http://www.socialblogroll.com/rss/ social blog roll http://www.zeldman.com/2008/08/12/ala-no-265-better-experience/ A List Apart No. 265 is about improving user experience for the deaf and discussion for all. http://www.zeldman.com/2008/08/26/running-woman-and-madman/ Two incidents mark my morning walk to work. http://www.zeldman.com/2008/08/15/in-the-bag/ Early tomorrow, I leave for San Francisco. Headed into my laptop bag, along with my MacBook, are… An iPod Classic containing 8624 “songs” (I like music) and 46 “movies.” Sample titles: A Mighty Wind, A Night at the Opera, Helvetica, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Lost in Translation, North by Northwest, Rushmore, Spirited Away, Stardust Memories, Stranger Than ...] http://www.zeldman.com/2008/08/16/jubilat/ <a href="http://www.dardenstudio.com/">Darden Studio</a> has relaunched its website and released <a href="http://www.dardenstudio.com/typefaces/jubilat">Jubilat</a>, a fabulous slab serif. We've been beta-testing Jubilat all year; it's my principal typeface for An Event Apart in 2008. (Last year's principal An Event Apart typeface was Darden Studio's <a href="http://www.dardenstudio.com/typefaces/freight_sans">Freight Sans</a>.) New to Joshua Darden's work? Try <a href="http://www.dardenstudio.com/typefaces/birra_stout">Birra Stout</a>, a free font. http://www.zeldman.com/2008/08/07/death/ Ava, who is nearly four, is not so bothered about Daddy's monster toe, but great-grandma's passing still troubles her. http://www.zeldman.com/2008/08/06/zing/ The notion that usability is the easy part—something you just add on after doing the hard part of writing the code—is hardly limited to the open source community. http://www.zeldman.com/2008/08/08/pick-a-panel/ The SXSW panel picker launched today. SXSW Interactive is probably the world's biggest web shebang, and the panel picker is how the festival begins winnowing out which panels, out of hundreds submitted, will actually be presented to the public. A few potential panels feature Happy Cog personnel... http://www.zeldman.com/2008/08/19/photos-from-an-event-apart-san-francisco/ Take a dip in the <a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/aeasf08/pool/">Flickr photo pool</a> from An Event Apart San Francisco 2008. Day Two is about to begin. http://www.zeldman.com/2008/08/14/books-a-million/ Pssst. New Happy Cog Studios design. <a href="http://www.booksamillion.com/">Books-A-Million</a> Online Bookstore. It looks even better when you start using it. Details soon at happycog.com. http://www.zeldman.com/2008/08/25/ala-266-next-generation-sprites-metaphors/ CSS Sprites, the next generation. Cartography, the next metaphor for webmaking. Dave Shea and Aaron Rester aim high and score in Issue No. 266 of <cite>A List Apart,</cite> for people who make websites. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SearchEngineRoundtable1/~3/375558362/018096.html Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.... <p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/SearchEngineRoundtable1?a=OUGw8L"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/SearchEngineRoundtable1?i=OUGw8L" border="0"></img></a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/SearchEngineRoundtable1?a=YwAj9K"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/SearchEngineRoundtable1?i=YwAj9K" border="0"></img></a> <a href= http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SearchEngineRoundtable1/~3/375238065/018095.html The Official Google Blog has acknowledged that it will begin rolling out Google Suggest, which will let you formulate queries with more ease, reduce spelling errors, and save keystrokes. An example screenshot is below: It's about time, but one wonders... <p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/SearchEngineRoundtable1?a=FAFIjD"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/SearchEngineRoundtable1?i=FAFIjD" border="0"></img></a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/SearchEngineRoundtable1?a=kXQJ6K"><img src="http:// http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SearchEngineRoundtable1/~3/376126359/018097.html Google announced that the quality score metrics are more real time based on a per-query level, now. Not that this has been implemented on everyone's campaigns yet, but it will happen soon enough. Since then, advertisers have been noticing anomalies... <p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/SearchEngineRoundtable1?a=4a0Fek"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/SearchEngineRoundtable1?i=4a0Fek" border="0"></img></a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/SearchEngineRoundtable1?a=BnkLqK"><img src="http://fee http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SearchEngineRoundtable1/~3/376521996/018107.html Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.... <p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/SearchEngineRoundtable1?a=urO6Oh"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/SearchEngineRoundtable1?i=urO6Oh" border="0"></img></a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/SearchEngineRoundtable1?a=Af4k4K"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/SearchEngineRoundtable1?i=Af4k4K" border="0"></img></a> <a href= http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SearchEngineRoundtable1/~3/376146341/018099.html Google's ad serving tool, Google Ad Manager (google.com/admanager/), which launched as a beta in March is now open to all publishers. If you are a publisher using OpenAds, OpenX, phpAdsNew or a similar product, you may want to strongly