WM Share Roundup: 5/31/07

US Arrests Internet 'SPAM' king
Robert Soloway, 27, was arrested in Seattle, Washington, after being indicted on charges of mail fraud, identity theft and money laundering.

Seeing Web Traffic with Virtual Cities and Heatmaps
"There is a real demand for Web analytics at the small- to mid-sized business level," said Bill Gassman, a Gartner analyst, "where solutions offered by WebTrends and Omniture might be too complex -- and too expensive."

People power fuels new search engine
While the internet's major search engines keep adding more computers to scan the web and run increasingly sophisticated algorithms to pull up meaningful results, dot-com luminary Jason Calacanis thinks there's still a place for people power.

Google takes big step to make Web work offline
Google Inc. said Wednesday (May 30) it had created Web software that runs both online, and offline, marking a sea change for the Internet industry by letting users work on planes, trains, spotty connections and even in the most remote locations.

Email Report Card From Lyris
Still having trouble with email deliverability? It may not be the actual content contained in those emails as much as was previously thought according to Lyris EmailAdvisor's most recent ISP Deliverability report.

Publish or Perish: The Coming Content Wars
A few days ago, a report showed that Internet advertising was up 35% last year, hitting almost $17 billion. It’s been almost a year since we reported, “Web Advertising Spending Too Low,” and it looks like advertisers are starting to close the gap.

A list of web ready CRMs companies
Many startups out there need to keep track of customer, prospect, and partner information, including the status of those relationships. For many, SalesForce is too expensive for their needs. A list of CRM systems you could use.

Mahalo - A Not-So-Simple Curiosity

Jason Calacanis' and Sequoia Capital's new brain child, Mahalo, is touted as the world's first human-powered search engine. Mahalo's developers scour the Web to build search results - so far, 4,000 of the most popular search terms are included, with the goal of 10,000 by the end of the year. Seemingly, the biggest selling point is hand-selected search results that are free of spam.

Aside from an awkward name (I've misspelled Mahalo twice already), first impressions are positive. Search results are categorized by the "Mahalo Top 7,"  there is a section with "Fast Facts," "Today's Top 20 Searches" and other, related and interesting information. Search results for Chicago Cubs, for example, lists the top 7 (including the official site, wikipedia entry, and some local coverage sites), Cubs management, current roster, news and gossip, photos, fansites, blogs and rivals, among others. It's quite an interesting and informative mix. The engine does a nice job handling typos as well.

Some other features include icons next to search results such as "Warning" (for a site with pop-ups), "Guide's Choice" (the favorite sites of the search result list builders) and "What is" (sites deemed useful for the user).

The usefullness of Mahalo for practical search is still up in the air. The site does return nice results but still has a long way to go. I could see it being a nice supplement to a user's daily search needs - there is plenty of good information when the search term is available and the results are relevant and spam-free, but the limiting characteristics of human-powered search will provide obstacles for the quick-access and comprehensive nature of an engine like Google. When a search term is not available (not yet indexed by the Search Guides) results are returned as suggested sites, then from Google and other search providers. The suggested results are questionable - a search for 17-year cicadas brought back sites on basketball stars Ben Wallace, Brandon Roy, Jason Kidd and a site for Cadillac.

Curiously, a search on the search engine Mahalo for "search engines" brings zero results.

Google Mashup Editor on the Horizon

Email Report Card From Lyris

Still having trouble with email deliverability? It may not be the actual content contained in those emails as much as was previously thought according to Lyris EmailAdvisor most recent ISP Deliverability report.

According to the report, "two frequently triggered Spam Assassin rules generated content filter point scores of significance…. The first rule cautions against heavy use of images, which can increase spam scores up to a full point and render poorly in email clients with image blocking enabled. The second problem, sending messages with a 'From Name' composed of numbers or symbols rather than an actual name, can also increase the likelihood of the message being flagged as spam and ending up in users' junk/bulk folders."

Also from the report, "of the 25 U.S. ISPs tracked by the EmailAdvisor Report Card, several leading providers rank near the top of the list of domains with the highest rates of delivery to the junk folder rather than to the inbox. These include Gmail (3rd with 28 percent), Yahoo! (4th with 19 percent), and Hotmail (6th with 16 percent). Noticeably absent from the top ten ISPs with the worst inbox delivery is AOL, which ranked 14th on the list with a junk delivery rate of only 2.33 percent."

