The Race took place on Sunday, October 9, 2011 where all 10 staff members finished the race along with thousands of others to help find a cure for breast cancer.

Pictured above Top row left to right: Jack Morrow, Gladys Cazares, Alandus James, Missy Bryant, Billie Jean Ramsey.

Pictured above Bottom row left to right: Judy Rogers, Cruz Valdez, Fred Branin, Destiny Baker

Here are more photos from throughout the day, walking for the cure:

]]> http://www.textlinkbrokers.com/blog/2011/10/textlinkbrokers-sponsors-staff-susan-g-komen-race-for-the-cure/feed/ 0 http://www.textlinkbrokers.com/blog/2010/12/the-2011-question-will-yahoo-be-around-in-2012/ http://www.textlinkbrokers.com/blog/2010/12/the-2011-question-will-yahoo-be-around-in-2012/#comments Mon, 27 Dec 2010 23:08:41 +0000 admin http://www.textlinkbrokers.com/blog/?p=763 Yahoo’s recent layoff of more than 4% of its workforce leads one to ask what everybody’s been thinking for a while: will 2011 be the last year for Yahoo?

Like any good company in trouble, the Yahoo! PR department has been trying to put the best light possible… Continue reading...

This debate is over Craigslist and whether it should be more proactive in censoring those who post on it.

The debate began when listings for apartments were posted that were obviously racially slanted. In this article I look at the issue and ask the question: Should the Internet be censored?

Free speech is one of the building blocks of any democratic society. Without free speech we, as citizens of the democratic society, would be subject to many forms of chastisement including personal attacks and even legal ramifications.

This is why I for one like the Internet. You see, to me the Internet is one of the last great representations of true free speech. We are allowed to post as we see fit whether it is a comment in a forum or a blog post which gets syndicated around the world.

In fact, many sites have made their livings from allowing the general public to freely post their viewpoints, both positive and negative.

Apartmentratings.com has been sued before by angry landlords or building owners. This is a site which allows renters of apartments all over the US to post comments and ratings about the buildings they live in. Of course, many people are generally happy with their apartments but some are not, and aren’t afraid to let the world know.

It is these negative posts which have gotten the site in trouble in the past even though the website’s terms and conditions clearly state that the opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the website owners.

Now, I’ve talked to the owner of this site before and I don’t think he should be held responsible for posts made on his site. In fact, I don’t think it’s his responsibility to have to censor those who post there either.

I believe the only responsibility this site has to the apartment buildings in question would be to supply information of a technical nature to them if they have the legal documentation to support their request.

In other words, his only responsibility should be to supply IP addresses of those who have posted the offending remarks, and then let the apartment owner try and track down the anonymous posters. It really has nothing to do with the site in question.

The reason I’m bringing this up is because another well known site is currently being sued for a similar situation.

CraigsList.org is now the subject of a legal battle because of posts made to their website.

Apparently, someone posted an ad for an apartment rental and explicitly asked that certain minorities not apply because, according to the person who posted the ad, these people “tend to clash with me so that won’t work out.”

Now, here’s the issue for me: Sure the guy’s post stated that there were certain races that he did not want to apply, but it’s not like he said “I hate you all!” Instead, he said that these people tended to clash with him. This isn’t necessarily a racist comment, he’s just stating his opinion based on his previous experience. In my mind, that doesn’t necessarily make him a racist.

What really bugs me is that Craigslist is now being held accountable for this person’s post.

Sure it may not have been in the best of taste, but have you seen some of the other postings on Craigslist? There are many other posts which, while they aren’t similar to this one, are of equally poor taste in my opinion. Yet they are allowed to continue to be hosted on Craigslist.

You see, to me there are so many issues at play in this one simple post. Just consider the racism issue for a second. Who determines that it is racist? And how does one know if a post is indeed racist?

Let’s look at the apartment ratings site for a second. If I was to post there about an apartment complex that housed primarily white people and that was “ok by me,” would I then be considered a racist? If so, why would you consider me a racist? Because I said that it was ok that mostly white people lived there? Does that make me a racist or the apartment owner/manager for renting mostly to white people? Perhaps it is a community that has a small ethnic population – does that mean that the town’s fathers are racist because they are not allowing different ethnicities to reside there?

