by Vera H-C Chan August really began on 08-08-08, and made up for the doldrums of summer with political pomp and Olympian pageantry. Yet even as firsts were made on both fronts, the Search buzz was assaulted with the specter of Cold War , shocking passings, and natural disasters . Take a look back at what captivated the Web, over the past 31 rushed days of summer. Olympian Records, Herculean Efforts,

I've now read one dozen reports about Microsoft buying Greenfield Online, which owns a Web research business based in my home state of Connecticut as well as European comparison shopping site Ciao. My favorite analysis was published Friday by my colleague Joe Wilcox for Microsoft Watch because he correctly outlines how Microsoft made the $486 million buy for search market share. Specifically,

by Ross Dunn Last week I was fortunate to enjoy the company and tutelage of some talented web marketers at the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose. An annual occurrence, the San Jose conference is one of those particularly special events that I aim never to miss. On top of the incredible networking and party events such as the Google Dance and the Search Bash there were a great number of exceptional seminars on all facets of web marketing.

August is holiday season in both Southern Europe and North America, which means that search engine news traffic slows down. Next week, however, we should be back to normal. One of the most important news this week is probably Google's implementation of Google Suggest on English language sites. Google will now suggest alternative search phrases as you type. This is not a Google invention, however. Ask and Yahoo! have implemented this feature a long time ago.

Yahoo! beefed up their Search Explorer a little more and now provide some useful SEO information. The information is still fairly basic when compared to the data you can collect from Google Analytics, however, seeing how other search engines view your site is equally important.

Google adds search suggestions to search results, generating a list of alternative search queries. Google has added a new feature to the Google home page and other search pages. As soon as you start typing a search query, Google will open a small pull down menu directly under the search form with a list of alternative search queries based on the letters you type. The list changes as you type.

One important reason to use PPC, or paid search, is because you lose out on a percentage of the market if you don't. Estimates show that between 10% and 25% of searchers click on the paid search ad. Many marketers are satisfied with that 75% of the search market that clicks on the organic listing, but what if you don't have respectable enough rankings to be on the first page?

If you are operating an online business then you have an opportunity to create content that is not only of value to your readers, it can be an effective SEO resource to develop links. Build a Resource Directory If you are going to build a resource directory then you need to be sure it really is a resource directory and not just a list of links. A list of useless links will do more damage to your sites credibility and provide nothing of value to your readers.

I see a lot of new search products on a daily basis. One of the things I don't see often, though, is real improvements to the presentation of search result. Jamesoo is a news search engine with an innovative results page: The news stories that match your query are presented in newspaper layout. Jamesoo was launched this month. It searches RSS feeds, which should make for fresh news and a brand new, relevant "newspaper" on the subject of your choice, whenever you want it.

Over the last few years I've taken a look at a few sites practicing what is generally regarded as funky link building. Some of these sites build their rankings on the back of a ridiculous amount of directory submissions. Others have backlinks that are so obviously paid-for you expect to see a red light on their backlink SERPs.