Admin wrote: 

Maps, local, and mobile services all figured in Microsoft’s latest updates to their Live Search product, following their work on the entertainment, health, and shopping search verticals.

Microsoft has a 411 phone number just like Google now. People can dial 1-800-LIVE-411 for local business information. That service draws upon Microsoft’s Tellme acquisition, which drives the local business search and other features of Live Search 411.

The company also revamped its driving directions to use real time traffic information, and dynamically reroute directions based on those details. People with Internet-capable mobile devices can get links to traffic maps from the Live Search 411 service.

Local search users on the desktop will see several updates to Live, derived from continued updates to Microsoft’s Visual Earth platform. The company said they have expanded bird’s eye and 3-D coverage to 80 percent of the US population.

Almost 200 cities may be viewed in 3-D, and these images can be combined with the bird’s eye view of mapped cities in Live Search for a greatly detailed experience.

The real push for improvement came to local search, where they compete with Yahoo, Google, and Ask among others for a piece of a booming multi-billion dollar advertising market. Microsoft hopes its local search combination of expert sources and user-generated content, along with their mapping technology, proves a difference maker.

Microsoft, Live Search, 411, Bird’s Eye

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Admin wrote: 

• URL vs. Title: The URL of your post doesn’t have to be the exact same as the title of your post. Creating a custom URL allows you to insert additional keywords which can benefit your post from a search engine perspective. Some blogging platforms such as WordPress allow you to define a custom URL for a post (also known as the post slug) whereas platforms such as Blogger construct the URL by taking the post’s title word for word (it also applies a character limit for the URL). For platforms that don’t allow custom naming I recommend creating a keyword rich title initially and then after posting, changing it to something enticing to draw in readers.
• Interlinking of Top Posts / Hot Topics: As a blogger you will occasionally write a post which will considerably outperform your other posts OR you will blog about a hot topic in your industry which you hope will perform well in the search engines. For both cases, a good idea is to hard code keyword rich links to these posts on your blog’s side bar or in your footer so that they receive added attention from search crawlers and readers.
• Re-Ignite Past Posts: Staying on the topic of hot posts, it is often a good idea to keep the momentum rolling on popular topics by updating their content or adding 2nd and 3rd parts to the original post. What has worked well for me in the past is to create a 3 or 4 part series on a popular topic and then combine all the posts into a PDF which readers can download.
• Yahoo/Google Finance: When writing about publicly traded companies it is a good idea to mention the company’s full name or even their stock symbol. Many times these types of posts get aggregated into a given company’s news section of their Google/Finance page which leads to more readers coming back to your blog.
• The Importance of Variety: Offering posts which vary in length, topics, format (lists vs. news vs. opinion vs. interviews), or content type (images vs. video. vs text) can prolong the life of your readers. Mixing up your posts will keep your readers coming back rather than being bored by the same old content day after day.
• Relationships with Companies/Bloggers: It is important to have relationships with companies or their PR firms because they will potentially release information to you before it goes to the public giving you an edge on your competition. Additionally, companies can offer you access to software/services during test periods before it is officially released. Relationships with other bloggers is key because they can help you spread the word on your most potent posts as well add value to your blog by guest blogging from time to time.

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Today,  

After TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington called Robert Scoble a sellout for accepting ads on his blog in the future, Dave Winer (you might know him as one of the original bloggers and the inventor of RSS) took on the tone of a disappointed father in the comments section.

"Mike, I say this with all my heart — stop wasting your time on this bullshit," writes Winer.

read more

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Admin wrote: How many links do you have going to your web site? An even better question - how many links do your competitors have? Links are one of two most important components to a successful (and…
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