When does the racist card stop being played?

Racism aside, why should Craigslist have to censor its postings? Is there some acceptability threshold? Some common denominator that says your post is OK but mine isn’t? This then leads to the larger issue of who decides what is “common decency?”

If the community as a whole should decide what is acceptable, why is it then up to the private business (in this case Craiglist) to enforce that “common decency” protocol?

Because this is a privately run, for-profit business it should be up to them to decide how to run their business. I don’t think Google actively filters racist sites from its search results, so why aren’t they being sued because that content is also freely and easily accessible through a Google search?

In the end, I think if you are a believer in true freedom of speech with no strings attached, you must support sites like Craigslist and Apartmentratings. Because if you don’t, you never
know where the government or lawyers will stop.

Before you know it our Internet could be as heavily censored as China’s. And then where will democracy live?

Rob Sullivan is a SEO Consultant and Writer for Textlinkbrokers.com. Textlinkbrokers is the trusted leader in building long term rankings through safe and effective link building. Please provide a link directly to Textlinkbrokers when syndicating this article.

Overall I am impressed with the new look even if the current results aren’t that spectacular.

But is the new MSN really that much better?

As you’ve already no doubt heard, MSN Search has changed their look. But there’s more to this new look than meets the eye.

I’ve always been apprehensive about using MSN Search. It’s not because the results are generally less relevant than other engines (although that’s always been part of the problem) but I’ve never really liked the search results.

To me they were always too crowded and dark.

But now that there’s a new search interface I feel more inclined to use their search engine.

Why, you may ask?

For one thing, I could never really put my finger on what it was that bothered me about it until MSN changed the look. I think it was the blue bars that used to run across the top and bottom of the search results page.

Now, instead of wide blue bars there are sleek silver-grey bars.

Also, the top bar where the search box is became narrower. To me this makes the page seem less “closed in” and more visually appealing. I now feel as if I can trust the results more because they have more room.

I’ve also noticed that MSN has been playing with the display of the titles. Before this change, they seemed to bold the entire title, as well as bolding terms which matched the search query in the snippet.

Now, they still bold terms matching the query in the snippet but they also only bold the search term matches in the title. Additionally, the font used for both the title and snippet are smaller.

These help to create a more visually appealing search result making it easier to spot the best match to what you are looking for.

You see as humans, we like to take the easy way out. Most of us are “scan and click” search engine users. We scan the results hoping something will “jump out” at us. This is how Google became so popular – because they realized early on that we like visual cues to help guide us on the web.

MSN tried this for a while – I found examples of it dating back to 2004, but most recently – even as recent as a few days ago – there was no bolding on matched terms.

When you look at the sponsored results you will see even more differences.

While looking at searches performed in Firefox, I thought I’d perform those same searches in Internet Explorer. Here’s where things got interesting.

While the organic results were the same, some things caught my eye. First, the sponsored ads appear much smaller in Firefox than IE. The font size used to display the top and side sponsored ads is smaller than the organic results. In IE they are the same.

Also, in Firefox I was seeing Yahoo! sponsored results, however in IE I was seeing Microsoft Sponsored results.

That’s right, I was seeing different sponsored results providers depending on the browser I was using.

Even the layout of the sponsored ads was different. With Firefox and the Yahoo! ads, the top sponsored stretched across the page and the side sponsored started at the same line as the organic result, creating a fairly large blank spot in the upper right hand corner of the page.

However on the IE browser with MSN ads, that blank space disappeared and the side sponsored ads moved up to be in line with the top sponsored results. It made the page look much more organized.

I looked into the CSS and JavaScripts being executed on the page to see if perhaps they were doing some kind of browser detection before rendering the page but I didn’t see anything other than some style modifications for IE on Mac.

Of course, this is still early in the game for the new MSN look. I expect they will continue to tweak and refine it until it’s just right. As a result, if you do try the same tests I did (with a side by side browser test) you may not see the same results.

In the end I do have to say, results aside, the new look is more visually appealing and at least for me makes it easier to accept the results. I don’t feel overwhelmed because of the previously small space available.

Rob Sullivan is a SEO Consultant and Writer for Textlinkbrokers.com. Textlinkbrokers is the trusted leader in building long term rankings through safe and effective link building. Please provide a link directly to Textlinkbrokers when syndicating this article.

