An off-the-cuff remark by Matt Cutts at the SMX Advanced conference has some SEOs and webmasters up in arms. Is PageRank sculpting dead or is it alive and well ? As you'll see from reading Rand Fishkin's post on the subject, he thinks it was a Google diversionary tactic that is going nowhere. Is Google just trying to, paraphrasing an unnamed celebrity SEO as quoted by Rand, dissuade new webmasters from attempting to sculpt their own PageRank? It's possible.

For gaming fans, E3 is the place to see the industry's most-anticipated new properties. If you can't make it to Los Angeles for the convention, E3 Spotlight is the place to check out the highlights of the show. E3 Spotlight brings together some of YouTube's top gaming partners for the first time to give you in-depth coverage of this annual industry event. Respected gaming editors from channels like IGNentertainment , GameSpot , Machinima ,

Miriam Warren of Yelp is speaking at SES Toronto on June 9, on the panel "Follow the Carrot: Cool Mobile Apps" in the Geek Track. Miriam is director of marketing for Yelp , and is based in New York. She was gracious enough to respond to my detailed questions. I have to admit, along with dishing the dirt about the ins and outs of building the Yelp user community, Miriam is possessed of an uncanny instinct for all things Toronto!

Eric Brown has been appointed by Yahoo! to the role of senior vice president of global communications. Brown is charged with public relations, executive communications, product promotion, public affairs, internal communications, corporate reputation management, as well as social media outreach. He reports to Yahoo! chief marketing officer, Elisa Steele, who joined Yahoo! in late March . "Our communications strategies and programs for Yahoo!

If you are a non-US Internet user or just have to deal with multi-lingual or international sites, you should find the following addons useful: Google Global is a must-have FireFox addon for browsing international Google versions. Right-click on Google search results to choose the location: View paid and organic search results as they appear in different regions. View paid and organic search results from a specific IP address.

There's so much 'noise' in the world of Internet marketing, and especially about SEO, that I sometimes feel the edges are blurring. If I feel that, as a professional, then it's a sure thing that individual website owners hoping to strike it lucky with the search engines are having a tough time sorting out information they need, from that which is purely misleading. Algorithms , traffic potential ,

Hulu has made no secret of their plan to rot your brain . But apparently the motivation behind it is so that you'll unwittingly shell out moolah to pay to watch vids there in the future. At least, this is the opinion of NewsCorp's brand spankin' new chief digital officer, Jonathan Miller . He's been out there expressing his hope for putting Hulu content behind a pay wall. (NewsCorp was one of the original partners in Hulu, with NBC being the other. Disney, which owns ABC,

I'm not going to assume that Google's sudden announcement of  Google Square has anything to do with Microsoft Bing.  Nevermind if Google intentionally or unintentionally announced Google Wave a few moments ahead of Microsoft's announcement of Bing's launch. I still don't want to think that Google Squared was launched to overshadow again Bing online availability. Anyway, according to Google ,

Three new members are joining the Search Engine Strategies (SES) advisory board , joining 11 current members to guide the future direction of the search marketing conference series. The new advisory board members are: Brett Crosby, group PPM at Google; Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Online Marketing; and Stewart Quealy, VP of content development at Incisive Media. Quealy, the senior person responsible for creating conference program content for the SES events,

At the Online Marketing Summit in Minneapolis  this week, I presented on Social Media Strategy and briefly highlighted Blogging and Twitter as tactics. This is the first of several posts that will visit the key concepts offered in that presentation. Why social media?  It comes down to gaining a competitive advantage. I like the quote from Oliver Young at Forrester Research:  "Marketers who embrace social media will outdistance competition, build community following,