Michael Blumenthal has identified a big problem in Google Maps that's hurting the small-to-medium size businesses the company has been trying to help. So what's the problem? Google cannot find some locations in Google Maps. For example, Blumenthal says Google cannot find the Cabellas store in Rogers, Minn., though it exists. Instead, Google Maps sends the person searching for Cabellas to Owatonna, Minn. instead, Blumenthal writes. He says he filed a request in the online help section of Maps, but there's no solution yet.

Matthew Diehl believes knowing how to implement canonical tags on Web sites is important, so he provides instructions in a lengthy post. Diehl steps through the details of redirects and IIS servers.

Implementing 301 redirects could have a detrimental impact on SEO, according to Matt Cutts. Those little 301 page redirects can result in a loss of PageRank. This is one of many insights Cutts shares with Eric Enge during an interview. The lengthy interview transcript provides details on a variety of topics, from session IDs to canonical tags to JavaScript code, iFrames and spammy activity.

Google continues work on its display ad buying platforms that let advertisers and agencies plan, buy, create, serve and measure display ads across the Web in one interface, Susan Wojcicki, Google's vice president of product management, tells us. Wojcicki points to significant upgrades made to DoubleClick's ad serving technology, such as new measurement and planning technologies, including Ad Planner and Google Analytics. She says that during the next few weeks Google will explore ways that new technologies are helping to move display advertising to the masses.

Alibaba.com, an Alibaba Group business unit in China 39% owned by Yahoo, reported that net profit for 2009 fell 12.3%. The company pointed to adverse business conditions in the first half, investments in new technology, and losses on its business management software division. The company provides Yahoo with a presence in China's search and advertising marketing, a market segment that Google will likely leave.

Danny Wong points to three skills every SEO professional must have. And, no, on the list you won't find link building, PageRank know-how or redirect strategies. While SEO professionals need technical skills, Wong reminds us that people skills count, too -- so that's his focus here.

If you want to learn more about building a search engine marketing strategy or need a template for some new hires, Jessica Bowman steps through the process from the beginning. She defines important industry terms, procedures and processes, such as the variety of words used to identify paid search. For instance, seasoned marketers often will call search engine advertising either paid, search pay per click, or PPC. Search engine optimization can be called SEO or organic or natural search. There's a big difference between the two strategies, though they can work together to complement the other. Bowman also goes into …

Rather than thinking about maximizing return on investments (ROI), maybe marketers should concentrate on maximizing profits accrued daily, according to Bradd Libby. Find the value of the ROI where profit gets maximized and that should become the goal, he writes.

Google Search will replace SearchWiki with Stars to help people quickly identify information most important to them, according to Matt Cutts. He provides search examples and screen shots to demonstrate the feature. The feature could come in handy if you need to quickly identify information after a considerable amount of time has passed since your initial search.

Google has integrated social search into Web queries, and you can try this out in Google Labs. John Greer tells us how pulling information from Gmail accounts, Google Talk transcripts, subscribed RSS feeds, Picasa, Flickr, FriendFeed, and Twitter profiles can influence marketing efforts. Social search lets people get input from friends about specific restaurant, music or movies, rather than anonymous people on review Web sites, for example.