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New TLD for Canadian Government
Rand Fishkin

New TLD for Canadian Government

Thanks to Ian Mcanerin, who suggested the Canadian government's new TLD - .gov.ca (the humble fellow isn't taking credit, far too gentlemanly). The debate on what to choose was relatively interesting, with the French Canadian contigent complaining bitterly that .gouv.ca was not the choice. B...

WeeWorld Profiles & Visual Communities
Rand Fishkin

WeeWorld Profiles & Visual Communities

I'm particularly fond of WeeWorld - I love the illustration style, the feel of the interface and the thinking behind it - that we can all have an online identity that follows us from place to place. The concept of an avatar has been around since the nascent beginnings of web forums, but to have a community of identities that allow for customization, represe...

Is Craigslist Blowing their Opportunity?
Rand Fishkin

Is Craigslist Blowing their Opportunity?

I talked to some very smart folks last night over dinner about Craigslist and their position in the market. Currently, CL is the leader in online classifieds, they've had great success porting their model to other cities and countries and they have a built-in loyalty and fan base that rivals that of any online user-generated-content site. The question is - w...

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HighRankings Conference in San Francisco
Rand Fishkin

HighRankings Conference in San Francisco

The "Events" category on SEOmoz has been getting all the entries lately, but there's one more to add to the list. Jill Whalen and the HighRankings crew are running their Search Engine Marketing Seminar in Walnut Creek, CA (just outside San Francisco) at the end of March. Details are below:The High Rankings Search Engine Marketing SeminarThursday March 30 and Frida...

Measuring Success Session @ SES
Rand Fishkin

Measuring Success Session @ SES

Today was my last presentation for SES NYC. The subject was case studies of measuring success and I used one of our clients that was mentioned in Newsweek - Avatar Financial. The session was terrific, with the exception that the third member of our panel, ...

Perfect Example of How to Email a Blogger
Rand Fishkin

Perfect Example of How to Email a Blogger

One of the best techniques for starting the ball rolling on a content-rich, high quality new site is to email bloggers in your industry and ask for their input. I got this one from Jon Kemp yesterday:Rand,I just wanted to write you and say that I have been an admirer of yours for about six months now, maybe more. I first got turned on to your web site for the tool...

Matt Cutts & the Cuttlets
Rand Fishkin

Matt Cutts & the Cuttlets

In the evening forum tonight, Danny hilariously referred to Matt's band of followers (who literally swarm around him after sessions like fruitflies at the buffet) as "Cuttlets". I saw Aaron and Vanessa from Google laughing in the back of the room and the audience was largely in stitches, too. That is, apart from those who huffed and puffed and acted like they weren't "Cuttlets"...

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SEOmoz Cheatsheet & Coverage of Barry Diller
Rand Fishkin

SEOmoz Cheatsheet & Coverage of Barry Diller

I think a little bit of an early sneak peek at conference coverage from us is in order. This SEO Cheatsheet was something I printed out for conference attendees, but you're welcome to print it for yourself, too. I'd recommend using Flash's built-in print function so it will scale properly (rather than your browser's function)....

Sources for Search Engine Algorithm & IR Research
Rand Fishkin

Sources for Search Engine Algorithm & IR Research

Welcome to SEOmoz blog readers and SES NYC participants who may have seen me speak at the Search Algorithms session. You've reached the right page - congrats! The following is a list of useful resources for where to find information about patent applications, research that may affect search engine technology and algorithms and general data on the function of modern information retrieval engine...

Google's RK in the XML Data Feed
Rand Fishkin

Google's RK in the XML Data Feed

Jim Westergren sent me an email about his new article on Google's RK datapiece. Apparently, it was first reported at WMW, but Jim's done a reasonably good job of pulling out the important pieces and conducting a bit of research. RK is basically an XML tag that appears in Google's fe...

Beauty in URLs
Rand Fishkin

Beauty in URLs

Mike Schinkel has an older, but golden post on the beauty of URLs. There's nothing revolutionary here, but since I've been seeing so many ugly URLs in the SERPs lately (have hyphens and subdomains made a comeback with BigDaddy or is it just me?), I have to step in. A few of his rules include: Well De...

Wufoo - Woo Hoo!
Rand Fishkin

Wufoo - Woo Hoo!

For those of us who have to constantly reference HTML form help pages to create new forms for websites and surveys, there's nothing better than this cool new "AJAX" automated form builder. It's intuitive, easy-to-use, well designed and very flexible....