Read the entire report from Lyris here (PDF).

Listed below are the top ten US domains by gross deliverability:

YPN Pays Publishers By PayPal

The Yahoo! Publisher Network announced today that publishers in their network will have the option to be paid via PayPal, rather than by check or by electronic funds transfer. Publishers who opt in will receive a reduced payment threshold as well, from $100 to just $50.

Very few programs of this nature or status pay their affiliates/publishers through PayPal. In my opinion it shows Yahoo!'s committment to expanding their network into the international market as many of the prospective publishers will not have US-based bank accounts.

MySpace's Last Gasp?

MySpace's parent, News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media has announced that they will purchase Photobucket, Inc. This follows Fox's purchase of Flektor Inc., which provides tools for creating slideshows, video mash-ups and various other interactive presentations. Is this is a move by MySpace to become more agile and compete with the smaller, smarter communities out there? Maybe so, considering their dynamic competitor Facebook has recently opened it doors to the developer community. As a privately owned system, Facebook has the luxury of experimenting without risking alienating shareholders or losing big on an investment. It makes them sleeker and more open to change. Perhaps the $580 million MySpace price tag requires a bit more caution. So, Fox opened their wallet instead.

Look at it this way: The Facebook crowd started with the college-aged demographic - a niche generally more tech-savvy than the teens that make up a large part of the MySpace crowd. So, Facebook can feel comfortable allowing developers to take part in shaping the site as they see fit. And isn't that what Web 2.0 is all about?

MySpace didn't have the tech crowd to begin with. Shaping the site is left to MySpace developers and whatever they see fit. So, they purchased Photobucket and Flektor instead. While not exactly a developer's dream, this should make the tailoring of MySpace pages much easier and eliminate some of the problems associated with customizing profile pages. MySpace is obviously feeling the heat of a clunky system and wisely made a move.

Tool-Of-The-Day: PopShops

Wade Schlosser contributed an article for the digital edition of the May issue of Website Magazine about maximizing data feeds which is a great primer on how to use the data of others for enhanced visibility and as a revenue source.

Last night I came across PopShops - a very interesting data feed solution that is free and amazingly simple to use. PopShop enables users to search for products from various merchants, personalize product recommendations and customize layouts with easy-to-use editors - integrating quickly as JavaScript, PHP or ASP. There are hundreds of datafeeds to utilize from affiliate networks such as Commission Junction, Linkshare and Shareasale. Just sign up, add your affiliate ID and you're off and running. Affiliates keep 100% of the commissions and can generate custom XML, CSV, RSS and Atom feeds without costly development work.

The list goes on and on really - this is a game changer for affiliate marketing. The basic version is free but enhanced (Pro and Enterprise) are available for a flat monthly fee.

Web Design Mistakes That Destroy Usability

Today Website Magazine is featuring the first in a series of posts by guest bloggers. Jason Smith, webmaster of xsiteprowebsitedesignbuilder.com, leads the way with a very insightful article about three website design mistakes that destroy usability.

From the article:
Your website may have great content and an eye-pleasing design, but your users don’t seem to stay very long or visit many pages. What could be wrong? In many cases, the problem is usability – your visitors are abandoning your website out of frustration. There are many design mistakes that can destroy your website usability. Today we review three common problems that make your website difficult to use.

Read more on how design mistakes can negatively impact usability.

GoDaddy Gets 850K Domains

WordPress: Duplicate Content Plugin

SlideBurner vs. Slideshare

With all the hype surrounding social media and "consumer" as the force that defines your brand, you might just think that there is simply no need any longer for traditional sales presentations - you know, the ones you create with PowerPoint slides to tell your story to prospects?

I've created quite a few PowerPoint presentations in my day but I never thought to share them with the wider Web community. As recently as the past 12 months there has been an influx in online services which help facilitate this sharing. Here are two to consider if you want your presentations to receive a little more attention, a lot more traction and way more feedback for those that really make or break your online enterprise.

