This week Yahoo! launched version two of BOSS(a “build your own search service”), a data API that gives developers access to web search, image and news content for a usage fee. Version one of BOSS will be shut down this summer, scheduled for July 20, 2011. The primary changes in version two are that web and image search results and now sourced from Microsoft’s search engine, Yahoo branding attribution is now required (the first version allowed for white labeling), and arguably the most significant in that developers are now charged based on query volume. The Yahoo! Search Boss v2 API…more»

Web hosting provider 1&1 Internet announced that it has begun offering its services and solutions to the Canadian market. The company currently operates in seven major markets in Europe and North America, hosting more than 11 million domain names. So why is its focus on Canada so important? According to 2010 research by Industry Canada, only 41 percent of Canadian businesses currently have a website. That presents a big opportunity for a company like 1&1 and everyone else in the U.S. considering crossing that virtual border. “While the fundamental needs of a small business are fairly consistent in all countries,…more»

Launched in beta this week, LinkedIn Today is a new social news service that strives to deliver the most-shared business headlines and stories across multiple industries to members of the professional network. The new product is designed to provide LinkedIn users with access to the most relevant news based on the information in their professional profiles. Members can get news by following what their LinkedIn connections are reading, access a digest of what users in their specific industry are reading or see what headlines are trending across multiple industries throughout the entire network. Users can also customize their LinkedIn Today…more»

Google continues to provide amazing ways in which search marketing professionals can improve their campaign efforts. The latest is this week’s announcement that webmasters using Google Analytics to track site data can link verified sites in Webmaster Tools when using the same Google account. What does this mean to you? Perhaps the most valuable aspect of connecting the two services is that users are able to access the Google Analytics Referring Pages report from within Google Webmaster Tools. This means that you will be able to “understand the overall trends in traffic volume from referrals, as well as the sites…more»

On Tuesday, ShopVisible launched a new e-commerce platform for Facebook that allows retailers to sell products to consumers without requiring them to leave the world’s most popular social network. Whereas Facebook has been a valuable platform for merchants to build brand loyalty and product awareness that drives customers to their retail websites, ShopVisible Social Commerce is the first solution to offer enterprise-class e-commerce tools and functionality within the site itself. Key features and attributes of the new release include the following: •    A full suite of e-commerce, analytics and social marketing tools built specifically for Facebook •    Integration with any…more»

Google’s annual analysis of search, Zeitgeist, has been released for 2010. Along with some unsurprising results – such as leading events of the Haiti earthquake, Chile and … Justin Bieber – there are some interesting observations to be made; most notably that Apple is in the driver’s seat. The fastest rising search term of all in 2010 was “Chatroulette”, the pseudo social network where one can video chat with strangers around the world. The search term dipped a bit after April and a wave of issues surrounding security and obscenity but is again on the rise. It’s interesting to note…more»

A recent blog post that caught the attention of readers included a summary of the annual report from online employment platform Elance. Another Web employment marketplace, oDesk, has released its own year-end report with similarly positive views of both the year in review and the year ahead. The report from oDesk says that employers spent $115 million on online work in 2010 and that job opportunities doubled from 2009 to approximately 602,000. Mobile was the best bet for job-seekers, and positions involving Android expertise shot up 680 percent from 2009 while iPhone-related jobs increased by 152 percent. Social media was…more»

Yahoo! has released a new Web based tool which offers an interesting and visually appealing way to explore search trends. Yahoo! Clues provides a way to discover and compare trending information. What makes Clues so interesting is that it provides not just search volume charts, but demographic graphs, maps and even related searches to a demographic group. It makes Google Trends look like an elementary-level Excel spreadsheet in comparison. Noteworthy features include the ability to compare two terms, a time filter (only for the past one, seven and 30 days) and of course the information categories which delve into gender,…more»

I’m happy to see that Google is starting to give page ranks back. While I’m not back to my PR6, the PR3 is just as good for the time being. I do hope to get my original rank back but that’s something I’ll have to take up with them in the future. I know what I’m going to have to do in order to make that possible so I’m not too concerned with it. In the meantime, I’ve been going through quite a few resources to help me with my SEO techniques. I’d like to properly market my portfolio. Word…more»

Thanks to Fantastico finally being upgraded on the servers, I’m now using WordPress 2.5.1.  It only took about 10 seconds to upgrade but that’s the beauty of auto-install programs.  With the upgrade came updates for about 20 of the 35+ plugins that this domain uses.  Thankfully everything is automatic there too so what I thought was going to be a daunting task of downloading all of the .ZIPs and then uploading manually – it was actually quite simple and only required the click of a mouse.  That’s always a good thing. I’m in the process of updating my portfolio.  I…more»