This leads to the question, how would a women design a search engine?

So my family and I were watching Extreme Home Makeover on the weekend. It’s kind of a ritual for us. My son loves the show, so we watch it together.

And, invariably on every show, my wife finds something she doesn’t particularly like on the show. It’s not that she’s picky. In fact she has some very good points.

For example, in the kitchen, why is the oven always low? Why can’t the oven be about waist height? It would make it easier to get things in and out of it. The same goes for the dishwasher, and the clothes drier.

Of course that got me to thinking about search. How would a women design a search engine?

Knowing that men design and build houses and it’s been that way for years, and that men also designed today’s search engines, what would a women do differently?

After all, it has only been in the last couple decades that women have been “allowed” to help design houses to suit them. Don’t get me wrong here, I think such input is crucial to a properly designed house. After all, there are certain aspects that we, as men, don’t consider.

For example, the end goal of a man is to make the home functional – three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a utility room, kitchen, living room and so on. Yet a women tends to put more thought into a house – designing it as a living space rather than just a series of rooms thrown together.

Let me give you an example: A few years ago my wife and I decided to design our own home. So we each took a piece of paper and drew out what we thought would be a great house.

In mine, the living room and kitchen were on one side while the bedrooms and bathrooms were on the other. In hers the living room and kitchen were central, with other rooms surrounding them.

I was thinking utility and function while she was thinking “meeting space” and “entertainment.”

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m merely making generalizations out of my own observations. I know there are exceptions to the rules, but in general, men and women just deal with things differently and with different end goals in mind.

So this is where I got to thinking about the male influences of search engines.

After all, Google, for example, was designed by a couple of guys. Same with Yahoo!

Their purpose is to help people find things quickly and easily. Kind of like how men shop – get in, buy it and get out.

Imagine if a female designed a search engine?

Just think of all the things we men do differently. When I search, I scan the top results, assume something at or near the top is what I want and then click away. If it isn’t, I go back and scan again, or refine my search and start the process over.

But women tend to be more deliberate: They spend a little longer on a search results page, reading more and looking for different things.

Further, I think men in general want to know that there are 10 billion matching results and, if need be, would go through all 10 billion to find the page they are looking for.

Women on the other hand, I think would rather see only 20 results, but they better darned well be THE best 20 results.

That’s why I equate shopping to search – men will pick the biggest home improvement store in the area to buy a screwdriver. And they will go in, straight to the hand tool aisle, select the screwdriver they want and then head for the checkout.

Women, on the other hand, will select the smaller shopping center, knowing full well they need a screwdriver but will start at one end of the mall and work their way towards the hand tool store. The shopping center may be smaller than the home improvement store but the woman will see more of it. She will experience it.

And I think this is why it would be interesting to see a female designed search engine – because there would be more thought put into the design and presentation of the results. Results would be chosen not because they are well optimized and have the most links, but because others recommended them.

Further, I don’t think we’d be presented with merely a list of results to chose from, rather the results would be more engaging and interactive.

Also, we wouldn’t get 10 billion results returned in .05 seconds. Instead it would take 2 or 3 seconds and we’d only get 15 or 20 results but if what you want isn’t in those results than you searched wrong.

You see, I think searching the web with search engines is easier for men because men designed the system. It has nothing to do with who is smarter. It has to do with the system that is in place. Because men designed the system, we are forcing women to conform to its use.

Imagine if search engines were designed, maintained and controlled by women? The guy who dreads going shopping with his wife or girlfriend likely wouldn’t touch a computer ever again. Not because the search engine would be bad but because we’d be forcing men to react to the results like women.

I don’t want this to sound like an “us versus them” article, nor am I saying one gender is superior to the other. All I’m saying is that men and women are different. They react differently to different stimuli and when they search they do so looking for different things in the search results.

Personally, I think I’d like to see this women designed search engine. In some ways I think it would be far superior to what we have now.

Rob Sullivan is a SEO Consultant and Writer for Textlinkbrokers.com

To me this goes against the very nature of the web.

In this article I look at the implications of this proposal and what it could mean to the web.

Originally I was going to provide an analysis of the various ranking tools out there, but I felt this was a more pressing issue – one which needs to be addressed soon.

