A new eye tracking study from Oneupweb shows that search is a core element of social media sites. They did studies on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, arguably three of the most popular social networking sites right now. The study is especially relevant when you consider that search queries on Facebook grew 5% in May of 2009. Search marketers will want to take note: Despite the prevailing idea that social media ads are worthless,

It wasn't that long ago that I discussed in this blog how to create good content that will get your site noticed, by both end users and search engines. But to be clear, just writing some slick text is not the whole story. The previous blog articles in the Site Architecture and SEO series ( files/pages and link/URLs ) made reference to doing what you can to help the search engine web crawler (also known as a robot or, more simply, a bot) crawl your site.

by Claudine Zap Our top picks from the day's hottest searches. Queen Latifah (Searches increased by 956%). The singer delivered a touching eulogy at Michael Jackson's memorialâ?"but turns out the Queen had never actually met the King of Pop . Supreme Court justices (+476%). A recent study shows that a majority of Americans can't name one of the nine. Get the complete list . Weekend box office (+463%). "Bruno" beat out "Ice Age" for number one at the movies .

Here's an interesting concept I haven't considered: What might happen to the value of mortgage.com or credit.com or health.com when the government launches the equivalent government portals co-sponsored by whatever relevant multi-billion dollar corporations pitch the idea to a congressman from their district? Can the U.S. government drive down the value of .com websites using SEO? If you consider that being in the top 3 of any SERP the premium location for any business,

In February our friends from the Windows Live team announced plans to pilot a new feature unique to Hotmail called quick add. Today, were happy to announce that Bing Microsofts new decision engine will power Windows Live Hotmail quick add, allowing you to Bing and Decide from the comfort of your inbox.* Hotmails quick add feature , now enhanced with Bing helps you easily search, find, and insert restaurant reviews, movie times, images, videos,

Health is one of the most searched topics on the web with 45% of people, across all age groups, using the internet to research health issues spanning topics like wellness and prevention, medical conditions, symptoms of illness, drugs and treatments. However, looking for health information is a challenging task because the average consumer is not a medical expert. This makes it difficult to know what should be trusted as credible sources of health information,

After just over one month in market, we wanted to take the opportunity to THANK YOU for all your feedback and support of Bing and provide an update on our early results. Weve been really pleased to hear so much positive feedback, and we appreciate all you whove taken the time to pass along your ideas on how we can continue to improve. So how are we doing? When evaluating progress, we measure ourselves on how we are helping each of our key audiences consumers,

Okay TechCrunch publishes an anonymous article calling for the regulation of SEO and SEM aimed squarely at the monopoly that is Google. The hue and cry is being heard around the world, mainly through comments being posted on Twitter. But is the article really just a way for TechCrunch to do a test of Twitter traffic and its impact on link building and ultimately on Google's search algorithm?

Let's face it. Seth Godin's blog is a wondrous thing. It's consistently No. 1 or No. 2 on the Ad Age Power 150 . More importantly, it's pure insight. At least once a day, every day, there's a little homily on marketing, or brands, or quality, or on something else that makes you say "hmmm" or "that's right" or even "that's wrong" â?" but something that's worth your time. Do you have any idea how hard this is? Nobody else does this.

Over the past couple of months, after merging Search Engine Journal and Search & Social, my business life as an SEO and online marketing consultant has changed a bit from the behind the scenes copy, coding and linking world, to add a bit more bizdev, management and of course, travel - which means I'll probably be blogging on the business aspects of running a search agency more and more on SEJ. After a week of four flights and various locations around the US,