I'm a big fan of Google Finance. Yeah, I know it's far behind Yahoo! Finance in popularity, but the clean interface - like everything Google touches - is appealing to me. Slowly, but surely, however, Google is gradually adding content to Finance.

The most recent addition is that of video, primarily in the form of YouTube. Most prominent tends to be Reuters and CBS, but it may only be a matter of time before CNBC or even News Corp's future business channel gets funneled here, in addition to MySpace, I might guess.

Makes me wonder how long it will be for videos to infiltrate Web search results in the same way.

Labels: google finance

I recently posted an interview with self-proclaimed Internet marketing geek Jim Kukral for my Internet recruiting blog, Cheezhead. Enjoy.



More on Jim at JimKukral.com.

Labels: Cheezhead

Shortly after Google purchased YouTube, both video solutions were plugged into their video templates via Google's RSS reader. Up to that point, users had to click to the blog or Web site in order to view the video.

For awhile, if you plugged in a video from MySpace, a user couldn't view it from their reader, which gave YouTube or Google Video preferential treatment. No more. I justs saw a MySpace video via Google Reader.

Hats off to Google for thinking of the user first. They could have easily squeezed out any competing video services, but they don't ... at least not MySpace. Haven't seen a Yahoo or MSN video yet.

Of course, neither one of them have a multi-million dollar deal with MySpace. That said, I'll give Google the benefit of the doubt and assume all competing video services will be viewable via Google Reader.

Labels: Blogging

There was a time when hyphenated top-level URLs ruled. It enabled publishers to easily plug-in keywords into their top-level domain, which carried a lot of weight with the engines. Well, as you can imagine, that technique was overdone and lost its effectiveness. Do a search for just about anything competitive on Google and you will see few, if any, hyphenated URLs such as www.your-domain-name.com. (This, however, www.yourdomain.com/this-is-ok, is OK.)

That's why I'm always surprised to see new startups go live with a hyphenated domain. One could argue that enough backlinking juice would cure any URL issues, but why start out in the hole. There's a good change that you're starting out with a penalty out of the gate, just for your domain choice. Not good.

In addition to hyphenated URLs being a bad choice, unless you have an exact-match domain name, it looks like you could pretty much pick anything and start from the same line. Who knows? Maybe having something totally unrelated to your market is a great choice. Craigslist, Monster and Indeed all have nothing to do with job search, yet each is a top brand.

I know a lot of people who are ga-ga over URLs. In some instances, I see the attraction, but in most, I don't. Most should agree, however, that no matter what your domain of choice is, it shouldn't have a hyphen. SEO is too challenging as it is.

Labels: SEO

I was reading the Sunday newspaper yesterday morning. Yeah, I subscribe for the coupons, but I like the Sundays. Call me old fashioned.

Anyway, I came across a story about some new federal regulation or some explanation of how the legislation worked. I'm not really sure, because while scanning the story, I said to myself:

If this ever becomes important in my own life, I can just Google it. No need to digest and retain this information.

So, this begs the question, Is Google and search turning me into a dumbass?

Maybe. Maybe not. Or probably somewhere in between. That is, smarter on some things; less so on others. Either way, I think I'm in good company. Wasn't it Albert Einstein who hadn't memorized his phone number because he could just find it in the phone book?

Labels: google

Are you a recruiting firm or job site looking to build more traffic to your site? Well here's something you may be interested in. It's called the Poor Recruiters Guide to SEO. It will tell you how to build targeted quality traffic to your website. For free. Download it here (pdf) or read the online version of recruiting seo.

Labels: Link building, SEO