When you think about the Microsoft search platform, do you call it “MSN”, or “Microsoft” or “Live”?
When Microsoft first began development of their new search engine, MSN was not utilizing it yet for searches. When discussing any examples of Microsoft search, it was necessary to call it “Live” to distinguish between it and the old MSN.  You couldn’t accurately refer to Microsoft search without clarifying whether you meant MSN or Live.

On my list of “Top Ten SEO Factors” I’ve never removed ALT tags, because I’ve seen evidence that they were still a determining factor in rankings.

Many experts have been saying for a couple of years now that “ALT tags don’t matter anymore” so they’ve stopped using them in their pages.

On December 11th, local Portland business owners will be offered a rare opportunity to get live help directly from proven SEO experts, including myself.

The most talented search marketers in Oregon recently formed a group called SEMpdx, and we are having our first educational event, called “SEM Hot Seat”.

Your business will have an easier time getting web traffic and customers if you list it in the Google Local directory, Google Maps.

Instead of having dozens or hundreds of competitors in your neighborhood, you may find there are very few.

Google penalizes websites for blatant link farming and other unsavory tactics, but it looks like Microsoft has taken it a step further.

By now, everyone is supposed to know that unrelated links can’t help you, but now Microsoft Search (a.k.a. Live.com) may actually be officially BANNING websites that engage in this practice.
According to this post Barry Schwartz (a.k.a. Rusty Brick) reported that certain webmasters were receiving this letter from Live.com -

I’m the cook in our family, and I decided to make some stuffed mushrooms for a Thanksgiving appetizer.

Naturally, I had to start with the right foundation… very large mushrooms. They couldn’t be difficult for my guests to find, by being made of “Flash”, or images.

In no particular order, here are the most important things I was either reminded of, learned, or remember from Pubcon.

1. Always strive for perfection, but don’t wait for it before implementation, or you may never get your projects completed, your product ready, or your web pages uploaded, etc. In his keynote speech, Guy Kawasaki said one of his mantras is, Don’t worry be crappy. I have always believed this, but it was nice to hear the reinforcement.

Don’t let posts like this fool you, it’s nothing but work, work, work at these things. There’s no fun, no relaxation, and only hours and hours of mind numbing education and networking. I didn’t even know they served alcohol… I’m shocked!

I’m going to the Webmaster World Pubcon convention next week, and getting pretty stoked. I’m so glad they’re back to a 4 day format now…

The session grid has been complete for a while now, and looks really good. Like always though, it’s hard to be two (or more) places at once.  I’m pretty sure these are the sessions I’ll be attending, but some were a tough call, and I may still switch at the last minute:

That’s the claim of someone that emailed me yesterday.

After reading his email and subsequent replies to mine, I decided to post. Any thoughts? What’s your search engine of choice, and why?
Here’s his original email -

Dear Sir:

I have been reading your pages with great interest.
One thing some expert on SE, like you, needs to do is to try and
determine which engine produces the most relevant results.

MSN has a new search operator that allows you to see all the domains that any given site is linking out to.

If you’re used to using http://validator.w3.org/ to try to validate your pages, then you’re going to absolutely FLIP if you haven’t seen this before - http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

Perhaps this tool has been around forever, and people who are “in the know” will wonder where I’ve been hiding that I missed it, but I don’t care. It’s SO useful, and just saved me SO much time, that I had to tell someone about it.