Mark Twain once famously said, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.” Twain never saw a webpage or performed search engine optimization (SEO) in his life, but his assessment of the importance of using the right words is, shall we say, illuminated. So why are words important in terms of SEO? Because users type them into search engines to try to find you!...
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There have been a few requests for some international flair on the Live Search team blog, so we thought we’d give you an update on the European Search Technology Centre. Thanks for asking!   There have been several important milestones in the creation of STC Europe:   The first was in Paris, October 2008, when Steve Ballmer and Jordi Ribas (General Manager, STC Europe) announced the creation of the STC Europe. This announcement...
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Want to know what’s been going on behind the walls of the Powerset division of Live Search lately? Check out the Powerset blog for the first in a series of Powerset video podcasts.     This week Mark Johnson sat down with Dave Fayram, a software engineer working on Powerset’s semantic search infrastructure, to discuss the semantic web. Stay tuned for more podcasts, and if there are hot topics you’d like to hear about...
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Quick note from the author: The closing teaser from my last post said the next post would cover building a toolbox. I’ve decided to take another tack on this and make references to tools as we go along in the series to keep the unfolding story as interesting, active, and relevant as possible. Sorry for the misdirection! – Rick ———————————————...
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I just want to give IDV Solutions a huge shout out today. I dragged myself in to work after waking to another dreary Seattle morning. Hoping the coffee would perk me up…bring out the fail whale. However, this morning I finally got some time to investigate the latest version of IDV’s Visual Fusion (4.0). After just a few clicks, I am re-inspired to take on the mapping world – which is good because I have a web cast here in 30...
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  Today MSN announced a new version of its local offering MSN City Guides, one step in a long term plan to help users stay in the know wherever they are. The new MSN City Guides is an entirely re-vamped site, featuring a new design with integrated Live Search, Live Search Maps, video, content sharing, and more. New integration with popular social networking services such as Windows Live and Facebook makes it easy to organize events with just...
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The Live Search mobile team has just launched two great new features to help make the mobile web your own: MSN video search and an MLB dashboard.   Looking to fill some time while you’re on the go and feel like grabbing a video news clip from Obama’s First 100-Days event? Now you can! Type “obama” in the search box on your mobile phone, and scroll down to the “MSN video” section of the results page to tune...
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Are you going to be in the Bay area tomorrow? Do you have a vested interest in search marketing? Know any web developers? Well then, make sure drop in to the Microsoft technology center in Mountain View, CA for a hearty discussion of search marketing hosted Microsoft, with guest speakers: Vanessa Fox, famed creator of Google’s Webmaster Tools, and Sean Suchter, previous VP of Yahoo.   Microsoft Campus in Mountain View Event...
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I have a good friend who creates websites for personal users and small non-profits. When I told him about my new project, blogging about search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO), he wondered aloud, “Who in the world cares about that stuff? What does it matter? There are only so many Amazons in the world, anyway.” I was initially surprised by his reaction. But his comments got me thinking – what is the...
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I’ve spent a lot of time on airplanes in the past few weeks.  All that thinking about flights got me thinking about trying new things: new foods, new hotels, new smells in taxi cabs. That got me thinking about how we try new things in search.  And that reminded me of what we call it here when we try new things: flighting (which you may recall from Ramez Nam’s post earlier this month.) And that, my friends, is a play on words....
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