Obama has been known to use domain names to go after emotionally charged empty words that are easy to support (like change ), but now the government is going after commercial keywords like cars. Cars.gov was launched on June 30th and is already ranking #3 in Google for cars ! What does it do to the value of cars.com when cars.

One thing is certain: Online reputation management is the most important thing in the world - today and always. The more people who migrate online, for business or pleasure, the more important it will become. People somehow feel a sense of power when they are anonymous and the Web makes it easy to post anything you want anonymously. Your business and your reputation could be at stake. So what's the most important reputation management tool you can have? Is it Google Alerts?

Brandy Shapiro-Babin, the co-founder of Webmaster Radio , and Jorge Hermida (aka Brasco), the director of programming and production, asked me to cover the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition (IRCE) in Boston last month. Now, I'm more comfortable with a video crew in tow behind me. But, once upon a time, I was a radio reporter and newscaster. So, I figured that I could figure out how to use the digital audio recorder that Brasco shipped me before the event. Wrong!

The Google and free issue is really heating up. Friday I posted what I thought was a pretty innocuous analysis for eWEEK.com about what Google is doing to its brand with its free Web services and what the coming of Chrome OS will mean. " What Would You Do If Google Web Services Stopped Being Free? " drew some passionate responses . The people have spoken: No one will be willing to pay for Google Web services, such as Gmail, Docs and Talk. Why would we?

I'm not one for advocating the use of frivolous tags and attributes at every turn. Many tags that I still see in the source code of websites just aren't necessary. Meta author, for instance, copyright dates, and such. I mean, why? How about putting such information on your web pages for human visitors to see? But there are a few tags and attributes, though not necessary, that can be helpful.

There has been a lot of discussion regarding the growth of the Microsoft search engine Bing this week. The question is: Is Bing growing fast enough? Statcounter presents the following numbers for the US for July 9: Google (NSDQ: GOOG) : 75 percent Microsoft's Bing (NSDQ: MSFT): 13 percent Yahoo! (NSDQ: YHOO): 10 percent However, these are numbers for one day only. On average Bing is slightly below Yahoo!

The search engine news sphere has been dominated by Google (NSDQ: GOOG) announcing the birth of the Google Chrome Operating System this week. We think this will become a very important launch, mainly because of what the Chrome OS will not be. It will not be another Windows for running large applications on your own computer. As a matter of fact, the Chrome OS is nothing but a shell surrounding the Chrome web browser. You will use the browser to run your applications,

Do you want to follow every Google tweet on Twitter? Now you can. Google's Karen Wickre, who shepherds the Google Blog & Twitter Team, offered this list earlier today: General: twitter.com/Google - our central account twitter.com/Blogger - for Blogger fans twitter.com/GoogleCalendar - user tips & updates twitter.com/GoogleImages - news, tips, tricks on our visual image search twitter.com/GoogleNews - latest headlines via Google News twitter.

Do you want to follow every Google tweet on Twitter? Now you can. Google's Karen Wickre, who shepherds the Google Blog & Twitter Team, offered this list earlier today: twitter.com/Google - our central account twitter.com/Blogger - for Blogger fans twitter.com/GoogleCalendar - user tips & updates twitter.com/GoogleImages - news, tips, tricks on our visual image search twitter.com/GoogleNews - latest headlines via Google News twitter.