Email Spammer Gets Off Easy With a Slap On The Wrist

Another email spammer gets slapped on the wrist! Ryan Pitylak, an individual who is know as the world’s fourth most-prolific spammer, has settled a lawsuit with Microsoft and the state of Texas which accused him of sending up to 25 million e-mails per day. The settlement cost Ryan Pitylak 1 million dollars, as well as the seizure of many of the assets he accumulated during a short-lived career as one of the world’s worst spammers. No jail time? No lifelong banning of access to the Internet?

U.S. Government Asks Internet Companies To Keep Records

In the U.S. Government’s continual quest to battle terrorism and child pornography, they have recently asked Internet companies such as Microsoft, Google and AOL to preserve records of customers’ Web activity. This latest move of course does not go unnoticed by privacy advocates who are complaining that the government may be intruding on the rights and privacy of law abiding citizens.

No More Froogle? Well Not Exactly

In an email sent to Froogle account holders, Google has made the announcement that Google Base, a new project thought to allow Google to compete with Craigslist and eBay, has swallowed up Froogle and that Froogle feeds will now have to be submitted through Google Base. Existing account and product information has already been transferred and is now viewable in Google Base. Along with Froogle, content should also be viewable on http://base.google.com.

You May Be A Link Whore If…

Link building expert, Eric Ward has an interesting article that lays out some tactics of link whores. What is a link whore anyway? Typically it is a person who goes about link building using less then ethical tactics. It is a person who litters the web experience of others. Are you a link whore? Read on to find out.

Current State of Buying & Selling Links

In a continuation of response to what Matt Cutts had to say about links yesterday on his blog, what about paid links? How does Google view these, how good are they getting at spotting them and what actions do they take when they do find them?

Current State of Reciprocal Links

Because Google focuses more heavily on links then any other search engine, people monitoring link popularity typically pay close attention to how Google views and treats links. Yesterday Google’s Matt Cutts dropped a bomb on some when he wrote up a lengthy post on the indexing timeline of Bigdaddy.

Danny Sullivan Chats With Google’s Matt Cutts at the Googleplex

In a special edition of The Daily SearchCast, Danny Sullivan finds himself at the Googleplex in Mountain View, California where he takes the opportunity to interview Matt Cutts, a chief software engineer at Google and also quite famous as a liaison between the search engine Google and webmasters looking to market their sites.

Will Congress Restrict Access To Social Community Sites?

A Pennsylvania congressman has recently introduced legislation that would ban minors from accessing social networking websites such as MySpace and Friendster as well as forbid libraries from making such access available. The bill goes by the name “Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006.”

Yahoo! To Finally Upgrade Sponsored Search

No sooner does the ink dry on my 10 Things I Hate About Yahoo! Search Marketing post that I get an email from Yahoo! sent to all their advertisers stating that they are finally going to revamp Sponsored Search (Yahoo!’s PPC program), at least by this fall anyways.