Google has been changing the code used to display their search results a number of times over the past couple days. We recently updated SEO for Firefox and Rank Checker. Both should work as of now, and if any more SERP changes happen we will try to update the extensions as soon as possible.

If you need to update these tools you can do so within the Firefox browser by clicking on Tools in the top Firefox menu, then from the Tools menu click on Add-ons. This will pop up the Add-ons / extensions window. At the bottom of this window there is a Find Updates button you can click. That will bring in the new updates and then when you re-start the browser the extensions should be fully functional again.

Most the attempts at political SEO I have seen this year have been grassroots GoogleBombing or half-thought out campaigns asking fans to comment online (and the occasional robotic sounding request for viral content creation).

Obama was estimated to have spent over $2 million on Google ads, and Google political ad man Peter Greenberger claims that limited and inconsistent search ad spend hurt Hillary Clinton, going so far as saying

The McCain campaign was the savviest among the Republican presidential primary campaigns. We think it's not a coincidence that the two savviest primary campaigns with Google are the winning ones.

How well rounded was their search engine marketing? How savvy were they with Google? Were they doing organic search optimization as well? Does anyone know a SEO working for one of their teams? Are any SEOs working for other political candidates like the Senators or members of the House of Representatives?

I got mentioned in the media 3 or 4 times last week and just finished my last interview (at least for a while). It is hard when you get used to doing interviews with friends or talking to the media because it is easy to be unprepared for the other. With reporters you have to be guarded because they often aim for a misquote because that sounds more interesting, whereas you can be really open with friends.

Anita Campbell recently interviewed me about SEO and business stuff on the Open Forum, and Augusto Ellacuriaga interviewed me about SEO on his Spanish SEO blog.

Kim Krause Berg recently interviewed Sugarrae.

In Leonard Klaatu's article about Bassackwards Business Model he mentioned me a bunch, but did not interview me...he didn't need to though as I think he understood my philosophy and strategy, perhaps better than I do. :)

On Search Engine Land I wrote tips on how to rank a new site quickly.

If you are going to SES please support Todd Malicoat's IM Charity Party on the 18th. I won't be attending SES, but I should be at the IM Charity Party for an hour or two.

David Mihm did a great rundown of SMX local and mobile.

Microsoft Live Search upgraded their webmaster tools, so if you want to dig into details but were afraid to give Google any more data this is a great opportunity. Rand recently interviewed Live's Nathan Buggia.

Amazon's Mechanical Turk fully launched. It has to be good for a lot of creative publishing ideas...the most obvious are spamming opportunities, but I have not tested the upper limit of quality yet. Have you?

Google is showing more data about when and how they customize and personalize search results...claiming greater transparency. Meanwhile, they have begun blocking some automated rank checkers and sending bad data to users of their API.

Zappos is practicing the ugly anti-marketing art of line extension, by selling laptops. Did you know that before ketchup Heinz was a leader in the pickles market?

On Sitepoint Clinton Lee wrote a 6 page high quality web site valuation guide.

The New York Times recently published a great article about flipping websites, quoting my buddy Peter Davis.

Shane Pike recently blogged about selling one of his sites to Internet Brands. The site he sold was the one that let him quit his job. I gave him some tips on how to build traffic and increase monetization during a 15 minute chat at Elite Retreat in December of 2006. He quickly took my advice to heart and is a richer man for it. Here is his revenue graph from that site

But where he really made a killing was when he found investment bankers to help him sell on a nice multiple of that

If you believe your site could sell for more than $100,000, you’re throwing money away if you don’t use an experienced broker or investment banking firm to help you sell it. Because they’re much more adept than you at running an efficient process, finding potential buyers, and maximizing the bids from those buyers, they make up their fee many times over.

For example, this whole process started when I received an unsolicited bid for the site. Before all was said and done, though, my representatives had secured not just one, but two final bids that were ten times that initial offer. I couldn’t have gotten half that on my own.

It is fun to watch Tamar Weinberg and John Andrews write about social media. Largely because they are both firm in their beliefs, and they believe polar opposites. Tamar's piece covering the definition of social media marketers is uplifting and paints social media as friendships to be won rather than games to be played and people to be fooled. But bots and ad networks are amoral, and they control the production of much of the free content.

John's view of social media is a bit more cynical - highlighting quotes like this one:

In an age when most major media outlets are providing outrage-of-the-hour content, one should not be surprised that the community built around that is also comprised of illogical, emotionally charged drivel flavored with a smattering of generally useless regurgitated trivia posing as genuine information.

Digg is full of fake profiles, and so is MySpace. Early promoters of social media ask if it is becoming a vast wasteland. But at the core the questions nobody is asking are

• Who is paying these content creators?
• How long will they keep sharecropping without financial incentive? What happens as attention becomes more scarce (and better publishing tools make it easier to keep the value you create)?

Some animals are smart, but assuming a user is real why would they spend hours a day on a general purpose social media site unless they were getting something out of it? Entertainment has value, but trading votes gets old on day #2 (at the latest)! How low must a person value their time (or how poor must their self image and identity be) for them to spend so much time on sites painted by a collage of spam? If they are poor they are probably easy to buy off, so social media is just another way to buy exposure.

The news companies are fighting back against the free content by turning newspapers into something Jerry Springer would write, with a few advertorials sprinkled in to help offset lower ad revenues. A recent survey revealed "Nearly one in five (19 percent) of senior marketers admit their organizations bought ads on a news site in exchange for a news story."

It is hard to create a destination, become an icon, or build a brand if you are stuck on a large anonymous network. And spending too much time on such a network can warp your perception of reality by showing you the nasty side of anonymity. Add in a bit of desperate attention whoring coupled with endless reams of free recycled content and you have the perfect storm for creating The Tragedy of the Commons.

At best most large social media sites are an Amway-like pyramid scheme. Sure you can count uniques, but what's the point? Social media sites are a transitory vehicle used by newbies hoping to gain status and recognition, while professionals use them for marketing and link generation. Those who realize the game rarely waste time on social media sites beyond satisfying the criteria needed to manipulate them to achieve their goals.

The only difference between most social media sites and a traditional free for all page is votes. As social network spamming programs get cheaper and bots get smarter look for that difference to narrow.