SlideBurner lets users upload presentation slides from PowerPoint or OpenOffice and converts them into a readable format (flash) for anyone with a web browser. There is currently a 20MB size limit per file but free accounts have a generous storage capacity of 200MB.

Slideshare is another free service for sharing presentations. In addition to PowerPoint and OpenOffice, Slideshare enables users to upload Keynote (for Mac users) or PDF presentations. The service supports a maximum file size of 30MB.

Both communities provide social features such as the ability to create groups, add friends and define presentations with tags. Now while I have not created a PowerPoint in the past few months, I am not familiar with any services provided by Microsoft that would enable the sharing of presentations.

That just might be another Web-based service for Redmond to consider!

Do you know of another Web-based presentation sharing service - just comment below and let us know!

Loki 2.0 - Instant Local Search

Skyhook Wireless has announced the release of Loki 2.0 - a toolbar that determines your location through wifi triangulation, thus bypassing the need to enter a location when performing local search. Essentially, with a few lines of JavaScript into the HTML content, custom, local landing pages can be presented to and end-user - as long as they opt-in to the service.

One of the real benefits of Loki 2.0 is the increasing use of the Internet to drive brick-and-mortar sales. More people than ever are doing their research of products online before hitting the streets and making a purchase. After researching the product, this new service will make it easier for users to find a location near them that sells the product, and easier for sellers to tailor their pages for those users - for example, instant access to a map of the nearest retail location(s) selling the desired product. Other area-specific tools could include nearby restaurants, tourist attractions, real estate ...

Engaging Advertising And Publishers

I spoke with John Marston today, CEO of AdEngage, an online advertising network that has the potential to turn the heads of both publishers and advertisers with an interesting solution that automates the process of buying and selling text links.

While the online advertising marketplace is currently dominated by the likes of Google and Yahoo (with MSN potentially making a move very soon), AdEngage has an offering that makes it a viable compliment to existing Web promotional campaigns. The one problem with contextual publisher solutions like Adsense is that you can't advertise (in every case) directly on the sites that meet your target demographic. AdEngage solves this problem by creating a marketplace that gives greater control to advertisers and publishers.

The advantage of AdEngage over these other high profile services (beside the relatively low cost-per-click pricing) is that advertisers have some interesting options at their disposal. What appealed to me was the opportunity to combine text and photos in advertisements. This visual emphasis (images are either 50x50 or 100x100) work to generate more attention from end-users and, in turn, more clicks to the advertiser's site and more revenue for publishers from remnant ad space.

Currently displaying around 15 billion impressions per month, Marston said what he and AdEngage are hearing from advertisers is an "... increasing desire to get more and more segmented about where they are finding their audience." The solution is a seven day rolling average - a detailed breakdown of where the Web traffic is originating. "What we've focused on is commercializing all inventory for a publisher, regardless of location," said Marston.

There have been some questions about the speed of AdEngage from some publishers. Networks need to be concerned with speed because if a page is getting hung up - advertisers don't get an impression, publishers won't get a click from users and users will leave - no one walks away happy. In all fairness, AdEngage tripled its business in a few short months and takes the possiblity of lag time seriously. They aim to serve ads in .30 seconds. To help with their current expansion, they have also hired a former MySpace employee who brings a lot of relevant experience in terms of making sure the infrastrcuture is ready for another such increase in demand.

Visit AdEngage and you'll definitely see an emphasis on entertainment-related sites. But don't let that mislead you. While the company is strong in entertainment (as their history is primarily in that area) they are very keen on exploring other verticals, like technology and will be placing greater emphasis in that niche in the future.

Advertising as Entertainment

Social networking site Bebo and the creators of Lonelygirl15 - the teen video blog that turned out to be an actress with a script - are teaming up in Britain to make a spinoff that will serve as an advertising channel. Kate Modern, as it will be called, will be a 19-year-old art student living in London. She will post videos and have a profile on Bebo where users can interact with her and be exposed to advertisements.

So, why should you care about this?

The original Lonelygirl15 series has drawn more than 50 million hits online. That's 50 million opportunities for an advertising message for a bare minimum production cost - essentially a video camera and a computer. The interesting bit is that the creators of Kate Modern are flat-out telling the world that this fictional character is an advertising machine. And they feel that this radical transparency will reap big rewards.

