Though Google clearly owns the core search space, the search giant actually doesn't deliver the best results to all searchers all the time. Take college students, for example. "College students sometimes need more specific tools to help them uncover quality information on the Web that they can use for class projects, research papers, and even job and apartment searches," says Laura Milligan. And she lists the myriad alternatives students can turn to when in need of info on the Web. For quick answers to reference-style questions, Milligan suggests Answers.com, and wiki-searchers Powerset and AskWiki Beta. For answers on …

While most companies have developed a search-based damage control strategy in the event of bad publicity or a major customer service snafu, Jeff Quipp suggests that doing some preemptive reputation management (PRM) could actually save time (and face) when something does go wrong. It starts with identifying the term or terms that pose the greatest risk to the company. Build up as many powerful pages as possible to rank for those terms, and then maintain and strengthen those pages continually over time. With proper PRM, Quipp says that at least 90% of the negative stories about …

Got the most relevant, mind-blowing article for link bait? Check. Got a list of bloggers to start building rapport with? Check. You may think that you're all set to start link building. But as Loren Baker notes, many Webmasters roll out a link-building campaign without making sure that their site is ready (and worthy) for the influx of links and traffic it may receive. "[As] you would do to your vehicle before a long road trip, before going about a link building campaign, give your site an inspection and tune up," Baker says. Start with the basics, like …

Samuel Dean reviews Piwik and Visitorville, two analytics programs that can be used to supplement your existing free or subscription-based platforms. Piwik is an open-source platform that gets a constant influx of widget-style plug-ins from a group of rabid developers. "And these let you see unusual views of your site data," Dean says. You can add and delete the widgets from your Piwik dashboard to create a customized analytics suite. Meanwhile, Visitorville offers a unique take on traffic reporting. "Rather than the usual numbers and graphics found in site analytics products, it shows your site traffic …

Matt McGee thinks so. In fact, he thinks they're the most overrated SEO tactic out there. And in light of a slew of recent discussions extolling the virtues of XML sitemaps, McGee lists the reasons that he thinks the navigation guides get too much attention. First, McGee says that they don't solve any real indexing or crawlability problems--sitemaps just mask them. "If you have a 100-page site, and the spiders can only access 25 of your pages, fix your crawlability problems," he says. "Using a sitemap to solve crawlability issues is never a good idea. It's like putting …

Yahoo has upgraded its Click Quality Center, adding tools like a submission form to initiate a click investigation and a new Q&A column where a Yahoo expert answers advertiser click fraud questions. Reggie Davis also lists some reasons that YSM advertisers might see an unexpected spike in clicks or impressions, ranging from changes in an ad's overall rank, to keyword seasonality, to having an ad run on Yahoo Buzz or the Yahoo front page. Davis says it's best to eliminate all of these possibly positive reasons for increased traffic before assuming there's a click fraud problem.

Charles Nevery reviews the new (beta) monthly budgeting option for Google AdWords. Instead of choosing to run a campaign (and stop it) when it hits a certain amount each day, advertisers now have the option of choosing an amount for the entire month and letting the campaign run on its own. Nevery says that monthly budgeting would likely be best for "companies that see a large fluctuation in search volume and do not want to miss opportunities by being capped by a daily campaign budget limit." Still, advertisers should be cautious when choosing the monthly budget …

Network Solutions is backing an Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) proposal to levy a non-refundable 20-cent fee on each domain that is registered (and then discarded) within the five-day "domain tasting" period. Web site buyers would only be charged the fee if the number of sites they deleted exceeded 10% of their overall registrations each month--which means that the proposal is aimed squarely at Webmasters that abuse the add grace period (AGP) system and set up made-for-AdSense (or other ad platform) sites. Network Solutions, a domain-registration service, has come under fire in previous …