consider... <p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/SearchEngineRoundtable1?a=TXYJaC"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/SearchEngineRoundtable1?i=TXYJaC" border="0"></img></a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/SearchEngineRoundtable1?a=TLuZdK"><img src="http://feeds.f http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SearchEngineRoundtable1/~3/376133462/018098.html We have been covering the issues with search ranking checkers since beginning of this month. At first, we thought it might be related to WebPosition Gold only, but it was not, it impacted most, if not all, scraper based rank... <p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/SearchEngineRoundtable1?a=su69jQ"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/SearchEngineRoundtable1?i=su69jQ" border="0"></img></a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/SearchEngineRoundtable1?a=1ebHuK"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/Sea http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SearchEngineRoundtable1/~3/376252338/018106.html On the Microsoft adCenter blog, we're informed that there is a brand new "keyword research tool to help you more efficiently find keywords and plan campaigns in adCenter." The tool will provide suggested keywords, the ability to add keywords to... <p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/SearchEngineRoundtable1?a=BYANuf"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/SearchEngineRoundtable1?i=BYANuf" border="0"></img></a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/SearchEngineRoundtable1?a=ithaEK"><img src="http://feeds.f http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SearchEngineRoundtable1/~3/376200346/018103.html Several Google Groups threads have been created in the last two weeks from disgruntled members who are running into issues with Feedburner In particular, their subscriber numbers are plummeting, which often occurs when Feedburner stops recording a service (and which... <p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/SearchEngineRoundtable1?a=0I995w"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/SearchEngineRoundtable1?i=0I995w" border="0"></img></a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/SearchEngineRoundtable1?a=94eiEK"><i http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SearchEngineRoundtable1/~3/376146340/018100.html A WebmasterWorld thread reports that many publishers have started to notice that their Google AdSense ads are not showing up when someone accesses their pages via the Google cache. For example, a recent Google cache copy of my personal blog... <p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/SearchEngineRoundtable1?a=vOroJm"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/SearchEngineRoundtable1?i=vOroJm" border="0"></img></a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/SearchEngineRoundtable1?a=C59dyK"><img src="http://feeds.feedb http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SearchEngineRoundtable1/~3/376241524/018105.html A few months ago, we reported on Google Popular Picks -- topics that webmasters are interested in but may not have an "official" voice from the Google Webmaster Team (yet!). In a Google Groups thread, the Google team asks webmasters... <p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/SearchEngineRoundtable1?a=YBk6xb"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/SearchEngineRoundtable1?i=YBk6xb" border="0"></img></a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/SearchEngineRoundtable1?a=bHlWfK"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.co http://www.ppcblog.co.uk/google/google-adds-onebox-results-for-premiership-football/ I just spotted Google is showing onebox results for queries relating to English football clubs. A simple club search query brings back their next fixture. Screenshot below - Only seems to be Premiership clubs currently. Cool. Update - Google have now added last game results alongside the next fixture. As below - http://www.ppcblog.co.uk/google-adwords/2-days-later/ It’s been a couple of days since Googles keyword trademarking policy change and it’s interesting to see many advertisers have already been slapped out of the bidding. In a quality score world, its not as simple as bidding against any brand due to quality based minimum bids. Although you might be able to display against ...] http://www.ppcblog.co.uk/google-adwords/google-keyword-trademark-policy-change-are-you-prepared/ Ok so the 5th of May lift on Google keyword trademarking date is nearly here. Are you prepared? Are your clients? Are you going all out aggressively to bid against competitors trademarks?. Are you going to start bidding against your own brand as protection?. Perhaps a mixture?. Or are you going to wait and see what your competitors do? Looks ...] http://www.ppcblog.co.uk/seo/why-im-not-a-fan-of-submitting-sitemaps/ This question seems to come up a lot still and while I believe sitemaps in general can be great for helping search engine spiders crawl your site and an effective way of spreading out linkjuice (with some nice anchor text) they can also bite you in the arse when not used intelligently. Certainly submitting sitemaps ...] http://www.ppcblog.co.uk/seo/hiding-links-in-flash/ Interesting experiment by the Neutralize Guava guys over on Search Engine War blog where they tested and proved that Google is now indexing links in flash. Next up for them to prove is whether text in a flash button acts as an anchor on those links… Pretty big achievement by the Google/Adobe engineers, flash still ...] http://www.ppcblog.co.uk/search-engine-marketing/always-get-the-dot-com/ I always wanted the ppcblog.com domain, but unfortunately it was registered before