The whole concept of advertising as entertainment benefits by the ease of access of online video. Most people would gladly watch a one- to two-minute advertisement if it provided some entertainment value, rather than a pre- or post-roll ad considered intrusive - a method Google is now testing with their online videos.

This mode of advertising brings up another advantage of the Web and a big plus for small business owners. The most popular videos online are, of course, user-generated - and they look like home movies. Web video brings reality TV to everyone online, capitalizing on people's natural voyeuristic tendencies. What this means is that you don't need a big budget, fancy equipment or hired actors to create a hit video. In fact, it's quite the opposite. And as long as you're providing entertainment or some education value, you stand a good chance of getting some really cheap advertising. It's a great way to bring your product to life and generate some real interest in your brand. For example, who knew Diet Coke and Mentos could be so much fun? There was no ad copy and no hard branding, but you can be sure that sales for both products soared as the result of one brief, grainy and entertaining online video.

Try it out. Find an angle to entertain or educate people, mix in your brand and see what happens. Just don't forget to show your viewers your website address early and often.

Misspelled Keywords; Typo Generators

The Yahoo! Buzz log has a post from Wednesday I just came across which lists the most common words that "vex" Yahoo!'s searchers:

Wallmart (Wal-Mart), Rachel Ray (Rachael Ray), Amtrack (Amtrak), Hillary Duff (Hilary Duff), Katherine McPhee (Katharine McPhee), Britany Spears (Britney Spears), Geneology (Genealogy), Jaime Pressley (Jaime Pressly), Volkswagon (Volkswagen), Wikepedia (Wikipedia), William Sonoma (Williams-Sonoma), Tatoo (Tattoo), Travelosity (Travelocity), Elliot Yamin (Elliott Yamin), Kiera Knightley (Keira Knightley), Kelly Pickler (Kellie Pickler), Brittney Spears (Britney Spears), Avril Lavinge (Avril Lavigne), Rianna (Rihanna), Jordan Sparks (Jordin Sparks)

 Using misspellings in search marketing campaigns (and even search engine optimization campaigns) is a very savvy use of your time.

So how do you come up with these misspellings? By far the best (at least most thorough) tool I've seen to generate typos and misspelling is Aaron Wall's Keyword Typo Generator at SEOBook. There are a few other good options including TypoGenerator.net and the SEOChat Keyword Typo Generator. The advantage of using misspellings in your promotional keywords is that they are typically cheaper to buy (SEM) and much less competitive (SEO) to achieve rankings for.

Yahoo Search Index Update Complete

PRWeb's BlogThis Tool

PRWeb has added a tool to their system titled "BlogThis." Upon reading a press release, users can blog about it on their own site without leaving the PRWeb site. By clicking on the BlogThis button on the right side of the screen on any given press release, you can publish the link and write your own blog post and/or comments and publish immediately to your site.

It's a convenient tool for posting relevant industry news to your site, adding content and another way to get your company's press releases distributed around the Net.

"As blogs and other social media grow in importance to public relations professionals and marketers, PRWeb continues to pioneer new methods to enhance the online visibility of our customers' press releases," said Joel Baker, PRWeb's President and COO. "BlogThis increases the interaction between social media and our customers, facilitating the process for bloggers and increasing the potential coverage for our customers' press releases within the social media world."

Internet Advertising Reaches Record High

According to a new report by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewatehrhouseCoopers, online advertising reached a record $16.9 billion in 2006 and that figure is expected to grow. It's an increase of 35 percent over 2005. Amazingly, this only accounts for six percent of total advertising spend in 2006 - $58 billion was spent in direct mail advertising with $51.2 billion spent on newspaper ads (and everyone says print is a dead medium!)

Among some interesting findings from the report:

• Display advertising, including both banner and rich-media ads, generated 32 percent of the total revenue.
• The 10 largest ad-selling companies grabbed 69 percent of total revenue, and the top 50 companies nabbed 93 percent.
• Ads billed per impression generated 48 percent of revenue, while those billed per a specific action, like a click, made up 47 percent.

PPC Summit In Chicago

Google Releases Hot Trends

Building on two existing products - Zeitgeist and Trends - Google has now released Hot Trends. The new product reveals the top 100 fastest-rising search trends. The two previous services were only available by week or month, but Hot Trends will update several times per day.

