Over at contentgeneration, Brad has a wordpress plugin that will cut down on the complaints you get from link spamming:It’s a temporary cloaking plugin for Wordpress. It allows you to display a simple message to visitors, such as “Account Suspended: Please Contact Support”, but allows the search engines spiders to see and index the whole […]

More: continued here

At SES San Jose 2009, I’ve been asked to make a solo presentation to kick of the Search and Community Track. The title of the session is “How to Optimize for Search & Engage the Community.”

I’ve been working on my presentation, but it lacked a compelling case study that illustrated how a community organization had used search engine optimization and YouTube video to generate measurable results. I had planned to show examples of videos created by Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, Monty Python, and Blendtec, but plans have a way of changing.

Then, I got involved with the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA), a national non-profit community advocacy and homeownership organization headquartered in Boston.

NACA is organizing a series of Save the Dream events to help homeowners avoid foreclosure, restructure home loans, and reduce mortgage rates. They have already held events in Columbia, SC, Stamford, CT, and Washington, DC. And NACA plans to hold more Save the Dream events in Cleveland, OH, July 17 - 20 at the Wolstein Center; Chicago, IL, July 24 - 27 at McCormick Place; and St. Louis, MO, July 31 - August 3 at Chaifetz Arena.

Although I don’t have my case study wrapped up just yet, I do see one in the making. And it offers lots of lessons to search engine marketers, YouTube directors and entrepreneurs about how to create unique, relevant content that can quickly gain popularity in the Internet community.

For example, we issued an optimized press release yesterday announcing that NACA CEO Bruce Marks and Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge (OH-11) will hold a joint press conference on Monday, July 6, at the Wolstein Center at 11:30 am to discuss the upcoming Save the Dream event in Cleveland. You can get the gist of the news at NACA and Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge (Oh-11) Announce Same Day Solution for Homeowners with Unaffordable Mortgage.

But we also embedded a documentary video created by DigiNovations of Concord, MA, in the optimized press release. It provides background on NACA’s Save the Dream program, which has helped homeowners across America restructure and renegotiate home mortgages and home loans they can no longer afford.

Documentary: NACA’s “Save the Dream” - Mortgage Restructuring and Renegotiation Rescues Homeowners

Now, the press conference hasn’t even been held yet — and the Save the Dream event in Cleveland is still two weeks away. But I was stunned yesterday when one Twitter user near Memphis, TN, said “this is fantastic news” but she couldn’t afford to wait, had called NACA and was “on hold” waiting to talk with someone.

I initially tweeted back that NACA will have over 500 staff and volunteers at the Wolstein Center in Cleveland, including over 250 counselors providing counseling from 9:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. from Friday July 17 through Monday July 20. Then, I realized that this information wasn’t helpful today, this minute, now. So, I sent her a direct tweet with the cell phone number of the person I was working with at NACA — in case she needed it.

I got a direct tweet back saying, “Thanks for the info… my process is well underway - so I’m all set (I hope!)”

So, something extraordinary is happening. And as I prepare for my presentation at SES San Jose 2009, I hope you won’t mind if I share the story as it unfolds. That’s one of the lessons I’ve already learned: You can’t plan a search campaign and expect the community to wait to respond when you are ready — especially if you are offering an answer to the huge subprime and predatory lending industry.

This is bigger than a case study. This is people’s homes.

More: continued here

In January, four trade groups announced that they would be developing behavioral advertising standards. The groups are The American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA), The Association of National Advertisers (ANA), The Direct Marketing Association (DMA), and The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).

The standards have now been released and are as follows:

The Education Principle calls for participation in efforts to inform individuals and businesses about online behavioral advertising. The industry intends, in a major educational campaign involving over 500 million ad impressions over the next 18 months.

The Transparency Principle calls for clearer and easily accessible disclosures about data collection and use practices. The result will be a new notice on the page where data is collected and will occur via links embedded in or around advertisements, or on the Web page itself.

The Consumer Control Principle expands the consumer’s ability to opt-out of data collection. The opt-out will occur via a link on the page where data is collected. This principle also requires service providers such as Internet access providers and desktop application software companies to obtain consent of users before engaging in online behavioral advertising.

The Data Security Principle calls for reasonable security and limited retention of data.

The Material Changes Principle calls for the acquisition of consent for any material change to data collection and use policies as well as practices to data collected prior to any change.

The Sensitive Data Principle requires parental consent for consumers known to be under 13 on child-directed Web sites. This Principle also calls for heightened protections to certain health and financial data when attributable to a specific individual.

The Accountability Principle calls for the development of programs to monitor and report uncorrected non-compliance to appropriate government agencies. The CBBB and DMA will work cooperatively to establish accountability mechanisms under the Principles.

