Marketing Pilgrim

In case you’ve missed the kerfluffle recently, the AP is rather dissatisfied with their relationship with the Internet, and Google in particular. Google is everyone’s favorite villain these days. I mean, aren’t they singlehandedly bringing the newspaper industry to its knees?

Not so much, as TechCrunch reminds us. Google News isn’t the most popular news site on the Internet:

In the U.S., Google News is overshadowed by both Yahoo News and even the sites controlled by the New York Times (which includes NYTimes.com, Boston.com, HeraldTribune.com, and several other newspaper sites). According to comScore, Google News attracted 16.2 million unique visitors in the U.S. in February, compared to 42.3 million for Yahoo News and 46.2 million for the sites operated by New York Times Digital.

BusinessWeek wonders out loud in an article about Facebook whether there are premium membership offerings in the future of the social media big shot. Facebook’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg, spoke with Stephen Adler of the magazine to discuss, what else, how the company was going to make money. You would think that BusinessWeek would have the clout to get them to reveal the secret sauce for monetizing the 200 million users they have. The result is actually speculation of what might happen based on what wasn’t said rather than what was said by Sandberg. For instance:

ADLER: Does Facebook plan on charging a membership fee? Over three-quarters of its users are going into a panic-induced assumption that this is true, even though there hasn’t been talk of a membership fee from the business press or Facebook itself. So can you calm the panic?

No, I haven’t gotten confused about what year it is—Yahoo and Microsoft are once again discussing a search proposal. Well, color me so-freakin-tired-of-this-story.

If you’ve been living under a rock for the last year, here’s a quick rundown of why this story is soooooooooooooooo old. Last February, Microsoft made an offer to buy out the company, and considerable drama then ensued. Ultimately, a Yang Yahoo rejected the offer. This February, MSFT CEO Steve Ballmer was stunned that Yahoo’s new CEO, Carol Bartz, wasn’t interested in a deal.

But now, according to AllThingsD, things have changed, and the two companies have been in talks for weeks, culminating in a face-to-face meeting with Bartz and Ballmer:

According to a variety of sources, the talks between the pair and also other execs at both companies are preliminary and also wide-ranging, focused on what kinds of commercial relationship Yahoo and Microsoft could have in the future.

In the recent past Yelp has ruffled some feathers about business practices that appeared to be, well, questionable at best. It had to do with the possible sale of the ability to remove negative reviews from a business’ profile on the local review service.

In a move toward a more even approach (read not considered extortion) Yelp is now allowing business owners to publicly refute the negative reviews that are posted on the site. Starting next week the previously one sided approach to business reviews will balance out a bit more, reports the New York Times.

“Business owners for years now have been asking for more and more voice on the site,” said Geoff Donaker, Yelp’s chief operating officer. “As long as it’s done in a respectable way, it’s good for the consumer and good for the business owner.”

It seems that the only time we write about newspapers these day is to write another obituary or speculate on which newspaper is on its last legs. Well, for today at least, the newspaper industry can breathe a sigh of relief as there is news of an investment company that has doubled its stake in one of the most revered names in the industry Gannett Co.

Ariel Investments LLC has increased its stake in the 12.5% . The WSJ reports

Gannett shares leapt 39% on the news, rising $1.06 to $3.75 in 4 p.m. New York Stock Exchange composite trading, their highest price since the end of February.

Are you an SEO that knows how to dance? If not, you better learn because for some, the name of the game is the algorithm-two-step. Since the beginning of SEO we have been constantly predicting and strategizing around an ever-evolving set of technical rules known to many as search ranking algorithms. In a way these ranking algorithms are the beat and tempo to our often times clumsy and awkward dance moves!

Some SEOs have made a real science into tracking and understanding these ranking algorithms. While others dance blindly into the night to be forgotten and lost forever. Rand Fishkin has been doing the SEO dance for quite some time now. Rand has recently posted his thoughts on some of the changes that the Google algorithm has taken over the years. Rand’s analysis seems to be dead-on with everything that we have seen and read over the years.