John Andrews suspects that many SEOs were bombarded with emails and calls from Flash-obsessed clients in the wake of Adobe and Google's announcement that they were working together to help make Flash files more crawlable. Or perhaps there were some search consultants who made the calls themselves--telling clients that they could go ahead with their previously vetoed plans for building a Flash-heavy Web. "I can already hear the gears of misinformation turning as designers and even so-called SEOs prepare to tell clients 'Flash is okay now, Google indexes it,'" Andrews says. "Truth is Google is …

The U.K. version of the Cosmopolitan magazine Web site upped its monthly uniques to just over 415,000 in May. That's up 136% from about seven months ago, and the women's pub achieved the lift through a major site overhaul and SEO. Page views also doubled from about 2.3 million in October 2007, to 5.1 million in May. According to Alex Ballantyne, managing director of Hearst Digital, Cosmo's relaunch was built on a content management platform that actually encouraged editors to tag articles for search. The company also used the print mag and other properties within its network to …

We've cruised into July, so of course that means it's time for the search marketing firms to release their paid search market share reports. While it's no surprise that Google gets the lion's share of the Rimm-Kaufman Group's (RKG) client's dollars, the firm's stats do show increases for Yahoo (at Google's expense) for the past four months. Microsoft, meanwhile, snags a higher effective CPM (eCPM) than Google or Yahoo, but because the software giant's share of market is so small, the gains don't register as well. So Google snagged 79% of all client spend. Yahoo came in with …

Stoney deGeyter delves into the ins and outs of image alt tags, explaining why they're important and offering an example of image alt tag rehab for a specific site. "Almost universally, you should be using ALT text to describe each of your images," deGeyter says. "I say 'almost' because if you are still using clear images for formatting, styling, or spacing (you shouldn't be!) then those images don't need any description. As a side note, if you want your HTML to validate properly then every image needs an ALT attribute, even if it's left empty." Sometimes, …

Yahoo rolled out a free handbook for paid search advertisers dubbed "Yahoo Smart Start," and Katherine Anderson offers up a review. "Although Yahoo's blog claims that 'Yahoo Smart Start' is a guide for beginners, I would say that the guide is definitely geared more to those who have some experience with pay-per-click advertising but are not experts," she says. In addition, Anderson says that the guide would be a great tool to give to clients who were curious about the YSM interface. The handbook is broken down into 10 chapters that cover keyword research and campaign organization, ad …

Joe Teixeira waxes poetic about the virtues of U-Haul's online shopping cart in this post, having had to use it to prep for an upcoming move. In addition to searching for and reserving a truck, Teixeira also needed to purchase moving tools like a mattress bag. And each step in the process was "smooth, easy, efficient and effective," he said. The cart navigation itself was intuitive and simple. Teixeira notes that he could add and remove cart items, and get sub-totals and totals with one click. U-Haul also included a nice call to action (free shipping for orders …

Before launching into reviews of TasteKid and Evri, two alternative search engines, Alex offers the following disclaimer: "I am not saying that the following search engines are going to by any means make a ploy to take over Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, GooHoo, or any combination." Emmy the TasteKid is a recommendation engine that helps you "explore your taste" in books, movies and music. Enter a keyword or query and Emmy suggests related bands, books or flicks from its rather impressive index. "You probably won't get any real answers out of Emmy, or even the titles of CDs or …

Mike Moran, former search evangelist (and distinguished engineer) at IBM, became the chief strategist at Converseon, Inc., a search and social media-focused marketing firm last month. Carol Krol sat down with him to discuss the challenges that b-to-b marketers sometimes face in adapting to search and social media practices. "In b-to-c, social media tends to be entertaining and funny," Moran said. "That's not necessarily true with b-to-b. The best b-to-b social media solves problems." He said that the trick for b-to-b marketers was to become an expert in solving the problem that plagues their target market. …

Dave McAnally dives into the new domain name parameters from ICANN in this post. "The reason I think this is a big deal is threefold," he says. "First, this opens a whole new set of opportunities for micro-site branding. Second, it's one more way to increase keyword visibility. Finally, it changes the international internet entirely." The branding benefits are obvious, as behemoths like Apple can shill iPods on their very own .ipod domain, while one lucky travel agency could snag an insane amount of mindshare (and traffic) with www.cheap.travel. There's also the opportunity to boost keyword visibility and …

Rebecca Kelley reviews Boudica, a social news site for women. Currently in beta, Boudica.com is the brainchild of Lorna Harris (search guru Danny Sullivan's wife) and is aimed at creating a less sexist, more female-friendly news community than some of the currently available properties. First the pros. Kelley says that despite being a women-focused site, Boudica isn't "stereotypically girly." So while some of the stories highlighted are about "Sex and the City" and summer diets, others are about technology, travel tips and other topics found on sites like Digg. Boudica also offers greater opportunities for interaction than some …