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It must be difficult for people to change habits since they rarely do. When they do, it often takes considerable effort and time for them to do so. Try quitting cigarettes. You can be successful if you want. We've witnessed resistance to change with the advent of Web Search through the 1990s when habit was that people entered one word for queries. Imagine the results for [nutrition]. Those who were fascinated, driven by one spirit or another, decided to make a career focussed on Web technology specifically search for many because it was interesting, challenging and fun. It has since been viewed as a 'cottage industry' for a long time. It hadn't been recognized for years, decades, as the likely hero of the 'dot bomb' or the recent economic woes. Search was there. Search is there. Search is fantastic. Search is useful. Above all, search has become highly profitable. So profitable in fact, that Microsoft is freaked out entering the game in the biggest way it knows how. Microsoft is using its economic strength, its monopolistic, ubiquitous tentacles, usurping what it can from new media: The Web Revolution. It's taken a huge bite out of Yahoo! after snapping its jaws at it more than once. If it didn't gobble up some search, Microsoft would know that the train which left the station an hour ago, Google, will reach the prize alone without any competition. Google would otherwise dominate the future of everything connected.

Scary thought? Who knows. Google is quite literally the greatest software maker ad agency of today. Its hosted applications, its open source nature have ensured that Google is more than the search engine we knew. The search engine we knew is now unfortunately so littered with redundant spam, commercialism and terrible noise that it stinks. Google is polluted. Google may not have started that way. I turned my mom onto Google back in 1999. Now the Google legos are dirty in the search area. They need way more than Matt Cutts can do. The only thing Google is good for anymore is hosted software like GMail, Maps, Calendar, Docs etc. Google has become a Microsoft Yahoo! combination itself. The new Yahoo! dropped its investment in search, just like Google's search is junk, will continue to be junk. Google is a software maker (operating system!) re-inventing itself as the new Microsoft, taking Yahoo!'s lead neglecting search. Microsoft may actually win the search prize in the end. Particularly if Microsoft squares off and does a deal with technologies like WolframAlpha. WolframAlpha is quite literally the future of search. Forget what you've heard from marketers about their jaded "future of search" (they don't know anything except selling, selling themselves, selling out). The future of Web Search is to have an accurate engine for your purposes, not bookmarks to all possible answers from unchecked third parties. That's only good for comparison shopping.

Let me be clear. Altavista was my old favorite. It leaned more scientific. I miss it something awful. I'm going to mash up something fun at AltaDisa one fine day. I hope you like what I end up doing. I don't have uncanny aspirations to be a search engine. I'll just do something fun. Please be patient but don't wait. The future of search is here now. Take another look at WolframAlpha. The reason marketers are ignoring its real threat is because it doesn't lead to client sites. Marketers can't make any money with it. Why pay it heed? It can't be good for search marketers. It's the albatross that threatens their business. On the other side of the coin, they are right to say it's not a search engine as people know search engines to be. True. It's not a list of spam sites that try to sell you something you don't need. If you want something commercial, you can always Google it, or whatever. You will hopefully discover it at a reasonable cost, or you can always use a comparison shopping search engine. You might even navigate to a manufacturer's site directly, (if you know how to spell it). That's all a good thing. Spelling is fairly important, by the way. People that can't spell, can't use WolframAlpha. Search engines the way we know them aren't going to entirely disappear because people who can't spell aren't very smart. They're a dime a dozen with a dozen dimes to spare too. Shopping search engines like Google and Become spell for you. I think these are the successful shopping sites of tomorrow. That's not the Future of Search. That's the Future of SEO. That's the future for ad agencies like Google. Become works with merchants too. Typos are way different. WolframAlpha interprets what it can. WolframAlpha shows us the future of search, now.

Wikipedia has become one of the top visited sites. They don't sell anything. It doesn't pay Google to send people to Wikipedia. People tried to spam Wikipedia and list their clients in Wikipedia. Luckily, with enough effort, the thing survived. Wikipedia continues to be useful today. It's still a top visited site. That's the sort of resource that people can count on. It's like Amazon versus Crazy Joe Electric's wide screen TV sale. You may pay more at Amazon. Amazon is a merchant you know is not likely to have a breach of security that threatens your credit card number. With Crazy Joe Electric (I made the name up by the way), the business operator might either sell you the TV for less, or sell you a stolen TV, or worse. Your credit card might get stolen and sold. You never know. Unless you know Joe personally, you're at the mercy of the Wild Wild Web. That's the trick of the Web. There's not a bona fide way to tell one thing or another about what you're reading. People get in trouble. There are Web ratings for merchants, which make it possible at all to buy things, or else no one but big-box merchants would be doing e-commerce at all.

