One of the most popular posts I have written here on Search Engine Journal is " Start a Google AdWords My Client Center in 2 Easy Steps ." Now, I say popular not based on the number of comments, rather on the number of emails I get from people trying to set up their MCC account, and failing to get it work. The hardest part of starting an affiliate website is the idea, the hardest part of a paper is the introduction; everything is more difficult in the beginning.

IMVironments - the little background themes for Yahoo Messenger - have gotten Yahoo in a lot of trouble. The company's lost a patent infringement case that concerns them, and as a result, is supposed to pay a subsidiary of Acacia Research Corporation $12.4 million. With no offense intended to Yahoo's lawyers, it's safe to say that the odds never favored a Yahoo victory; a few details strongly imply that Acacia's a patent troll. Take, for example,

AOL has announced it Q4 earnings, which show how the company performed during its final days as part of Time Warner, as well as the beginning of its transition to the current incarnation. "We have made significant progress in support of the long-term vision we see in the future of AOL, but today's results continue to reflect the need for our focus and execution on the work required in the turnaround of the Company," said Chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong.

Those of you who subscribe to the Internet Marketing for Smart People email newsletter found out on Monday what Brian and I have been up to for the past few months. We knew it would be cool, because, well, we designed it to be cool. We wanted to build something people would really get value from. But still, when we saw what people were doing inside after the first day, we all looked around at one another and pulled a Keanu. Whoa.

Mark Cuban recently talked about how search engines and content aggregators are vampires. There is no reason to be indexed in Google. ... You haven't gotten anything back But he failed to disclose how his Mahalo investment loots content. If Google is a vampire (while sending away billions of Dollars of traffic for free) then what does that make Mahalo (which borrows your titles and abstracts as content to pull search traffic into their ad cluttered pages pages,

This is part of a regular series of posts on search experience updates that runs weekly. Look for the label This week in search and subscribe to the series. - Ed. From Google Squared enhancements to search becoming more social, this week brought a slew of exciting and (we hope) useful search feature releases: Social Search Sometimes, there might be relevant content on the web from people in your social circle. For example,

Google's Chromium.org site contains some pictures "of how a Chrome OS tablet UI might look in hardware" . Design studies for other hardware are available too. [Pics CC-licensed by Google.

Posted by randfish I ran across this survey data eMarketer released last week and my heart sank: This first chart looks innocent enough. It's when you look at the next one (from the same report) that things get ugly: As a CEO, an SEO, a web marketer and a participant in social media, this drives me absolutely crazy. The very last item on the list is "conversions, ROI, etc." If your pulse isn't pounding, you might need to cut back on the pharmaceuticals.

This is the 2 nd post in the SEM Intermediate Series , a collection of posts intended for search engine marketing professionals looking for guidance in monitoring and adjusting the key performance indicators (KPIs) that determine the success of a PPC.

Don't let your international efforts implode. Make sure you understand your audience, understand search positioning, and get help from local search marketing experts and good translators. ...