Although it’s been reported by lots of news outlets and search engine writers, my kids still had not heard that Google has teamed up with Norad this year to help improve it’s Santa tracking using Google Earth.

It’s pretty amazing, and you’d better go take a look right now!

Virus Marketing -

When I ran a computer store in the late 90’s, a lot of people would bring in computers with viruses and spyware to be removed, and they would usually ask us what the “point” was in these acts of cyber vandalism.

Nearly a year and a half ago I mentioned the Google phone was coming, and to everyone’s surprise, it has taken incredibly long.

With a typical PR update, the data used is usually older, and it’s always been my belief that it’s at least three months old. With today’s update, however, I’m finding some pages that have PR that are a little bit fresher…

For example, nearly every single post on SEMpdx from September now has some PR. Here’s the last post on the SEMpdx blog from October 1 that has PR - Win a free pass to SES LA

Overnight, there was an actual Google PR update (finally),  and some people got slapped, while others got helped.  After noticing this morning, I posted my thoughts and a couple of examples about this TBPR update over at SEMpdx. Please check it out, and leave a comment if you’re so inclined…

I know that porn is popular, but I really don’t need to be told (or shown a thumbnail) when the most popular videos on Youtube are porn.

Is that really the way it’s supposed to work? Is this something I’ve just noticed for the first time? If so, i’d better block Google’s home page from my kids computer as an unsafe site.

Google has the ability to Mark your search listings with a warning to users if they think you are doing something wrong, or trying to download spyware onto people’s computer when they visit. You may not even know they’re doing it until you see it, and worse, you may not know if your site is even compromised until they do!

I’m not sure when they added this but I just happened to notice there are new columns inside Google’s Webmaster tools.

If you go to statistics - top search queries, you’ll see that you can now see an overall percentage number for what percentage of your search terms that your site appears for,

The entire search engine marketing industry is quaking in fear and speculation as you read this, and the organic ranking of many sites is now subject to penalty at Google’s whim.

The debate over paid links seems to be coming to a frenzied head this summer, especially since the SES San Jose paid links session called “Are Paid Links Evil?” in August.

As of today it’s been 141 days since the last visible Google Toolbar Pagerank update. That is nearly 3 weeks longer than the longest previous period on record of 122 days, (October 19, 2005 to February 18, 2006).

I’ve been in and out of Google Webmaster tools all day, and its continued to look the same, but suddenly tonight the  interface is a bit different.

The dashboard looks the same but as soon as you get into any domain, there’s a slightly different feel to it. You still can’t see error messages there, though.  (Some RED 404 warnings would sure be nice…)

After what many are calling the best SES session, Matt Cutts was caught on camera physically expressing his feelings about the way he was treated, as he attempted to strangle Graywolf!

During his portion of the session, Michael Gray attacked Google pretty viciously, but did so in a methodical and logical way that was nearly impossible to disagree with.