In this article on the Washington Post the author explains that telephone companies are pressing for the right to throttle some sites, or give preference to others based on whether they have paid the company.

In other words, the article claims, Yahoo! could load faster than Google if Yahoo! paid the telco to do so.

While many of the search engines and other e-businesses are lobbying hard against such a proposal it nonetheless opens up a whole can of e-worms.

First let’s look at the implications

It should seem pretty obvious – if Microsoft wants to pay AT&T or BellSouth, then the companies would allow MSN to load more quickly than Google. That means that over time, people would likely switch search results providers to MSN because of the speed factor.

Before you go saying “I don’t think I’d ever switch, nor do I know anyone that would” consider AOL’s current plight: User’s dropping AOL dial-up in droves to go for the higher speed broadband connections.

Granted this isn’t an apples to apples comparison – there is a noticeable difference between dial-up and broadband, but what if the speed of returned search results was noticeable? Would you consider switching then?

This smacks of two-tiered Internet more than any other proposal I’ve heard. And it forces all websites to pay to level the playing field.

And really, what kind of “mom and pop” e-commerce sites can really afford to pay like Amazon or Yahoo! Stores?

The good thing is, as I’ve mentioned, many web properties are behind lobbyists groups fighting just such a proposal through a proposed “network neutrality” law which basically forces big communications companies to leave the playing field level.

Now for the Telco’s story

While you may think this is just another money grabbing scheme, consider that less “traditional” companies such as Comcast and other cable companies own over ½ the broadband market.

As people switch from the dial-up accounts that AT&T offers to the broadband offered by Comcast, AT&T takes a direct hit to their bottom line.

In effect, if people continue to switch as quickly as they have in the past, there will be no dial-up Internet in the coming years.

And since dial-up has been a staple of companies like BellSouth and AT&T it becomes harder for them to compete for Internet access accounts.

Which means they need to build parallel broadband networks in order to compete and that takes lots and lots of money.

Sure you can say “well they should have thought of that and planned for it” but the truth is, while they have been building a broadband network slowly, they haven’t been able to keep pace with more aggressive competition.

Further, they’ve had to maintain the dial-up service for existing customers which puts even more strain on the companies.

So why is this an issue now?

Simple – the US Congress is considering re-writing portions of the 1996 Telecommunications Act and is in fact considering proposals like this from the major telecommunications companies.

And from a purely business perspective – why can’t telco’s do just such a thing? After all, they own the network. Why can’t they regulate the traffic which flows on it?

I think the analogy used by AT&T Chairman Edward E. Whitacre Jr. does help explain their point of view. Leaving the system like it is now is akin to offering open seating on an airline.

In other words, the first person on the plane gets a first class seat without paying for it.

You see, offering certain online services “preferred” status is similar to people paying for a first class ticket and getting the perks that come with it.

At least that’s how the telcos see it.

Personally I think this is a bad move. Such a change would turn back the evolution of the Internet and could actually harm these companies.

I would like to see unlimited and unregulated Internet access from my ISP – and if my ISP tried such a thing I’d switch in a heartbeat.

You see, the thing these guys haven’t considered is that it takes about as long to switch communications carriers as it does browser home pages.

I recently dropped my “land line” and have been using my wireless phone exclusively for about 3 years now because I was upset with my telephone provider. If my ISP did something similar, I have options and I wouldn’t be afraid to exercise them.

And that is the message these big telecommunications companies seem to be missing. Perhaps people are switching to Comcast and others for reasons other than connection speed.

Rob Sullivan is a SEO Consultant and Writer for Textlinkbrokers.com

Link

But there are a variety of other tools I use just as often. While not SEO related they are just as handy and crucial to my job.

In this article I look at a few of those tools in hopes that you too will find them helpful.

As I said, these aren’t necessarily SEO tools but they are handy to have.

For example, I have a ton of extensions for Firefox – some are SEO tools but some aren’t. Here are my favorite extensions:

Adsense Notifier – tells you how much money you’ve made today/this week/this month with Google AdSense. A must for a website owner.

Greasemonkey – an extension that allows you add on a bunch of Javascripts to do a whole bunch of stuff. Greasemonkey is more of a shell which enables the richer Javascript aspects.