For those of you dedicated to staying on top of things hour by hour, this is a good chance to take advantage of near-real-time search behavior. By knowing what searches are hot, the opportunity is there to take advantage of sudden spikes in traffic. Getting relevant content published immediately increases the chances of being noticed through social services like Technorati and long-term opportunities can be created by becoming the first authority on any given topic. One of the real bonuses is if you are already considered an authority on a certain topic - your page rank and search ranking will provide a relevant search result for the hot topic and a venue for new information. The result is that a user finds new, timely information relvant to their search, further cementing your status as an expert in that field. Starting in mid-May, users will also be able to see what search trends were for any given point in the recent past.

Technorati Improvements

A Good Year (So Far) For Ecommerce

Three Key Plugins For WordPress

• The best bloggers know that there is a lot of value in their archived posts. So why let them go to waste! Wordpress users should definitely take a look at Semiologic's related entries plugin which leverages the extract terms plugin and MySQL's full text search algorithms to identify related entries in a WordPress powered site.
   
• Comment relish is a Wordpress plugin developed to send an e-mail message to users who comment on your website. The message (which can be defined with the plugin's preferences) is sent to users who have never commented before. You can work in a lot of valuable information in each message such as who they are, what they wrote and when they were at you site commenting. It's a valuable marketing touch point - so make sure you ask them to subscribe to your official feed!
   
• If you believe in the mobile hype, jump on the bandwagon and make your WordPress site accessible on a mobile phone. Individual posts, pages, archives and even comments can be viewed on various mobile devices. The best part is that posts and comments can be submitted by phone!  I've been using the following on one of my personal blogs for quite some time, but I have not yet utilized the AdMob ad solution that comes with the plugin.
  
   

PictoBrowser For Flickr Photosets

Don't you wish you could easily include your Flickr photos into your website (maybe even your weblog) without a lot of hassle and make them a prominent part of your content? You can! Check out PictoBrowser, a simple freeware widget that allows any website owner or Web operator to display pictures that are stored on Flickr!

To get a free PictoBrowser for your blog or website (MySpace too), click "INFO" on any PictoBrowser (check out this one we created with Sustainable Harvest's most recent photo set), enter your Flickr username and choose one of your photo sets. You'll receive a line of code that you can quickly add pretty much anywhere.

There could be a few copyright concerns as all you need to access and republish another Flickr members photos is their username. Pictobrowser will surely raise a red flag for some, but you can easily republish photos from Flickr easily anyway (but with a little more work) so it's probably not a big deal (unless of course someone is monetizing on your intellectual capital!)

Anchor Text Best Practice

The theme of Website Magazine's May issue (if you haven't received it - check out the digital edition) is search engine optimization (SEO) and it has received loads of attention and compliments - so thanks! We selected SEO as the theme of the May issue based on a survey running on our home page to identify topics readers are most interested in learning about. No surprise to me, SEO topped the list. (Take the WM Reader Survey and influence the content of future issues).  

Unfortunately, it's impossible to cover all the vital factors for SEO success in a 52-page magazine - one of the reasons we added 16 pages to the Website Magazine digital supplement. One of the results of the focus on specific themes is that we receive questions in regards to best practices on the topics covered in each edition. One such recent question regards the proper way to use anchor text.

What is anchor text and why is it important?  Anchor text is the text used in a linking structure that is visible to users. The keywords or phrases SEOs use in the anchor text of their site contributes greatly to the relevancy of the page being linked. The result is that search engines will give additional value to those pages, thus increasing the chances they are found among thousands of others when someone searches for the phrase found in the anchor text.

Imagine thousands of sites pointing to one page of your website using the same anchor text. Essentially, search engines would consider your site the most relevant and hence most popular for the phrase that those websites are using to link to you. However, variations of the anchor text pointing to your site are ideal. This approach is important because it gives search engines (which factor the number of links pointing to your site into their rankings) the sense that those link "votes" are more natural and not commercially solicited.

