It's time for the online search and advertising industry to get serious about protecting consumers against spammers, malware, Trojans and other malicious code that can infect computers and steal information. Richard Adhikari tells us that hackers are taking advantage of Google's paid search ads to spread viruses. He suggests brands and consumers start paying more pay attention to the paid search column in search engine queries. Adhikari explains that the latest paid search malware scam takes consumers to a site and asks them to download a code to play a video. With the help of software utilities, spammers can …

Bloggers and writers advocating free speech want search engines to do a better job distinguishing between legitimate sites dealing with sex, erotica, and "pornography" online. In particular, Google has come under fire for unfairly punishing legitimate sex sites in a bid to make the Internet safe, James writes, suggesting computer algorithms need a bit of tweaking. James explains that articles with content Google, Microsoft and Yahoo deem "unsafe" are not indexed, and people who make a living writing and publishing "legitimate" articles about sex are frustrated and fed up. Citing Seth Finkelstein from The Guardian, James writes "legitimate …

Mark Jackson was ready to tell colleagues at a search engine conference last year that search engines frown upon duplicate content. That's until he came across a competitor's Web site that ranked No. 1 on Google for one competitive keyword in particular. Not only did the company rank high, but did a whole slew of things good SEOers shouldn't, including have multiple versions of their Web site and participate in link farms, he writes. Of course, Jackson admits, there are exceptions to every rule. It's not always a good idea for SEOers to repeat metadata descriptions and H1 …

Avoid CamelCase for files and extensions, remove query string variables, and avoid exposing secure HTTPs. Jeremiah Andrick serves up a few tips on optimizing large Web sites that support millions of URLs and tons of content, but the strategy he lays out is useful for small and medium sites, too. The advice provides insight on ranking higher in search engine queries, specifically in Microsoft Live. Andrick points to "301 redirects to the canonical forum" as being one major difference SEO experts should take into consideration. "The first step is to determine what canonical issues your site suffers from …

Jennifer Laycock tells us about a new free ebook put together by Valeria Maltoni at Conversation Agent. It should give you ideas for marketing plans. The book provides thoughts of twelve online marketers from "a variety of backgrounds and skips the usual start of the year prediction model in favor of sharing thoughts on tactics and strategy," she writes. Laycock, who also contributed content for the book, shares her favorite quotes, as well as links to blogs and posts on Twitter for each marketer, including Mike Fruchter, Amber Naslund, and Alan Wolk. Each marketer who participated has a …

Leave it to Danny Sullivan to write a post on Googlebombs created by manipulating links and search rankings to produce a specific result for a certain search term. The most infamous one had requests for "failure" and "miserable failure" triggering former President George W. Bush's biography. Bush's Web team tried to fix it, with mixed success. And now, because the regime change triggered a redirect from Bush to Obama content, those unflattering results now point to Obama. Sullivan reports he's already "tried to reach the Obama administration in four or five different ways" to report this problem. "I know," …

When signing up new clients, even before launching a PPC campaign, calculate the potential ROAS of the keywords you are targeting. Sound advice from Naoise Osborne, who tells us how to calculate the return on investments for the amount spend on ads. Osborne explains that this basic approach of pre-checking keywords for ROAS can help "launch campaigns that stand a better chance of being profitable quickly, rather than analyzing data after some time (and some money!) has passed." This metric aims to help you understand what "costs-per-click should stand a good chance of performing well," Osborne writes.

Michael Gray has never been a big fan of personalized search. But after watching a video from TED (the Technology, Entertainment, Design conference), he had a "Zen" moment. While personalization makes SEOing a site more difficult, it's the natural step in the process of a maturing Internet and search advertising, he realized. In the video, Joseph Pine tells us consumers want personalization. And it all started with commodities used as raw materials to manufacture goods that eventually became commoditized. To reignite consumer interests, businesses took the commodities and customized services. This personalization has led Internet businesses and search engines …

This list of 20 tools lets you mine the buzz in social networks, according to Marty Weintraub. Best of all, they're all free. The tools can help you understand the top topics people are chatting about and what social site SERPs reveal about the market. Among the tools listed are StumbleUpon Recently & All Time Most Popular Tags, Facebook Lexicon, and Twitter. For example, Weintraub steps through the process of finding content by tag and keyword clusters with Google's External AdWords Keyword Tools. He believes you can build keyword lists rooted in search frequency to understand the chatter …

Searchers judge a Web site by such criteria as if they can find the information they need, how quickly they can find it, and whether or not all their questions are answered, according to Stoney deGeyter, who uses the analogy of judge and jury to illustrate his point. You may have done a great job integrating your SEO strategy. Consumers have found your site. But each shopper who abandons products in the shopping cart because she finds it too cumbersome is a juror that may deliberate with others on whether your site is easy to navigate and use. …