Google competes with Facebook by developing an open standard for social web applications.
Microsoft recently bought a stake in Facebook, the by far most popular social web destination with some 50 million members. Facebook has revolutionized this market by allowing others to develop plug-ins or applets for Facebook, delivering a large number of new applications to […]

Google Norway does its best to avoid paying Norwegian taxes, but is this illegal?
The Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv reports today that Google does its best to avoid paying taxes to the Norwegian government.
Google Norway had an official turnover of NOK 33.6 million last year (US$ 6.2 mill). However, as Dagens Næringsliv points out, […]

Some wars can’t be won. We’ve spent a week wrestling with Google’s stance on nofollowing advertising and what actions we should take. We believe strongly in our principle that site owners should not have to make changes that do not benefit their users simply to remain in Google’s index. We’ve struggled trying to […]

It’s no secret that blogs and social media sites are a great way to get coverage of your web site or your products and services. In fact, teaching small businesses how to approach and pitch bloggers is one of the things I most enjoy writing about. The archives here are full of suggestions and blog […]

If you’ve been thinking about giving the Google Content Network another try, you aren’t alone. John Ellis is testing things as well and offers up some helpful tips on maximizing your ad spend on the content network.
John writes:
Currently my content network ads are performing just as well, if not better then my search ads. Of […]

“SUMMARY: Joining an online social network such as Facebook can put you in touch with millions of like-minded professionals around the world. It also can serve as a powerful marketing tool.
Yet, marketing yourself and your company on Facebook takes a special approach. Social networks are designed to foster human interaction, not to promote products. […]

I know. The horse is dead. I’ve beat it enough. But I just. Can’t. Stop.
A few weeks back I wrote about the concept that content really doesn’t matter anymore and that community is the new commodity of the web. I fully believe that content is still hugely important when it comes to customer persuasion, visitor […]

The shift from static web site content to sites powered by blogs has been a blessing and a curse to many businesses. All that fresh content does wonderful things for rankings, repeat traffic and link generation. On the other hand, giving people who aren’t trained writers access to post on your company blog can spell […]

Something I hear now and then from small business owners and small business in-house marketers is that they aren’t afraid of marketing. They’re just afraid of internet marketing. After all, most people have a general understanding of how things like the yellow pages and newspaper spots work. Even if they don’t run good campaigns, they […]

One of the most common questions small businesses have when dealing with online reputation management is “how do I make bad results go away?” The bad news is you usually can’t. The good news is you can often push them far enough down the search results they don’t get looked at. That’s why it’s essential […]