Let's Look At An Example:
If you were kind enough to link to Website Magazine, you could use any number of phrases. What we (the SEO in this instance) are looking for (or appreciate the most) is relevant anchor text as well as variation in the anchor text of the links. For example, Website Magazine recommends links using seven anchor text variations. Here's one (the anchor text is in black):

Many websites link to WebsiteMagazine.com using this anchor text such as Collarity.com (as seen below):

Over time this has helped us receive first page placement for the term "Website Magazine" at Google.

While plenty more accounts for ranking high on search engines for specific phrases (on-page factors for example), anchor text plays a major role and it's something you should take into consideration when starting out with SEO or improving upon your existing SEO campaigns.

It's your turn: take the WM Reader Survey and influence the content of future issues!

Is Adsense Arbitrage Dead?

Microsoft Dives into Online Ad Game

Microsoft has announced that they will buy online ad agency aQuantive for a whopping $6 billion, twice what Google said they would buy DoubleClick for and what is considered 85% over aQuantive's value.

Beyond traditional display and textual online advertising, Microsoft will use this new ad network to target very specific audiences - a move many see as the new frontier of online ads. The ad venues will be mobile advertising, podcasts, video games and Internet television. It's a bold move and a serious swipe at Google's dominance in the online ad space.

eMarketer projects online advertising to reach $36.5 billion by 2011. "These companies are making a pretty big bet that online advertising is going to pay off in a big way," said Shar VanBoskirk, online marketing analyst at Forrester. "Six billion is a little to pay if the payout is a third of the $600 billion ad industry."

This move negates the rumored Microsoft and Yahoo deal and now puts the pressure squarely on Yahoo to keep up.

External Click Tracking

Mark Hannan of nectarcomputers.com pinged us with a good question this morning that we thought we'd share and see if we can answer. Here's Mark's question:

I have a small online venture that I started about a year ago, www.lonestarlodging.com. At present the site is doing well as an unpaid service for lodgings, but I would like to take a step further and turn it into a paid service soon. The big issue I am facing is the ability to track clicks on lodging links, so that I can provide potential and present customers with detailed link stats. I would greatly appreciate any recommendations from you on wither a suitable clcik tracking service, or a webhost that can provide detailed click tracking stats. Love the magazine by the way.

This is an interesting question - there are actually quite a few ways to track the number of clicks on external links. Personally, I would suggest creating a custom tracking and reporting solution so that you and your users can see the traffic and, if it's based on a PPC (pay-per-click pricing model), how much they are paying and you are earning. You can hire developers (I've had some good experience with RentACoder.com) to do this for you. The advantage is that you own the software and will be able to resell it and make some money off your investment. The reason I suggest this is that if you use a third party reporting system you will need to repurpose the data and then provide it to your users - an unnecessary administrative step if you have your own proprietary reporting system

External click tracking is not too difficult. What you will need to do (or as you suggest purchase a solution to do) is run user click stream data through a server so that it can be tracked and reported back to you.

Here are two suggestions based on my limited understanding of your business model and your users expectations of your service:

• Check out Damien Katz' Clicky, a JavaScript file that essentially reports data to you server. It's a little rough around the edges but it works well. It's based roughly on how MyBlogLog tracks external clicks. You will need to append each external link with code, but if you hard (hand) code pages it's pretty easy to pick up and do quickly.
   
• Consider using a service such as Google Analytics that, with some modification, can track clicks on external links and do so without you incurring any costs. Setup is pretty simple - you'll just need to modify the actual outbound link with a additional string of code that tells the Google Analytics server that you generated an additional page view .
  
  Here's the code for that:  <a href="http://www.example.com" onClick="BLOCKED SCRIPTurchinTracker('/outgoing/example_com');">

There are of course hundreds of ideal solutions you could employ instead of Google Analytics, like Omniture or WebSideStory which are incredibly robust. They are truly the leaders in the analytics industry but can be cost prohibitive to smaller online ventures.

The key to any tracking solution is determining your needs and the needs of your users. Every business is different, so the place place to start is creating a plan that best suits your business model. Determine exactly what you need to track - then you will be able to find the best solution for your individual needs. 

Getz WordPress 2.2: Upgrade Now

If you're a dedicated WordPress user you have probably heard by now that WordPress released version 2.2 of its popular blogging platform.