For example, I’ve added a “Delete” button to my Gmail and a “Compose” button to the Gmail preview on my Google homepage.

I’ve also been able to remove the Google logo and search box from my Google homepage using Greasemonkey. For more information on Greasemonkey and it’s scripts go here.

I also have Forecastfox – it’s a cool little extension that shows you the current weather and even gives you a satellite view of things.

Of course there’s the usual toolbars including: Google, Yahoo! And Clusty. And for those lazy Friday afternoons there’s card games like Solitaire, Pyramid and Wasp.

In addition to browser extensions I have lots of other SEO and non-SEO tools:

IDServe, Checkload and Xenu are all great free applications as is the text based Lynx browser. All of which I’ve introduced before.

I also like a bunch of online tools which in general aren’t SEO related:

For example, I have a little program called GmailFS which allows you to access your Gmail account and treat it as another drive. I have kept files there in the past that I needed to access in multiple locations.

Yahoo! Has a similar feature (which isn’t a Gmail hack) called the Yahoo! Briefcase. If you have a Yahoo! Account you have access to 30 MB of storage for free.

Speaking of Yahoo! Accounts I love mine and I find myself turning to the various Yahoo! Services more and more. I like the My Yahoo! Page because I can customize it with all the feeds and news that I want, plus I have a Yahoo!360 account. But my favorite Yahoo! Product is MyWeb 2.0.

It’s an online bookmarking system much like del.icio.us (and it also interacts with del.icio.us on a limited scale). I find that I turn to MyWeb 2.0 on a regular basis to store all kinds of things, both work related and personal.

Another cool feature is the tag cloud you can produce – it shows you which are the most popular tags you’ve assigned based on the size of the font. Larger fonts indicate a tag is used more.

Speaking of tag clouds, I’ve found a couple other cool tagging sites. TagCloud.com allows you to import your favorite feeds and then creates a tag cloud based on keywords it parses out of them. It’s a quick way to see what the hot topics are at any given moment.

For example, I can look at the cloud I’ve created for my favorite SEO blogs and see that “google” and “search” are the top 2 terms.

Also speaking of clouds, if you’ve ever wanted to know what the hot topics are on Google News, why not check out Newzingo.

Another site I recently found was LinkedIn which allows you to create a network of friends and associates. So far it seems to be more professionally oriented in that most people are not using it to find new friends, but they are using it to make connections.

Finally, for the photo buffs is Flickr. This site provides you with a way to easiliy upload and share your photos with the world or just people you chose. They offer a handy desktop file uploader which makes it really easy to manage photos plus they allow you to tag and organize them. And if you have a Yahoo! Account it’s very easy to use as Yahoo! Recently bought Flickr and has since integrated some of its key features, including authentication through your Yahoo! Account.

Finally, I came across a site that allows people to share their music. However the music they are sharing is unique. This is because in all cases the songs are a mix of a variety of tunes. This type of music – called Mash or Mashup – is becoming more and more popular. I know I recently downloaded a few songs from here and I’m very impressed. The quality is excellent and the songs are better than you’d imagine.

For example, I never would have thought that a mix between Black Eyed Peas and Marilyn Mason would be that good, or one with 50 cent and Queen. But my favorite is a mix with AC/DC and Kanye West.

So there you have it – a mix of my favorite work and non-work related tools. I use all of them on a regular basis – some more than others – but overall they’ve made my online experience both more rewarding and more enjoyable.

Rob Sullivan is a SEO Consultant and Writer for Textlinkbrokers.com

What surprised me is how long it took to come to the realization that ads in games is a highly lucrative market.

In this article I look at what some of the impacts of in-game ads could be.

According to this article in Information Week, video game maker THQ has signed a deal with Massive Inc. to distribute ads within its games.

The ads will be streaming ads, which means that if the game is connected to the web the game player could receive ads targeted at them.

To me this is an overdue move in terms of advertising. This is because the gamers demographic has changed from what you may think. The gamers market is now the 18-35 year old with disposable income. It’s no longer the geeky teenager who lives in his parents basement.

Today’s gamer generally has a good job with a steady income and doesn’t have a problem dropping 80 bucks for a new game.

This is because the games themselves have also evolved. Donkey Kong is old news. The most popular games now are MMOPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Playing Game) or MMORPG – Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.

