Well, not that I was interested in selling, but I found it interesting that there was a resource available if I were searching for an asking price.

How does $184,040.04 sound? Make that out to “cash.”

Hat tip Seth.

I received an IM from the Marketing Hipster this morning regarding Yahoo and their connection with MyBlogLog.

Cord Silverstein contends that it is possible that Yahoo! might be spamming MyBlogLog with fake members just to have a larger community and get better visibility.

• Yahoo! who has recently purchased MyBlogLog and has a community promoting their product Yahoo! Messenger.
• They have an enormous amount of people who joined their community, but never bothered to add a personalized picture.
• These “members” have never gotten a single contact.
• They have never registered a blog of their own.
• They have never received one message from another member.
• But just be chance (?), they each took the time to join one and only one community, the Yahoo! Messenger community.

IMHO, most of the folks over at Yahoo! are not dumb people. If they attempted something this stupid, they had to know that it would come out at some point.

At the same time, they are taking a beating in the search space, despite increases forecasted from Panama. Yahoo!’s business model includes search; but since it is more of an information portal (Hotjobs, Finance, Autos, etc.), it stands to reason that making MyBlogLog a success would certainly add more visitors to the other properties.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that while it’s a lousy user experience and careless, I don't believe it's a conspiracy. The risk of being a shill does not outweigh the success of a program.

I’ve been reading SEOmoz for quite a while now. In fact, most of us interactive MSAers do. And while I agree with the majority of his opinions, never has he hit the nail on the head like he did today.

Not only does Rand provide a list of what best practices should and shouldn’t be for Search Marketing Experts versus Novices, I believe he inadvertently brought up the expectation of the Novice Search Marketing client. Specifically:

Measuring Traffic Rather than Conversions
Rankings are great and so is traffic, but a website that's improved it's traffic tenfold while ignoring conversions has got the process backwards - your goal isn't (except in a few rare cases) to bring just any visitor, it's about bringing the right visitor.

So many of our clients have come to us requesting that we Band-aid the work of a novice hack. Their goal is to be ranked on 2 or 3 core terms, but they really haven’t thought through how to overcome their 50% bounce rate. And the reason that they are so adamant is because it’s all they’ve ever considered!

So that means there is a “relationship before the relationship” which involves the Expert helping prospect make smart business and marketing decisions (not necessarily tied to SEM). When you help the Novice prospect become an Expert client, you not only have realistic goals in a realistic timeframe; those goals actually mean conversions and dollars.

For those prospects who are unwilling or unable to have these conversations, this obviously leads to another favorite:

Accepts the Right Projects
A novice consultant or firm might be tempted to take any client who can pay the bills (and many times, they must). Experts know how to choose their projects, based on the expected outcomes, the style of the client & the short and long-term ROI.

Barry Schwartz has a good post on Search Engine Land regarding how Google determines sitelinks.

I find this particularly interesting. While we have several clients who have earned sitelinks for some of their core terms, I’ve never been able to pin down an exact reason why they earn this prestige versus Google’s normal #1 and #2 ranking for the same site.

According to Google, a large portion of the decision is based on site architecture.

We only show Sitelinks for results when we think they'll be useful to the user. If the structure of your site doesn't allow our algorithms to find good Sitelinks, or we don't think that the Sitelinks for your site are relevant for the user's query, we won't show them.

So, if you’re still thinking of utilizing that cool Flash navigation, you might want to have an html back-up.

Sound harsh? J.P. Sherman and TechCrunch note that Wal-Mart’s new video download site has ignored CSS requirements of Firefox.

I found some browser statistics which indicate that 31% of web users in January 2007 used Firefox. That’s much more than I would have expected. And it’s apparently more than anyone at Wal-Mart would have thought.

Threadwatch reports that Alexa is significantly dropping users.

Alexa Toolbar use in the US has decline from 36.91% last year to 14.28%...

I hate Alexa. In fact, the only thing I might hate more than Alexa is a client asking me what they can do to improve their Alexa rating. My answer is, “You shouldn’t. Worry about something reputable.”

I hate Alexa because its research methodologies are flawed to its core. Pure GIGO. Alexa gets its results and “rankings” by measuring the traffic of its users. Not all web users are equal in terms of surfing skills, surfing experience, demographics, psychographics, interests, etc. And that means that Alexa is not looking at a random sample. Pure garbage.

So, Alexa is potentially fueled by you. That’s not to say that I hate you—hell, I may not even know you. But you’re not getting a Christmas card from me until you get that damn Alexa Toolbar off your browser.

Apparently, the several reports of the $600 million plan to build a facility in Lenoir, NC were not to Google’s liking.

The Raleigh News & Observer reports this morning that Google played hardball with local government officials and state legislators.

As work proceeded on the bill to remove much of its tax burden, Google threatened to end negotiations because legislative staff didn't write exactly what it wanted.

I’m conflicted as to how much a city/county/state should bend for any company that wants to relocate and bring jobs. Caldwell County has suffered higher unemployment then much of North Carolina, as several textile jobs have been shipped overseas. So Google’s presence would mean that much more.

However, it’s a little unreasonable for Google to believe that they can simply dictate a tax incentive plan and expect their word to be law. I guess that’s also the reason they:

…demanded that legislators never speak its name, and had them scolded when word of its interest in North Carolina leaked out…

If no one knows that Google was interested, then no one finds out about taking their toys and going home when they don’t get their way.