According to the WordPress blog, this release includes several new features - most notably Widets integration which allows users to easily rearrange and customize areas of the blog (usually sidebars) with drag-and-drop simplicity. There's actually way more that will be of interest to hard-core WordPress users and developers so definitely take a look - might even be a nice Weekend project! If you're not able to automatically update your WordPress installation, there's a good guide on how to do so within the WordPress Codex.

Our very own Kelly Springer (who you may know if you've attended an industry trade show recently) has been spending her nights readying her own WordPress blog about her team - the Chicago Cubs. We'll of course make a formal announcement when she's ready. For those looking to get the most out of their WordPress blog installation, Kelly recommends WordPress 2 (available at Amazon).

Microsoft Affiliate Network

Word is that Microsoft is unveiling a new Affiliate Network. According to Mike Allen at Revenews, the system is "built on a customized version of Kowabunga's MyAP v9 affiliate tracking and management technology."

The number of affiliates is limited for now so you would be advise to get more information and apply at microsoftaffiliates.net.

Some details on the affiliate network:

- New, affiliate-exclusive commission opportunities as soon as they are available.
- Optimized marketing materials for all the offers you promote in one portal.
- Real-time traffic reporting powered by industry-leading affiliate tracking and management technology.
- Full earnings reporting for all offers in an easy-to-use interface.
- All the support you need from our affiliate managers dedicated to your success.

Microsoft affiliates will send internet traffic to Network offers such as OneCare, the PC care service from Microsoft, through specially formatted links. Microsoft is pursuing mainly well-known and respected sites, blogs, niche content sites, membership sites, comparison shopping sites and everything in between it seems.

Optimizing For A Google Universe

Google is introducing some major updates to not just their interface but their algorithm as well, moving towards what they are calling a "universal search" model. The simplest way to explain "universal search" is that instead of searching one index (the standard Web index) for the most relevant results, Google will be searching across all its vertical properties including image results, video results (YouTube) and news results to present the most relevant content it can find within a single unified results page.

What does this mean to you? It means that you now have a lot more to think about in terms of optimizing content for Google. The upside for those that choose to take these changes at Google seriously is that all of their content (images, video, etc.) that is optimized well will help secure broader penetration into the universal index. The result will be more traffic, better brand exposure and in a perfect world - more revenue.

Google Images: Include descriptive anchor text, name files accordingly and share with others to build links to these images directly.

Google Video: Meta data is of supreme importance. Crafting keyword rich (but user readable) titles, descriptions and keyword tag prompts will help ensure that when someone searches for a specific video they will find it within the universal index.

Google News: Getting into Google News means getting attention from major media outlets or online publishers that are frequently tapped for content by Google. How do you do that? Well, innovate like a crazy person, develop relationships with members of the media and establish partnerships.

That should keep us all busy.

Mozilla's New Mobile Service - Joey

Mozilla developers are testing a new service that allows users to store online content on a remote server for later access through mobile devices. Called Joey, this service enables users to select portions of websites (images, text or video) and save them on their personal Joey pages. That page can then be accessed by a mobile device for later viewing. Every time a user accesses their Joey page, the information is updated - for instance, a stock ticker will update each time the page is accessed through the mobile device.

Joey aims to solve rendering problems with mobile Web surfing - avoiding the content that you don't need (ads and images) that have a tendency to clutter small mobile screens and interfere with load time. RSS capabilities will be included in the future. Joey is available now, but still in development.

Check Your Online Reputation - For Free

As Internet users have become more in tune with security threats - especially through malicious email - hackers have turned to the websites themselves as a way of embedding damaging code. Security company Sophos reported earlier this year that 5,000 new Web pages are infected every day. So, it's important to monitor your website's security reputation.

Secure Computing has launched Domain Health Check - a free service that provides a behavior-based view of the messaging and Web reputation of your domains. After signing up, users are emailed a report about the security of their domains regarding email and Web traffic.

Digital Edition of Issue 7 Live

The May 2007 issue of Website Magazine is now available online to our digital subscribers - that means you (or it could mean you)! Website Magazine’s digital edition enables readers to easily search for content, email articles to friends and colleagues and even print for later review. And the best part? Access to the digital archive is free and will remain that way in the future - just like the print edition.

As you may now, the feature article of the May edition is "The ABC's of SEO" (search engine op