Commentary

A Search Column About Search Columns

Like many others in the search marketing industry, I have quite a voracious appetite for news and info to keep up with the never-ending changes in the search landscape, and on big news days I might cover dozens of sources.  So in the spirit of the folks who write email newsletters about email newsletters, link to pages that link to pages about linking, or place search engine ads about search engine ads, here is my search column about search columns (or, for others who prefer the alternate terminology, my search blog about search blogs), highlighting a select group of search reading stops.  Some may be familiar, others may not, but all are worth checking out if you share a similar appetite for search news and unique views.

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AltSearchEngines: Charles Knight has created a great resource that is one of the key news sources for the indie and startup search set.  There's a lot more to search than just Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask, and Knight doesn't seem to miss a beat.

Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim: Beal has established Marketing Pilgrim as one of the most popular search news destinations in the search engine landscape.  It's unusual when he's not one of the first to report or comment on the breaking search stories of the day, so this one has been on my short list of daily reads since it debuted about two years ago. 

Circle ID: Domains make our interactive world go around, and they also constitute 15% of the paid search market.  It pays to know what is going on behind the scenes from a marketing and policy perspective.

ClickZ: An army of experts cover various aspects of search -- including local, mobile, natural, paid, design issues, business issues and marketing.

Direct Marketing News:  I prefer to read the DMNews "blog" in the decadent tree-killing paper format. 

Eric Goldman:  Goldman is one of the leading thinkers in the interactive space, but most marketers wouldn't know him because he's a legal professor, though he often speaks on panels at interactive marketing conferences.  Some of his writings have had a major influence on the way I think about search. 

iMediaConnectionPaul Bruemmer, Matt Kain, my colleague, Noah Elkin, and the rest of the gang put out some very insightful natural and paid search commentary. 

John Battelle:  Battelle's column is less on SEO/SEM, and more on the big picture of search.  If you haven't read his book "The Search," go buy it now -- and start reading immediately. 

Matt Cutts:  SEO straight from the source.  While other major engines have their own blogs, Cutts has been the most engaging with the SEO community.  Considering that the engines do not provide extensive guidelines for natural search best practices, many SEOs take his writing as the gospel. 

Occam's Razor: Tony Wright was recently a popular writer for Search Engine Watch, but in the last couple of weeks he's shifted over to his own digs.   

Search Engine Land: Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman's mega search news resource.  Simply put, this one should be on the super short list of every search marketer's daily news menu.  Featured writers and editors include Andrew Goodman, Barry Schwartz, Greg Sterling, Gord Hotchkiss, Christine Churchill, Eric Ward, and Sherman and Sullivan.

Search Engine Roundtable:  Another excellent spot for breaking search news and commentary from the top SEOs and forum owners in the biz. 

Search Engine Watch Blog: Search Engine Watch is the original search news hub on the Web, and the blog is usually where you will find the day's key search events and commentary.  There are many notable writers here including Kevin Ryan, Kevin Newcomb, Mark Jackson and Eric Enge, among others.

Search Insider:  Long before I was invited to the regular roster, I was an addicted daily reader.

SEO By The Sea:  Key Relevance's Bill Slawski ferrets out tons of insightful search nuggets from the USPTO, so you don't have to.

SEOBook: Aaron Wall has written a treatise on natural search marketing, and his blog helps support the book, but also covers the latest in the search landscape. 

Top Rnk Blog:  Lee Odden's Top Rank Blog has covered search on a daily basis for some time now.  A few bright spots include his detailed trade show coverage, as well as his extensive compilation of search blogs.  If you can't be there at the show, his writing can be the next best thing.

WebmasterWorld: Though WebmasterWorld is a forum and not a column, it has been a mainstay in my daily search reading for over six years.  It was also kind of a blog before blogs were popular; webmaster Brett Tabke posted popular and newsworthy threads on the front page, as opposed to just linking to forums categories (as most other forums do).  Tabke also writes his own thoughts and commentary in the robots.txt file.

Yahoo's and Google's Official Search Blogs:  The official word on search.

Of course, there are many more great reads that are both search and non-search related, but this is a start. Hopefully you voracious readers have found a couple of additions to your blogroll, and to others unfamiliar with these sites, you've found some new destinations to peruse.  Enjoy.
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