http://www.net-tracks.com Fri, 09 May 2008 20:17:42 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Here's a little story for all my tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorist friends out there who have reason not to trust Google. (In the interests of full disclosure, I do not trust Google for a variety of reasons (which is an entirely separate blog post). That being said, my ... http://www.net-tracks.com/googles-phishing-campaign-for-paid-links/ Digg “shouting”, the act of sharing a link between Digg users, built the foundation of gaining Diggs. Once upon a time, the powerful Diggers with massive networks had a great deal of influence on submission popularity. A few even reached somewhat of a celebrity status. For those ... http://www.net-tracks.com/digg-shouting-can-everybody-please-shut-up/ Several years back, Yahoo! released a product called Yahoo! Mindset which dealt with the challenge of differing mindsets that users might have for the same search query. Yahoo! Mindset would essentially reorder the search results with a machine learning system that was based on the user’s mindset or orientation. The ... http://www.net-tracks.com/user-mindset-in-search/ There has been quite a firestorm in the webmastering community as of late regarding paid links. Actually for some time now, there's been heated debate over the use of them, the SEO benefit and whether or not to engage or restrain from using them. Paying for links benefits ... http://www.net-tracks.com/reporting-paid-links-to-be-or-not-to-be-a-scumbag/ I am not a fan of contextual “search” marketing. I think the value of the inventory is overvalued and its usefulness is overblown. The idea of contextual marketing sounds reasonable and, at face value, it makes sense. According to Wikisuckia: Advertising on a Web site that is targeted to the specific individual who ... http://www.net-tracks.com/contextual-search-advertising-ugly-duckling/