In either case the user generally starts the game on their PC or console but quickly connects to game servers on the web to play against others. It is when they connect to these servers that they lose themselves for hours at a time.

That is because they truly are massive. The universes created for the games are indeed huge and take days, weeks or even months to explore.

How does an advertiser take advantage of this

Well let me give you an example.

My brother is in his late 20’s. He’s single and earns a really good income as a network engineer. He has all the toys you’d expect – super fast computer, big screen TV, surround sound system and an Xbox.

When he gets home from work, the first thing he does is fire up his console game system and log into his favorite web based game. From there he spends hours playing. In some cases, such as on weekends, he’s been known to spend all his waking hours, from 5PM Friday until midnight Sunday in front of his TV playing the game online.

Now imagine if your ad was served to him, even in the background where he may notice it but not necessarily pay attention. Let’s further assume that he is exposed to your ad every couple hours during his game play.

He’s just seen your ad anywhere between 20 and 25 times during the weekend. And that’s just him. Now multiply that by a factor of thousands, because there is literally thousands of players online at any one time.

Over that weekend, your ad could have been viewed between 25,000 and 100,000 times. Not only that but the audience is likely more receptive to the ad as they have chosen to play the game. As long as the ad is tailored to that game (i.e. A billboard ad inside a driving/racing game) then they will be more apt to notice it than an ad they’d see on a website.

I think that’s key with this new advertising medium – that the ads have to be relevant to the game play. And THQ says they will do this. The article goes on to say “You don’t expect to see advertising in a Middle Earth setting,” Longano said, referring to the world created in the “Lord of the Rings” fantasy books. “It wouldn’t make any sense.”

So, as long as the ads relate to the game play, the players should be quite receptive to them.

I think the THQ deal is the first of many. As search engines like MSN get their online advertising programs figured out, I don’t think it would be too long before you’d start to see some form of MSN ads inside Xbox games (for example). There’s just too much potential there for Microsoft to pass up.

Of course in game ads won’t be for everyone. At least initially. But you can expect that large advertisers will be into them.

For example, imagine seeing a car billboard inside a racing game. What would Ford pay to have their newest Mustang appear in a billboard (or series of billboards) as players race by in a Mustang?

Similarly, in a simulation of Times Square in New York City, why wouldn’t Coke pay for the virtual billboard on the virtual building that represents the actual building where they have their now famous billboard?

I think it’s clear that advertising in games is just one more way to reach an audience. Especially if it fits your target demographic. Therefore, this is one medium you may want to watch because I think by the end of 2006 or early 2007 it will take off as the next Internet advertising medium.

Rob Sullivan is a SEO Consultant and Writer for Textlinkbrokers.com

I was trying to find a word for “People that are behind the times” for my previous blog post. I did a couple of searches in Google without avail and eventually started scouring for a tool that did a reverse lookup on a word. A tool where I would give the definition, and it would give me some words that matched that definition. What I discovered was Onelook.com’s Reverse Dictionary.

Reverse Dictionaries allow you to “Describe a concept” in order to find words that match that description.

Cool Stuff, especially for all of us non-harvard graduates.

What I find the most interesting though is all of the uses for this tool. It is actually a very smart search engine. You would be suprized the sort of answers you could get from asking a variety of questions. Here are some of potential applications that OneLook describes:

- Find a word, when you know its definition, [or a portion of the definition].
- Explore related concepts. Baseball, clouds, cities.
- Generate a list of words in some category. I.E. Large Birds, Green fruit, Canadian authors.
- Answer basic indentification questions. What is the capital of Vietnam, Who is big birds friend on Sesame Street. What is the longest River in the world

In actuality Onelook is indexing much more then just dictionaries to find these answers. They index encyclopedia’s and other reference sites as well.

I dont know about you guys, but if I had a very large amount of money, I might consider trying to buy their technology. There are a lot of times I wish the major search engines could do some of the stuff that they are. Ask.com (askjeeves) does some of this, but you cant get lists from Ask, its usually websites that come up that require you to sift through several pages to find your answers.

For all of you content mongers out there, this sort of technology could feed some very interesting sites.

I would love to see some sort of API.

http://www.onelook.com/reverse-dictionary.shtml