Despite the industry firestorm (not to mention possibly incurring the "wrath of Google"), some Webmasters may still decide to sell links. Jeremy Luebke lists seven tips for evading detection from the engines -- with the first and most important rule being to NOT advertise that there are links for sale. Seems like common sense, but given that the practices of link selling is much debated (and sometimes maligned) it's very likely that there are many sources of conflicting information. Luebke's tips include knowing when to turn down buyers and not placing paid links in a page's footer or sidebar. …

This finance-focused piece uses feedback from investment analysts to examine Ask and Google's symbiotic relationship -- and the repercussions for the smaller search engine if it is unable to (or chooses not to) renew its ad and content distribution deal with the search giant. The deal expires at the end of this year - and there's been no word yet on whether the two engines have been able to set agreeable revenue-sharing terms. While Google used to depend on partners like AOL and Ask to bulk up its traffic, the search giant has steadily gained search share quarter-over-quarter. Analysts …

Gary Stein's look at the state of paid search today combines a historical overview of the practice with a focus on new developments -- and begs a heavy, albeit hypothetical question: With all the advancements in rich media and display ads and the ever-present issue of click fraud , is PPC as we know it becoming extinct? Stein admits that pay-per-click advertising isn't dead yet -- but it's rapidly being eclipsed by more targeted, efficient models like CPA.

Microsoft may have made the most splashy health search (and storage) news recently, but the other players in the medical search space continue to innovate and add new features to their engines. Case in point -- United Business Media has upgraded its SearchMedica professional medical search engine, aiming to deliver a more specialized experience than both consumer-facing and industry-oriented competitors. SearchMedica actually released data from a new survey of some 6,000 medical professionals and found that Google was their number one search engine of choice. But 65% of them said that the search giant returned too many non-clinical, irrelevant …

Danny Sullivan's latest piece on the paid link controversy focuses on the link seller's angle -- noting that while Google didn't penalize sites that sold paid links in the past, now it seems that they are being punished by drops in PageRank and possibly even exclusion from listings overall. Sullivan uses various examples, commentary from Google's Matt Cutts and other search experts, and attempts to draw some enlightening conclusions in this lengthy post.

Michelle Montoya, the newest addition to the Pole Position Marketing team, is an experienced writer -- but has an admitted lack of copywriting or marketing-specific writing knowledge. Before setting her loose in the wild world of SEO, her boss and peers gave her a list of search books and white papers to read that includes: "The Nitty Gritty of Writing for the Search Engines," by Jill Whalen, and "Viral Copy: Trading Words for Traffic" by Brian Clark, among others. In addition, Montoya also lists 9 blogs that she found on her own -- some search-writing-specific, others focused on …

The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) has launched its first salary survey for in-house search pros. Users access the 20-question Survey Monkey survey via a link at the SEMPO site (or at Pandia, Search Engine Watch, or a number of other blogs). It's anonymous, open to both SEMPO members and non-members, and is for organic and/or paid search marketers. SEMPO will run the survey through October and publish the results next month -- data that will include a gauge on the overall salary range of SEM jobs, national or regional salary variations, and the value of perks like bonuses …

What started out as a battle last year between one blind student from University of California-Berkley and Target has morphed into a class-action lawsuit against the retailer. The case focuses on Target's alleged failure to use alt tags in the HTML of its Web site -- features that not only make a site more search-friendly, but make it accessible (and easy to navigate) by screen -eading software for the blind. Judge Marilyn Patel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California certified a national class in the case on Friday, and rejected …

Seattle-based Fusa Capital Corp. has launched iheard, a search engine for Internet radio. At iheard.com, users can find free Internet radio stations from around the globe -- and the service organizes them by genre, country and language. The engine even indexes online simulcasts offered by AM and FM radio stations, and plays the streams right inside the original window. Iheard is the latest addition to Fusa Capital's network of search sites - including Podanza.com (for Podcasts), newstowatch.com and searchforvideo.com. As site owners increase their video, image and audio assets (spurred mostly by the big search engines' moves …

Yahoo is rolling out new quality-preservation features for advertisers using its contextual ad network, including the ability to block entire domains. Click quality czar Reggie Davis also outlines other enhancements for "click quality," including the ability to block all International domains, and pricing discounts for seemingly inferior traffic.