Microsoft has offered to buy the search engine company Yahoo for £22.4bn ($44.6bn) in cash and shares. (more…)

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I’m chuffed to reveal the first Hobo SEO UK Interview and bring the world news of Jim’s new venture! Look out SEOmoz, here comes the amazing Internet Marketing Ninja’s!

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The October 2007 Google Page Rank update )the real one) continues unabated, with changes for all the companies which feature in the NSM Top SEO Company League, which measures performance in Google. Most hve decreased or at best held at their current PR. We dropped from 7 to 5, which I expected. We probably went from a low 7 to a high 5 (Google PR is logarithmic).

The Google Page Rank Update seems to include pages up to and including the 2 OCT 2007. All pages created after that day wil have to wait to the next update, I guess.

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Will Hobo (based in Scotland) be applying for membership in the new UK Search Engine Marketing Companies Charter developed by the UK IAB & DMA? Nope! They are trying to define a “search engine marketing company” and code of standards whilst leaving out the majority of the industry.

Here’s the skinny:

“The Internet Advertising Bureau – the trade association for internet marketing – and the Direct Marketing Association are launching the first search marketing charter to establish best practice throughout the industry. The charter includes four key requirements for search marketing companies in the UK. “

Ok. Define Search Engine Marketing Companies. They’re talking about PPC here, or rather, and specifically, Google Adwords? Aren’t they?

What about on page search engine optimisation? Link builders? Affiliate marketing? Web 2 promotion? Blogging…etc…etc? Isnt that over 80% (bear in mind I’m not a stats kind of person) of the rest of the clicks on search engines?

“This charter represents an important first step in the establishment of search marketing best practice in the UK. - Guy Phillipson, chief executive of the Internet Advertising Bureau”

Hmmm. This still only seems to be about Google Adwords. (more…)

What you’re seeing below is confirmation that Money Supermarket is still an “authority site” in Google (as of today), and as such, still appears at the top of Google for it’s trade mark term. Note the extra links under the domain? That is the sign of an authority site for a particular key term.
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Ocean Finance (at the time of writing) seem to have lost their authority status for their trademark term, “Ocean Finance”, in Google at least. An “authority” site is one which Google values, and Google provides extra linkage to from search engine page results - (see Hobo Web in Google).

Update 5/03/2008 - oops - it’s happened again!

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