Matt Cutts, a senior software engineer for Google, says that piling links onto a competitor's site to reduce its search rank isn't impossible, but it's extremely difficult."

I saw his last night its now on slashdot and search engine land.

Google Vs MS

I guess this is the official reason

In summary:

After taking a random sample of 600 Wikipedia articles, 96.67% are in Google's top 10 for their title.

I hate to do this, but this Friday I am closing Threadwatch. I don't think the site died at any specific point, it has been more of a process, which I will outline below:

Oh this is great shit. -- Google calls for more limits for Microsoft Enjoy the BS Full Story

More confusion about SEO, this time from NYT:

EBay said on Friday the where going to start placing ad's on Google, but that it would rely on other sources to a greater degree.

I don't even know where to start. MarketingExperiments recent article, "Harnessing Social Media - Web 2.0 Grows Up - Free Internet Traffic," has so many holes and is so off the mark, it makes me wonder if they've been sipping too much of grandpa's cough syrup over there.

rumours are a foot : http://internet.seekingalpha.com/article/39120 that Yahoo and Ebay are to merge.

The big thing here for Yahoo is that
a) they get a massive user base
b) Paypal

Just noticed this in one of my accounts:

Business.com, one of the better arbitrage plays, is up for auction. The WSJ reports:

A few weeks ago it was Vanessa Fox who left Google, this morning Barry reports over on SEL that two more high profile engineers are leaving

There's been a lot of controversy over WordPress theme sponsorhip lately.

In response, I've just done an extensive and detailed write up on how to evaluate Wordpress theme sponsorship. Pick the right theme and you could get up to 500,000 almost free backlinks with anchor text.

So we all know about the 419ers, the phishers, the pump-n-dumpers & everything in between. Well there's a new email scam out there and its a bit darker.

So after the recent spat between Google and Ebay, things do not seem to be getting anymore friendly.

Wow Google what a great algo you've got and what a really terrific user experience you're providing when you occupy 9 out of the top 10 results for a query with your own sites [

With major brands finding more and more sub domains to spam Google Yahoo has gone a step further.

They are selling entire high ranking sub domains to sites that fill them with affiliate links.

Pretty much the ultimate in pre-sell pages.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Google said Tuesday it is getting in on the development of electric vehicles, awarding $1 million in grants and inviting applicants to bid for another $10 million in funding to develop plug-in hybrid electric vehicles capable of getting 70 to 100 miles per gallon.

http://money.cnn.com/2007/06/19/news/economy/google_plugin/index.htm?eref=rss_topstories

Organizing the world's transportation...err.

In their second annual ranking, "Business 2.0 has compiled an unabashedly subjective list of people, produc