The best description of Google PageRank on the web, ever

If you do not know what Google Page Rank is, or how it is generated, and what it means for your website, then invest ten minutes right now to read the best description of Google Page Rank ever. Search Engine Land has got it. This should be required reading for anyone who wants to generate search engine traffic.

Avoiding duplicate content in search engines

One consideration many people working their SEO are not aware of is what duplicate content can do to their search results. The same content on many different URLs makes Google think you are a spammer and they will not hesitate to soundly punish you for it.

Pandia has a great article on this topic.

The search engines hate finding two pages with the same or similar content. Unfortunately modern blog software and content management systems have a tendency of generating many different URLs for the same page. So what is a webmaster to do?

AOL is definitely ripping off Yahoo

Is Yahoo the best rip-off AOL’s designers could come up with? Seriously…Yahoo has been tweaking for years but they still have a royal mess of a front page.  I use plenty of Yahoo websites, but I never, ever, ever seem to end up on their front page any more, and I suppose I’ll never need to go to AOL.com anymore either.  Actually, the only reason I’ve been to AOL.com in the past year, albeit quite a few times, is to get the link to their free XM Radio player (very cool, though clunky to get to).

From Valleywag who asks is if this rip is “some kind of joke”:

More on the Microsoft Exodus

Not that this latest has anything to do with Microsoft Live.com, but it does appear to be indicative of possible larger structural problems hampering MSFT.

Robert Scoble at Scobleizer gets an inside scoop:

“I just got a press release that Tjeerd Hoek, director or user experience design for Microsoft Windows, is now executive creative director of software and hardware convergence at Frog Design.

Tjeerd was well liked and well respected inside Microsoft.

Microsoft is seemingly in the middle of a full-bore executive cleanout. I’ve seen tons of executives leave, particularly in the MSN/Live division that’s struggling to compete with Google. Nearly every executive I knew inside that division is now gone.”

Don’t feel bad for them though. Forbes reports “Analysts are expecting the software maker to say fiscal third-quarter earnings rose 43 percent to 46 cents per share, on a 27 percent revenue rise to $13.89 billion.” Not everything is going wrong in Redmond.

Ask.com prepares to dominate Google’s Adwords…

…or at the very least, they are launching their own contextual ad network.  And it actually sounds pretty slick.  And I am going to give it a shot myself and report back on results in a future post.  And congrats to Ask.com for at least trying and at launching something.  As I’ve stated before, the more competition in this space, the better things get for small businesses.

Straight from the horses mouth:

“It’s no longer a rumor and definitely not a beta launch. Today’s announcement of the Ask Sponsored Listings contextual product is the real deal. First came Ask Sponsored Listings (ASL) 1.0 in August, 2005. Next came ASL 2.0 in October, 2006. Now comes the next innovative product offering with the Ask Sponsored Listings contextual product launching in less than four weeks.

How is this product different from our competitors, you ask? Three important reasons, each one a paradigm shift:

* It gives publishers more control over yield and relevancy
* It gives publishers more creative ad unit opportunities
* It allows both advertisers and publishers more control over where and what ads are displayed

We’ll be working with publishers to customize their implementations with some of the following options:

* New customized relevancy thresholds for publishers
* Innovative yield management thresholds that allow publishers to optimize their monetization efforts

You won’t find the standard white background with text ads. Our hybrid text + graphical contextual units will offer a fresh new look to performance based contextual advertising.“

All the power to them.