt a new agency model.
Is Google's Knol a threat to the 'net? Sarah might tackle this subject and copyright infringement in more detail, so stay tuned!

Four star links:

Rae Hoffman has a great case study of a "non-big brand" Twitter account and its successes. She also gives the search industry a major smackdown for being childish little turds.
Patrick Altoft shares a clever strategy: he uses URL search to get thousands of visitors by ranking for searches like "www.direct.gov.uk/taxdisc." I'm not sure how great this is for conversions, but it's a pretty cool tip nonetheless.
Mashable provides some good resources for "message boards 2.0."
Chris Harrison has some really cool visualization projects, including Digg Rings, Amazon book maps, and the Wikipedia top 50.
Copyblogger doesn't care about us. Wah! Oh wait, they're giving advice on how to make your content actually worthwhile to users rather than just yourselves. Okay, we cool, Copyblogger. We cool.
The Pew Internet Project released new research on search engine usage. It's an excellent document for people who pitch SEO (either to clients or internally).
Brent Csutoras is interviewed about social media, and he provides some really great tips.

Five star links:

Google launches Google Insights for Search, which Rand dubs "probably the biggest kw research tool to be released in years." Search Engine Land analyzes the new tool in greater detail.
Dipity.com has an Internet memes scrolling timeline, and it is pretty damn awesome. Want to check the exact moment when Numa Numa became an Internet sensation? Well, now you can!

YOUmoz entries:

List Link Bait = Overdone. Ecreeds gripes about how sick he is of link bait lists.
Where Do the Clicks Go? KeyPractices shares a screenshot of a SERP's clicks to see which results searchers are more likely to click on.
PR of Member Profiles - Part III. Carfeu hypothesizes that "comments and other links do play a role in this PR distribution, but only if your page is indexed - by then Google counts links, follow and nofollow, to compute toolbar PR."
Hacked: How Safe Is Your Business? Webwordslinger got hacked. He shares his experience and gives some safety recommendations on how to back up your content and guard it from hackers.
The Looming Battle for .search. Stuart McIlreavy thinks that the .search TLD will become pretty competitive and valuable once new extensions are approved.

Best of YOUmoz:

Thanks to Batman, I Worry Less About My Bounce Rate. Vingold analyzes his Google and Yahoo bounce rates for one of his sites and recommends that you individually analyze your own bounce rates for each of your targeted keyword phrases.

New events added to the Events Calendar:

Upcoming events:

LondonSEO.org August 13 at the Vibe Bar, Truman Brewery, in London, UK
Melbourne SEO Meetup August 9-10 in Mt. Waverley/Syndal, Australia
SunCity SEOCon August 9-10 in Phoenix, AZ
SEOmoz Expert Training Seminar August 19-20 at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA

New additions to the SEOmoz Marketplace:

Featured job postings:

Ecommerce marketing manager for eMarketing Silo in Indianapolis, IN
Affiliate and search marketing manager for Jet Blue Airways in Forest Hills, NY
Search marketing manager for ValueClick in Westborough, MA
Contracted link builder and Drupal/PHP programmer for Chakery Design in Dallas, TX
Contracted SEO for webcomic.com in Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Online marketing apprentice for thehappycorp in New York, NY
Associate program manager and senior SEM manager for Zappos in Las Vegas, NV

Featured companies:

United States/North America:

UK/Europe:

Asia:

Featured resumes:

Currently looking:

Samreen Soomro from Pakistan is an SEO specialist and Internet marketing strategist. She has a master's degree in Computer Science and has experience working as an SEO team lead in the web marketing department for 360training.com.
S. Suresh is working as a webmaster and search marketing consultant for PeachSEO in Atlanta, GA. He/she is very proficient in white hat SEO techniques.

Snag your MozCon tickets!