There has been a sustained debate about the merits of the meta keywords tag, and Chris Silver Smith argues that the tags aren't even worth the effort it takes to create them in this post. In fact, in some cases, he says a poorly optimized meta keywords tag could actually get a site penalized.

Smith's reasoning stems from an extensive post by Danny Sullivan that found that Yahoo and Ask are the only two engines that factor the tags into the ranking process -- albeit as a last resort. "If they can't find content matching a keyword search ...Read the whole story...

Bill Tancer has just released "Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why it Matters," a new tome diving into some of the overarching search trends he's observed while serving as general manager of global research at Hitwise.

One of the most provocative trends Tancer touches on is almost anything but -- more Americans are logging on to check their social media profiles than to watch porn. "As social networking traffic has increased, visits to porn sites have decreased," Tancer said, particularly with users aged 18-24. "My theory is that young users spend so much time ...Read the whole story...

As the golden rays of summer fade away, the best-prepped search marketers aren't thinking about Halloween or even Thanksgiving ads -- they've got their holiday-themed campaigns ready. Tina Kelleher offers some quick tips for setting up (and maintaining) successful PPC campaigns for the holidays.

First, craft entirely new campaigns that you can pause when the holidays are over. This way you avoid the time spent tweaking existing campaigns to fit a Christmas or Hanukkah mold. You'll also be better prepared for next year's winter rush.

Kelleher also suggests beefing up your budgets in preparation for aggressive ...Read the whole story...

Google dismissed the United Airlines-archived news fiasco as a fluke, but Michael Gray serves up more recent examples of the search giant indexing and displaying old news articles with current dates.

First up is a New York Times post about investment firm HRJ suffering from the subprime mortgage crisis. The article is from August 2007, but it turns up during a search with a date of Sept. 14, 2008. "What if I'm in the financial market and as part of my job I have to monitor HRJ Capital, and I go to Google News and search for them," ...Read the whole story...

Tons of local businesses have sought to cultivate their online traffic through a Google Maps listing, and have been met with buggy spam filtering and relatively nonexistent live support from Google. The giant has taken one of its first steps toward combating the subpar merchant experience by laying out a set of "quality guidelines" for being included in Maps, as well as an automated form to fill out for getting reincluded (if a listing gets pulled).

The guidelines include making sure that the business' online listing matches its real world contact info, providing users with the most direct ...Read the whole story...