More: continued here

Buzz has been building about real-time search. Of course, you can search real-time Tweets on Twitter, Facebook is testing search on its live Feed, and Bing just added limited Twitter search to its engine.

Now, FriendFeed is launching real-time search and it has the potential to be the mackdaddy of them all.

Here’s why. FriendFeed is a social aggregator. It’s a one-stop shop to check and update a bunch of different networks, blogs, etc. Now, you can search all of that in real-time.

The drawback? It only searches what people submit to FriendFeed. Whoever does that can basically say “Check” in the chess match of social real-time search.

Still, this is a tremendous step in that direction. Even better, FriendFeed has released an embeddable real-time search widget you can put on your website.

What do you think of FriendFeed real-time search? Let us know by leaving a comment.

More: continued here

More: continued here

More: continued here

This classic, hands-on guide to learning all the tools, principles and techniques needed to build a fully functional database-driven web site using PHP and MySQL has been revised for its fourth edition. It remains essential reading for the budding developer.

More: continued here

Before you can start building your database-driven web presence, you must first ensure that you have the right tools for the job. In this first chapter, Kev will tell you where to obtain the two essential components you’ll need: the PHP scripting language and the MySQL database management system. He’ll also step you through the set-up procedures on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, and show you how to test that PHP is operational on your web server. You’ll even get to write your first PHP-driven web page.

More: continued here

Before you can start building your database-driven web presence, you must first ensure that you have the right tools for the job. In this first chapter, Kev will tell you where to obtain the two essential components you’ll need: the PHP scripting language and the MySQL database management system. He’ll also step you through the set-up procedures on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, and show you how to test that PHP is operational on your web server. You’ll even get to write your first PHP-driven web page.

More: continued here

This classic, hands-on guide to learning all the tools, principles and techniques needed to build a fully functional database-driven web site using PHP and MySQL has been revised for its fourth edition. It remains essential reading for the budding developer.

More: continued here

Yahoo’s Blog has some of the stats.

More: continued here

More: continued here

More: continued here

More: continued here

If you can access the mobile internet via your cell phone, then you now have access to newly optimized Google Mobile search. It reaches 38 different languages in over 60 countries.

The optimized Google mobile search experience began last December when it was rolled out to iPhone and Android phones in the US. Then in March, it was rolled out to iPhone and Android phones in over 20 countries.

The optimizes mobile search incorporates universal search when appropriate. There’s also a focus on local search due to the nature of searching on the go.

More: continued here

More: continued here

Before you can start building your database-driven Web presence, you must first ensure that you have the right tools for the job. In this first chapter, Kev will tell you where to obtain the two essential components you’ll need: the PHP scripting language and the MySQL database management system. He’ll also step you through the set-up procedures on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, and show you how to test that PHP is operational on your Web server. You’ll even get to write your first PHP-driven web page.

More: continued here

Real estate search sites Zillow and Trulia are seeing big growth in traffic, despite the economy and its housing woes. Zillow saw a 67% increase in unique visitors while Trulia saw a 40% increase in uniques.

Zillow averaged 8.3 million unique visitors per month so far in 2009. They’re experiencing 35% more listings with a current total of 3.6 million listings. Customers submitted 265,000 loan requests which returned 3.5 million custom loan quotes during this time. Zillow is also experiencing great success with its iPhone app, which has has seen 535,000 downloads.

Trulia saw 30 million unique visitors across the six month period. Contributions to the Trulia Voices Community grew by 85% and has achieved the 5th spot in both Hitwise and comScore’s real estate matrices.

These numbers are coming during an uncertain time in the economy, fueled by crises in the credit and housing markets. Taking all of that into consideration, congratulations are in order for these achievements made by Zillow and Trulia.

More: continued here

More: continued here

This classic, hands-on guide to learning all the tools, principles and techniques needed to build a fully functional database-driven Website using PHP and MySQL has been revised for its fourth edition. It remains essential reading for the budding developer.

More: continued here

More: continued here

If you’re a celebrity or some other figure Bing has deemed “prominent,” then searches for your name plus the word Twitter will turn up a few of your Tweets above the organic results. You can also search for a person’s screen name, preceded by the @ sign.

Prominence is deemed by number of followers and volume of tweets. Bing uses the Twitter API to pull in the Tweets. But the feature is inconsistent.

Of course, I assumed Ashton Kutcher, the King of Twitter, would be included since he has 2.5 million followers. But the first search for his name didn’t include Tweets. The second one didn’t either. The third one did.

And here’s what it looks like when it happens:

What do you think of Bing integrating Twitter into the results? Share your reaction in the comments section below.

More: continued here

More: continued here

More: continued here

More: continued here