April 1st is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four. (Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894)

Todays I don’t envie all the reporters out there. It’s is April Fool’s Day, and one needs to be on the lookout for what is real news and what is fake news. Here are my 5 favorite April Fools hoaxes from the search industry, starting with Google.


Google Mobile launched Brain Search, which uses their hoax technology CADIE (Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity) to “index your brain to make your thoughts and memories searchable”. The Big G also mentions some use cases for the new application: you can recall “the name of that guy across the room, where you put your car keys, why you started dating this woman in the first place”. Hehe, hillarious.

Yahoo launched a new search service called Ideological Search. The service allows searchers to “control the ideology of their search results for the first time in search technology history”.

MSN’s Live Search simply redid their homepage. Not a big effort, but still funny.

YouTube turns its videos upside down (add “&flip=1″ to URL to activate.

Reddit looks like Digg for a day.

Bonus (not search, but media related): the British newspaper Guardian announced that it will discontinue its publication after 188 years and publish its news via Twitter. Considering the state of the print media, not such a bad idea, isn’t it?

What were your favorite April Fools hoaxes on the web this year? Let me know in the comments!

Find out what I am doing right now by following me on Twitter! If you like this post then please consider subscribing to my full feed RSS. You can also subscribe by Email and have new posts sent directly to your inbox.

Julia Angwin wrote a great article in today’s edition of the Wall Street Journal, about SERPs (search engine position ranking) and controlling your reputation online. She writes that among the top spots result in the search results for her name has been an (in her opinion dissatisfying) article she wrote four years ago.

Since he was about to publish her new book and wanted to make this unflatering article disappear from the the Top 10 of her SERPs, she explored various options how to achieve that. Her insights mentioned in this piece are part of ‘SEO 101′ and illustrate the Do’s and Don’ts when trying to control your online reputation (since Google is the dominant search engine in the U.S. and most other markets, she’s focusses her story on the ‘Big G’).

These are my favorite six takeaways from Angwin’s article:

1. It’s extremely difficult to remove items from Google search results. Persue other others. Only if you can prove that another site has stolen your social security, credit card or bank-account numbers and posted them online, the search company might consider to remove the offending data. In that case it’s still recommended that you contact the owner of that site directly.

2. You should take control of your own web presence. Create original content that is compelling to readers and can be easily accessed by search engines – and you’re in the right direction to be in charge of your reputation online.

3. Develop a linking strategy. Get incoming links from relevant and authoritative and websites. (In Angwin’s case, this certainly paid off.)

4. Make search result with the annoying content disappear with your social media efforts. Increase your online visibility by creating accounts at social bookmarking sites (Del.icio.us, Furl, Stumble Upon), social networking profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace and micro-blogging sites like Twitter. Talk about your expertise, share insights, thoughts, web finds and other links with others.

5. It’s the crawlability, stupid! A beautiful website with tons of stunning pictures doesn’t do the trick. You need high-quality content which can be easily be crawled by the major search engines.

6. Don’t forget the meta information on your site. You know, texts like the “title tag,” which is displayed at the top of the Web browser and describes the page to a search engine. Often forgotten by noobs, but crucial.

7. You can work to boost your results, and then lose control in an instant. Even if you think that you did a great SEO job, your work is never done. Among many reasons: the search engine constantly update their algorithms, other web content than texts is becoming more and more important (videos, music, podcasts, etc.), your competitors (who are trying to grab the top spots of the same keyword like you) never sleep.

Do you have other suggestions on how to get control of your own SERPs? Leave a comment!

Find out what I am doing right now by following me on Twitter! If you like this post then please consider subscribing to my full feed RSS. You can also subscribe by Email and have new posts sent directly to your inbox.

Let us remember that, as much has been given us, much will be expected from us, and that true homage comes from the heart as well as from the lips, and shows itself in deeds. (Theodore Rosevelt)

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! I wish you a relaxing day, a wonderful gathering with family and friends – and a delicious culinary feast.

In honor of this day, many search engines and websites in the search industry got ‘dressed up’. Here is a little collection of Thanksgiving logos:

Ask.com:

Live.com:

Google:

Yahoo:

Dogpile:

AOL.com:

Friendfeed:

Cre8asite Forums:

Search Engine Roundtable:

Plus: Check out Search Insider’s great post “10 Reasons Search Marketers Should Be Greatful”. It’s a must-read!

A new whitepaper by search marketing firm iProspect shows that 62% of search users click on links found on the first page of search results.

Overall, 90% of search users will click on links found in the first three pages of search results. The findings show the increased importance of first page placement, along with the value of being found in the Top 20 and Top 30.

Other findings:

• 41% of respondents would either alter or abandon the keywords used in their queries if they could not find results on the first page.
• 82% of the time, respondents would alter search queries by adding descriptive words, most often resulting in a successful search.

Pretty impressive results. This definitely show how important it is to rank in the first 20 SERPs of the major search engines.

Find out what I am doing right now by following me on Twitter! If you like this post then please consider subscribing to my full feed RSS. You can also subscribe by Email and have new posts sent directly to your inbox.