I’ve just been reading Jakob Nielsen’s thoughts on RSS over at the WSJ. I know Jeremiah has already weighed-in with his thoughts, but I wanted to add mine too.

I’m not going to rip into Nielsen, he knows more about web design than most, but he does seem somewhat confused about RSS.

Exhibit A – “So one of the real strong recommendations is to stop calling it ‘RSS’ and start calling it ‘news feeds,’ because that explains what it does.”

Beal says – “News feeds” really doesn’t do RSS justice. You can use RSS for many reasons beyond “news” – for example REI uses RSS for it’s Outlet deal of the day. Maybe “web feed” would be a better alternative.

CNET always treads on dangerous ground when it invites biased writers to contribute articles. Hey, I’m not naive, bias exists everywhere, but Steve Johnson does a particularly great job of showing the world just how biaised he is, with his article criticizing Google for lack of personalization – personalization happens to be the focus of Steve’s company (shock, horror!).

So, with that in mind, Steve offers up his thoughts on what Google needs to do, in order to offer greater personalization in its search results. Some good ideas are there, but they’ve been on people’s wish-list for years.

Lastly, maybe CNET should do a better job in screening its contributors. If Steve can make this wildly inaccurate statement…

You’ll notice some new faces around here over the next few weeks as Marketing Pilgrim adds new blog posters. You’ll have already seen some posts from Fortune Interactive’s Ben Wills and today we add Al Scillitani to the list.

Al’s an expert in too many search marketing fields to list, but he’ll likely focus on paid search.

Look for more new contributors soon.

Looking for some inside info on how Google works? Don’t try using Google Answers to get the inside scoop. Google Blogoscoped reports Google recently removed one question that asked “What percentage of Google searches are contextual?” Why?

According to an official response from Google…

Questions about Google, Google Search, and search engine optimization are not allowed because Google Answers researchers are not employees of Google. Researchers don’t have access to any “inside� information. The information they do have access to is available for free on the Google help pages or by writing to Google support.

So what if I posted a question about Yahoo’s algorithm? Would they remove that for the same reason? I very much doubt it. Let’s try posting the same question at Yahoo Answers and see if Yahoo allows the question.

You have until July 30 to set your time zone in your Google AdWords account. You should definitely take advantage of this option if you are using their new Day Parting tool.

When you created your Google AdWords account, the account automatically defaulted to Pacific Standard Time. According to Google, “Your time zone determines the official “working day” for your AdWords account.” In otherwords, if you are in the Eastern Time Zone and set your account to be off from 6pm to 9am, your account will actually turn off 9pm est and will turn back on 12pm est.

You can now download the Google Toolbar via Adobe, according to the Google Blog.

As a part of the agreement, Adobe and Google today will launch availability of the Google Toolbar with downloads of Adobe’s Macromedia Shockwave® Player. The Google Toolbar will now be offered as part of the Shockwave Player installation process for Internet Explorer on Windows. Under the terms of the agreement, the Google Toolbar will also be offered as part of other Adobe product installations in the future.

Reports are surfacing that Google is offering a new CPA model for AdSense publishers.

I’m not an AdSense user, so perhaps someone else can answer the following question. Will Google share the CPA value for each advertiser? They don’t currently share the CPC with AdSense publishers, but surely, if you intend to select ads to show on your web site, you’ll need to know how much per action an advertiser is willing to pay.

And, where are the advertisers coming from? Which advertisers are testing this CPA network?