Now take information. How many sites are out there to provide free access to information? News sites might even try to charge for access to content (Rupert Murdoch, AP comes to mind). Other sites display banners and text ads (Google!) to make the information pay for itself. Google is the biggest ad agency in the world. In my opinion, they are not a search engine anymore. They are a software maker / ad agency looking to eat your lunch. This is not the Web which was how the Web all started. This is the Web we know now, which has transformed into a commercial enterprise (not necessarily a bad thing). There is a caveat, however. People learn how to do interesting things wrongly, or misdiagnose themselves rushing to the doctor, or are otherwise somehow misled by the utter junk that can be found on the Web. They are misled by people who can't spell, people that exercise hate. It's all in Google. Just go to Google, Google it. You'll get all the junk I've been talking about. You'll get spam. You'll get hate speech. You'll get misinformation. You'll get phishing sites, drive-by downloads, hackers, crackers, whacks and weenies complaining about each other, ad-infinitum. Search engines were supposed to help us sort through the mess. Google is the mess.

Enter WolframAlpha. It's not a search engine as you know it per se. It's just accurate. Accurate is all that it is. If you can learn to enter queries correctly, it will provide you information without leading you to any junk. Junk is not possible. It has information on the most interesting (non-commercial) things in the universe, which is what the Web is really good for in the first place. It does it in a clean, sterile room without a hint, without a germ of commercialism. That makes it utterly useful. I am anxious to watch WolframAlpha continue to evolve. It answers like Hal 9000 (the machine Craig Silverstein of Google famously invoked at a 'Future of Search' panel at a marketing conference). WolframAlpha literally is the future of Web search here and now. It's just not like a search engine the way people are used to thinking about search engines. It reminds me of the feelings I had using Altavista a long time ago. It requires decipherable input (it's somewhat forgiving for that) in order to coax what you want out of it. Try the sample queries. Try the tutorials. In the very least, get the information out of it that is more important than price information on a new digital camera. If you are going to query for medical or nutritional information, anything scientific, if you ever thought to use computations in a query, WolframAlpha is the winner. I think it's the Future Alpha Search Engine. I used it today, too.

Stay tuned.

Yesterday we crafted a new Yahoo! Backlinks uploader. We did this on behalf of an agency that plans to use the Client Center to monitor a large number of addresses, as many as 750,000. The file that we used to import contained over a million addresses because of duplications. It was over 70 megabytes of plain text.

We worked over the data, adding the necessary whitespace delimiters (tabs) and text (including URI escape chars) to model the file after a Yahoo! Site Explorer backlinks TSV export. That was necessary for it to work with our uploader. The new worked-over file ended up being over 90 megabytes.

Our original code for the uploader was built for Yahoo! exclusively, although we could format files and use it. That was moving too slow for us for this bigger file. So we set about the job of upgrading the parser and data extraction routine for addresses. The new extraction routine will simplify the rules for many more file format.

We now have a version operating at lightning speed. All users should notice a speed difference immediately. If you experience any problems at anytime, for any matter relating to the Client Center, please notify us by one of many means by which you can reach us. Free support is available through Twitter. We'll make another announcement when new file formats are supported.

Stay tuned.

Last night, I spoke on air at Webmaster Radio (dot) FM about the imminent Microsoft Bing and Yahoo! Search deal. As expected, this morning (about 30-minutes ago), Bing announced on Twitter, linking to the official news that Microsoft Bing will power Yahoo!, and that Yahoo! will leverage its considerable relationships with major search advertisers to exclusively handle the advertising side. The deal is reputedly worth guaranteeing advertising dollars for Yahoo!, as Microsoft can easily afford to sweeten the deal that way.

Microsoft will also compensate Yahoo! from traffic and revenue resulting from traffic that originates from Yahoo! sites and affiliated network at a share of 88% over the fist 5 years. Panama and Search seems to have been given over to favor Microsoft Bing Search and Advertising platforms. That appears to be an admission by Yahoo! that Panama just failed to compete.

Paid Inclusion could lose its value when the switch to Bing happens. Unless Yahoo! can insert the feed somewhere with Bing search volume, there's no telling what will happen with inclusion deals past and present. It would be insane to leave that rich content, even when paid, on the table. That's literally leaving money on the table. Either Microsoft or Yahoo! will likely figure out a way to benefit by Paid Inclusion advertisers.

The key to making Paid Inclusion work, is understanding how it might not fit into Bing at all. If not, then finding search volume somewhere down the chain. Popular affiliated sites could make sense as a destination for the feeds. It's just that without being part of Bing, the value of Paid Inclusion is practically lost. Will Yahoo! control the first listings in Yahoo! Search? Or is it wholly over to Bing? Only time will tell what they decide to do. It's looking pretty bad for Paid Inclusion.

In the mean time, there's plenty of time. There needs to be regulatory approval of the deal. I said last night that I expect this would pass with government regulators. After approval, Yahoo! would make the transition within two years. That buys a lot of time for current Paid Inclusion deals to ponder the next strategy. Paid Inclusion will at least be as valuable now as it was yesterday until the deal is approved by government regulators. Even after that, the technical transition could take some months but no longer than two years. If you're an advertiser, plan ahead for this.

The things that are exciting about this news, is a rejuvenated platform to compete for search with Google. Whether that comes from Yahoo! past, Microsoft Bing's future, there's never a good reason to have just one search provider. As is the case with Microsoft's browser division for Internet Explorer, the company relaxed after winning dominant market share leaving room for new upstarts like Firefox. Google's search quality has been in a steady decline since it's wide appeal began in earnest (back in 2002).

