There is a new search engine.

Cuil

From Cuil.com::

Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. When we find a page with your keywords, we stay on that page and analyze the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency.

There are tons of sites that purport to be directories of businesses and many of them do allow you to create a company profile. Profiles that are searchable by industry will help you when people search on those sites for your industry, but any value to your SEO campaign (specifically, here, it would be gaining links back to your own web site) depends on the links and kinds of links you get from a particular service.

When the links are created by their internal systems - which is usually the case - you're asked to supply the URL for your site and then the system that builds the profile for your company turns your title (or some other portion of your listing) into a link. Does it go to your site? Does it go to your company contact information also on the host site?

Former users of Facebook claim that deleting their account left them visible to Google search.

From iMedia:

Instead of being able to delete their entire account, a handful of former Facebook users found that their profiles could still be located through a Google search. While most of the information in the account was deleted, the search still revealed the users' network of friends.

Facebook chalked up the incidents to a technical glitch, which it insists has now been fixed. While Facebook continues to grow as a social network, the company has taken heat from users, many of whom angrily rejected the site's ad platform, Beacon, last fall.

Inevitable, isn't it? I mean, anytime someone so completely dominates an industry there will come challengers. Google has seen them come. Goodle has seen them go. And, right now, Microsoft is upping the ante even as Ask.com seems to be losing momentum.

You remember Ask.com, right? Jeeves went away - a permanent vacation - a new and supposed smarter algorithm was created, and Ask.com was going to prove itself the search engine offering the BEST, most relevant, most useful search results pages. Ask.com  

Following an intense TV advertising blitz, Ask.com did see an increase in market share. But, Google continued its dominance. The 4.5 to 6 percent share (depending on the data you look at) was a nice increase for Ask - up from less than 1%. But, whether Ask.com made any headway at all where it matters is open to debate. More than that, it may show why Microsft/Yahoo! are looking at a long, uphill battle.

But none of that matters yet... Microsoft isn't after the search volume with this deal. they're looking at the revenue from delivering contextual advertising, and OF COURSE _ Yahoo!s APPS! _ I just found this at PC World. check it out:
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/142152/microsofts_yahoo_bid_is_really_about_biz_apps.html I'll get back to that in a second, but let's finish with why Google is still going to dominate search.

An Apparent Increase in Searches Served by MSN's Live Search Creates a Stir

Compete reports MSN's share is on the rise, and a few webmasters predict a new Top Dog in the Search Industry in a decade. Check the posts in this thread. You gotta love it.

Here's the part of this that is interesting to me...

How NOT to get rich with e-Commerce

We just ran an SEO evaluation of a pre-made online store. You know... XYZ Company sets you up with a web site, the products, handles your shipping, provides a payment gateway, keeps records for you, bills you if you sell anything or not. 

Hey! This one even has an automated "SEO professional"! To be fair, I think it was called "Professional Search Marketing Expert" - which sort of offended me, because that's what I am.

Realtors' Dominate the Real Estate Market

Sounds obvious. You might even wonder, briefly, who else would want IN that market.

One of my small business clients, Greg Off - of gregoffhomes.com - is a home builder who offers a small but very nice selection of homes online. Our first look at getting him ranked highly for the keywords he needed was an eye popper.

You're familiar with these two terms, right?

• Search Engine Optimization
• Search Marketing

Often used interchangeably, these two terms are not at all the same thing.

Most Search Marketers will tell you that Search Marketing has to do with the creation of and management of Pay-Per-Click campaigns. And, that can be a part of it... a big part, depending on the market you're in, the strength of the competition for your keywords and your prospects for success with organic listings.

Our recent working vacation in California took some unexpected turns.  Jann McCully, Senior VP and CIO of  ABD Insurance and financial,   the 15th largest insurance company in the united states,  asked me to pop in for an SEO basics discussion.

I met with Jann, lead developer on the award winning CyberSure®,  web site and with Marybeth Strack, ABD's Director of eBusiness, to run through the high points of page optimization and the most up to date information on the algorithms used by the major search engines.

When an oppportunity to work with people of this caliber comes around, you ignore the fact that you have no notes, no prep time and none of your own tools at your disposal.  You simply deliver - and it helps if you know your beans.