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Fredrick Marckini gives another interesting article this week at ClickZ. He’s debating the worth of affiliate links in regard to link popularity. The important notes that bear repeating come as he discusses the Google algorithm that was highlighted in the Google patent filing. These are items that are confirmed ways to slow or permanently exclude your site from Google:

• If too many new links appear in too short a timeframe, the site may be penalized, or even banned, by Google.
• Google watches how many new links with identical anchor text emerge.
• Google monitors the rate at which links disappear to identify the degree of relevance and sort out spam.
• If Google does these things, you should assume other engines do something very similar.

If you are interested, check out:
United States Patent Application: 0050071741

How Affiliate Programs Can Affect Search Rankings

I have mixed emotions about this name change. On one hand, people are confused enough about search marketing. Constantly changing names on them isn’t overly helpful.

But maybe this change will be more helpful in the long run. Calling it Yahoo! Search Marketing is pretty clear. You know exactly who you are paying and where you are getting listed. Never mind that you will also be on MSN until 2006 and 100’s of other partner sites.

You can see the name change here: Advertiser Login

All over the world, people have discovered the power of blogs. Not only are they a great way to keep a diary or express your opinions, they have also created a worldwide community. This community has grown in power on the net, making them a valuable ally to the web marketing field.

Blogs in existence in April 2005: 50.75 million worldwide

Multinational Blogging Services
Google: 8 million
according to Persus
MSN Spaces: 5 million
Persus + Scoble
Six Apart Live Journal/ TypePad/ MT: 8.2 million
from LJ 14Apr (6.8m) + SixApart claimed 1.2 million for MT and TypePad when it acquired LJ which was 5.3m at the time, allows for 200,000 conservative growth figure for MT and TypePad
Other hosted (US): 9 million
based on Persus study
WordPress: 250,000
at best an educated guess, over 100,000 downloads of WP 1.5 and 266,000 links to WordPress on Google
Other DIY: 100,000
again, an educated guess, and this would include CMS packages that are utilizing blogging plugins

The Blog Herald || Number of blogs now exceeds 50 million worldwide

If you sell online, be sure you are indexed at Become.com. The more listings of your site, the better.

“Currently, Become.com crawls U.S. sites that provide product and buying information. The site is free to use; no registration is required.”

Become.com Launches Shopping Search Engine:

This is a topic we’ve been revisiting here at the office. This is the debate we’ve had here at the office, which was the debate at this conference:

“Cox suggested two strategies for making Flash sites more receptive to Google indexing. One is to offer the site in both Flash and static versions, an already common practice.

His second suggestion was to embed Flash files within multiple static pages.

One participant noted that Flash had a feature for exporting text into a Web site’s metadata–invisible information describing the page to search engines–for easier indexing.

Another participant volunteered with an assessment of this approach.

“It doesn’t really work at all,” he said.”

My personal feeling is to just go with two seperate sites. But not everyone agrees with me… especially from a branding standpoint.

Flash authors ponder Google pitfalls | CNET News.com

Check out this creative way to design your site based on Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and Kiersey Temperament Sorters. It’s a very good idea to consider.
Motivating Your Web Site Visitors To Take Action: Personality Targeting