Google's search quality has had to endure being the top search provider, and what that means in terms of commercial noise (spam) targeted specifically at undermining their search quality. Big online ecommerce over the last decades have proven that website owners and big box merchants alike will do practically anything to gain top search engine rankings. For the past 7 years, that has meant Google alone, and not Yahoo!. Commercial sites now have to plan for a strong likelihood that Yahoo! Bing will become a contender again.

Yes, Yahoo! could have been a contender. It flippantly dismissed the search back in 2002 when it saved a small fee for Inktomi powered search, and offered Google instead. Google capitalized precisely as Inktomi had warned Yahoo! they would, by just growing their site into the behemoth that it is today. Google's world changed from being a small upstart search engine based on hypertext analysis to a major software provider that competes with Microsoft. Microsoft is now in real danger that Google will make them less and less relevant.

That's today's thriving competitive search marketplace making its way into all sorts of industries. In my opinion, that's the real story here. Google has Android, Chrome OS and cloud computing with applications that traditionally were Microsoft's bread and butter: Office. Google has the online worldwide audience captured by their free offerings including Maps. This is threatening the very core of Microsoft's business in all ways except gaming and their XBox. Microsoft has not done very well with Windows Mobile or Zune.

The XBox, however, is a popular gaming console. During the next 10 years, the period that will coincide with this search deal, search will find its way into every conceivable device and access point across the globe. Apple just rejected Google Voice for the iPhone App marketplace yesterday. Microsoft is already poised as a player, poised as the player that Google must take on directly without flinching. There is room for both which makes the competition even more fierce for dominance in these down stream marketplaces. Just imagine the whole competition.

Stay tuned.

One of the last coffees I had the chance to enjoy before hitting the road back in May, bound for Portland and Bend, was at Intelligentsia. I had the chance to meet at the cafe with SearchReturn link builder Sophie, who is working on two of the most important link building projects. Her rate is consistently over 10% acquisition. She has scored as high as 16% links from high quality webmasters. No reciprocals needed.

When I met with her, we had a coffee. Whenever I get the chance to have a great coffee where they style the top, like they do at Intelligentsia, I take a photo. I have one or two other pictures I took before heading to Portland, Bend and then Seattle, which I'll feature in more posts. Here is a picture of that coffee I had with Sophie back in May.



Sophie is the staff member with the most experience using the link building application. She has been working with the program since it was first developed. Her feedback has become part of the application. We've adopted one or two features based upon her direct suggestions. Sign up for link building, and chances are you'd have Sophie helping with strategy and potentially link building. Her success rate with clients is high.

Stay tuned.

After Disa Johnson's Visit to the Dark Side of SEO, as the warm embers of our fire fade to gray ash, after the phantom stories of last night's dream, after our slumber from night, and as the sound of the dawn's innocence begins when we waken - I beckon you for a walk in the fresh air. Let us visit our little Link Building garden to see "The Bookmarklet and the SQuiD" grow.

There are any number of ways to spot, nurture and protect sprouting new link targets, and most of these methods result in the need of great care and management. Our gracious gardener is none other than Eric Ward. He has carefully planned, planted and nurtured our bed of multi-colored roses and our row of Daffodils. He has trimmed our hedges and he has minded the grass. The fresh scent rises now, as the morning glow begins to heat the earthbound treasure of fresh links coming up out of the ground.

Before the day begins. Before the week's busywork ends in forgetfulness for yet another weekend of fun. Before the malaise of our mind-numbing commitments, and our deadlines are sure to hastily expire, (they will expire whether you keep them or not), suspend for now these things on your mind and pick up for a walk in the Link Building garden green.

How do you set about keeping track and reporting to your clients? Take a brisk tour of The Bookmarklet and the SQuiD this morning, provided by our tour operator and the developer lead on the SQuiD project: Jake Scruggs. His is a developer's view. In turn, Eric and I will provide further assistance to users. There's something nicely hidden in the obvious that makes this application special.

The Bookmarklet feature briefly mentioned towards the end of Jake's 10-minute tour hints at things to come that will allow search engine optimization expert users the opening of new doors into ways of doing things in SEO never before possible. That will be thanks to special Javascript written by our very own Fred Polgardy. This all comes with a management application for the most important job you can do to achieve rankings the correct way: Link Building.

So, take a little tour, see what we have growing in our Link Building Garden Green. Maybe, if you set about the safe and proper way to build links to your site, and your clients, you will come to like having a management tool at your finger tips that helps you keep track the way we do. SQuiD helps you manage large lists of pages and it has built-in search capabilities with reporting features you can use with your clients.

You can look forward to forthcoming information, tutorials and guides by the brightest minds in Link Building and SEO. You can especially look forward to the neat little Bookmarklet branching off and thriving, as it grows with fruitful new features and supplies magical benefits to you and your organization. Welcome to the Link Building "Garden Green" with The Bookmarklet and the SQuiD.

Stay tuned.