I got the chance. At the time, the .net & .org were available aswell as the .co.uk and nobody had built a brand around the name ‘PPC blog‘ in the same way there were seo blogs seemingly everywhere. About 2 years ago when I developed ...] http://www.ppcblog.co.uk/seo/123-reg-hacked-awghfjuhrfgh/ Another example of a Wordpress blog being hacked and injected with hidden links to viagra, tramadol and the like. Their blog is on a subdomain of the main site - http://inside.123-reg.co.uk/ If the self acclaimed ‘UK’s largest web host’ can’t protect their own blog or even spot they have a big problem, what hope is there ...] http://www.ppcblog.co.uk/seo/the-hypocrisy-of-google-nofollow/ Ok, so I was just reading the official Google blog today about their new 3D virtual experience product called Lively when I noticed some big red lines. Anyone who uses the SEO for firefox extension knows that red means the ‘nofollow’ attribute is being used on a link. So what are Google applying the ‘nofollow’ attribute to ...] http://www.ppcblog.co.uk/seo/nme-first-for-spam/ It’s festival season and I have been browsing here and there getting all excited about seeing some great bands and having a few beverages in the sun rain. Anyway, NME is first for music news (apparently) but it also seems their forums have been totally nuked by spam. The main forum boards has a nice toolbar ...] http://www.ppcblog.co.uk/seo/google-still-not-treating-underscores-as-word-seperators/ There is still some debate whether the search engines place any weight on keywords used within page urls and that’s actually what I wanted to quickly test. So I set up a couple of pages from this blog and included unique words within the page url, one separated by hyphens (dashes) and the other by ...] http://www.jaankanellis.com/search-marketing-standard-acquired-by-inet-interactive/ One of my major clients (iNET Interactive) acquired Search Marketing Standard magazine today! SMS is great magazine for search professionals like ourselves. If you have not had a chance to check out SMS I invite you to do so: Search Marketing Standard Magazine Here is the press release below: iNET plans to accelerate media brand’s ...] http://www.jaankanellis.com/how-does-the-president-become-president-common-craft-shows-you/ Great new video out by the people at Common Craft detailing the somewhat confusing process on how a US president comes to be: Video: Electing a US President in Plain English Since Gore won, lost in 2000 many American’s have become much more interested in the overall election process in the US. Common Craft gives an ...] http://www.jaankanellis.com/ididworkcom-launches-throw-away-the-notebook/ A new (and very simple) work tracking website launched today. It is called ididwork.com. TechCrunch has a great write up on it Show Your Boss What You’ve Done All Day with ididwork “In short, the web-based service lets employees keep record of work they have completed. Employees can then submit a weekly or monthly report to their ...] http://www.jaankanellis.com/do-google-webmaster-support-employees-work/ Watching this video I would think no: Here is the Google blog link: A day in the life of webmaster support Well you know I am kidding Maile Ohye, but I wonder. Maile takes through three meetings in a day and no constructive work on camera. I would think they could have picked a more ...] http://www.jaankanellis.com/google-insight-tool-very-cool/ Google released a cool new tool today called Google Insights for Search. Check it out: Announcing Google Insights for Search Google Insights for Search The tool kind of consolidates Google Trends, with related/rising searches search tool. There is some cool geographic based tools you need to review when you have some time. For instance ...] http://www.jaankanellis.com/google-always-experimenting-with-serp-results/ As most of you know Google is always testing, tweaking and trying new things on various datacenters. Today Ben Gomes a “Distinguished” Google Engineer lifted the hood on few of them: Search experiments, large and small The main point Ben was trying to make is even the smallest thing like spacing between results can ...] http://www.jaankanellis.com/google-rankings-change-from-day-to-day-hour-to-hour-why/ Rankings are in everflux more than ever…hey that sounds weird. Meaning the ranking constantly seem to be moving around for many 2-3 keyword phrases. So when some SEO’s run these ranking reports it really just takes a “picture” of where the website currently ranks. I would like to explain how Google ...] http://www.jaankanellis.com/working-on-new-theme-today/ Hello everyone. For past visitors to JaanKanellis.com you will see I am in the process of updating to a new theme. Please bear with me while I work through the changes :). I am also working on a new logo as well. Look for some new great things at JaanKanellis.com in the coming weeks. Post ...] http://www.jaankanellis.com/google-suggest-will-greatly-change-keyword-referrers/ Last night Google announced that they will be going live with Google Suggest across all their datacenters: At a loss for words? We find that by providing suggestions upfront, we can help people search more efficiently and conveniently. Below are some great ways Google Suggest can help simplify your searching. * Help formulate queries: Instead of just ...] http://www.jaankanellis.com/online-reputation-management-the-easy-way/ I was approached by a prospect a few weeks asking how I could help them with some reputation management woes. When I get emails from visitors looking for services I rarely jump right into proposal mode. Rather I take some time to learn exactly what is the issue and do some research before ...]