I’ve just learnt from theRegister that the Times Newspaper in London, either knowingly or otherwise, has fallen victim to employing a link spammer to help their own website in the organic ranking within search engines. Allegedly, over 1000 links were posted on Social Networking sites causing uproar amongst the user fraternity. Of course, the outsourced SEO could have been mismanaged through either a rogue or inexperienced SEO employee, but nevertheless, still VERY embarrassing to all involved and just goes to show how decisions and protocols devised by Google et al have such a profound knock on effect/panic further down the food chain…

It’s true! In what many can only assume is a purely desperate attempt to ‘buy in’ to the chase of Google’s Search domination, Microsoft have offered a bid to struggling Yahoo! worth about £22 Billion! That’s a lot of money and around 60% above the Yahoo! share price before this announcement (though shares at Yahoo have unsurprisingly now risen by about 50% as a result!)

Question is…why do Microsoft want Yahoo!? Well, everybody knows of the rivalry between Google and Microsoft and Google have moved into what many have assumed is an unassailable lead in the search market. But it’s not all about search. Yahoo have the popular, but distinquished photo sharing site; Flickr and also their own reliable webmail program and many forget that these guys were performing Search when Google was still a high school project! Recent years though have shown the paid search of Yahoo to be not only unreliable but also less profitable and Yahoo had recently issued a sort of profits warning and board members had walked. Last summers UK Paid Search algorithm and technology update saw many a loyal YSM! paid search supporter walk to Google where advertising costs are now closer and volumes a lot stronger.

If, and it is still a big if, Microsoft were to take on Yahoo!, we would have a Search Media empire which could seriously take on Google…if the right management was put in place to mould the new combined company into a streamlined and concentrated effort. Yahoo Search Marketing’s (YSM!) customer service is crap in the UK (fellow Brits using the service will be nodding their heads at this stage) and MSN have had a tendency to over engineer their search efforts much to the amusement of the boys and girls at Google, so £22 Billion would be an awful lot of money to waste just to scare Google for a month or two….

The BBC have at last jumped on the Web 2.0 bandwagon and launched a beta site for it’s hugely popular news, radio and interactive broadcasting site: BBC Beta Site. The site looks a damned site better than it’s bland, but well populated current site and it surely has to be easier to navigate. They haven’t forgotten their gizmos and widgets either…spot the clock, top right of page and blog style footer. With so many daily visitors from around the world it’s amazing really to think that an organisation of this size has managed to blag it for so long. Welcome to 2008 guys!

Ever wanted to quickly know your IP address but are fed up with the unimaginative bland sites which state ‘Your IP address is……’?

Try this one out. I didn’t hear the first time so had to play back 2 or 3 times : Moan my IP

Those guys at Google have been busy again. Not long after the infamous November 07 reclassification of so many sites for PR, we’ve this last week seen many of our and our rivals sites re evaluated again. Whilst the movement was this time was less severe, we have seen one or two sites which we thought were unfairly devalued last year, boosted again and one or two sites belonging to rivals, rightfully devalued (use of farmed link directories). All this at a time when we’ve also seen Yahoo make more of our concerted efforts into Google SEO techniques than Google….