This was previously posted but we had a blog burp so we’re reposting it now. Cheers.

Earlier this week we had the pleasure of being the pleasure of being taken out to dinner by some Google folks up from Mountain View.

There were few surprises, but we all wound up with one unanimous and pleasantly surprisingly opinion: these were very pleasant, amicable folk.

Perhaps it’s our genteel, Canadian way, but we were, frankly, expecting alpha geeks with IQs off the charts and frankly little in common and less to talk about. Not so.

Week 4 of the contest has seen an increase in the number of submissions. And the quality … WOW! See for yourself below. We’re also seeing a number of people using social media very effectively … good ’cause that’s a compontent of the scoring algorithm.

1) ‘The Real Search Guru’ - Parody of ‘The Real Slim Shady’ by EscapeTheRake

2) ‘Dave Naylor Went Down to Google’ - Parody of The Charlie Daniels Band tune‘The Devil went down to Georgia’ by CountryCritter.com

3) ‘She Thinks My Ranking’s Sexy’ - Parody of Kenny Chesney’s ‘She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy’ by LunaMetrics

In what should really come as a suprise to no one, Terry Semel resigned as CEO of Yahoo! to be replaced in the interim by Jerry Yang, one of the site co-founders.

Susan Decker will become company president and most have their eyes on her with, frankly, great expectations.

While I myself have never run a multi-billion dollar corporation, it strikes me that putting a new driver behind the wheel doesn’t automatically mean you have a new car, or a new race for that matter.

What can Yahoo do?

I’ve been watching with great curiousity the, ummm, tension between Google and ebay with great interest.

Who hasn’t?

To wit: Ebay holds annual ebay live convention, Google announces competing party with the unstated goal of having ebay/Paypal users force inclusion of Google Checkout.

Ebay gets, oh, what’s the word? PISSED Mildly annoyed. Ebay cancels all paid advertising on Google. How much? In excess of $100 Million annually or about 1% of Google income. Um, ouch.

But here’s where it gets interesting.

Week 3 of the contest picked up a little, with 4 new entries. Voting has been very brisk. We’ve even seen forum postings talking about how to game our contest system … we are mostly SEO’s btw. Suffice to say … how could this be an SEO contest without our using an ‘algorithm’. Let me say this. The winner will not necessarily be the site with the ‘Highest Average Score’ as shown on the “Highest Rated” page, although this will be a factor. The number of votes will also be considered, as well, the voting patterns will be analyzed for inconsistencies. We also have opted not to show the real scoring since it makes the system easier to game (especially knowing who you all are) … oooooooh does that sound alot like Google. We don’t quite have 200 variables, but definitely more than 5. Matt … I can sympathize with you to some extent. We want the best lyrics possible to win.

Apologies for the long delay getting the week 2 wrap up out, and even week 3 for that matter. Between attending SMX in Seattle, sponsoring and attending SES in Toronto, and trying to operate a business, I got really busy somewhere along the line. Imagine that.

In any case, enough about me. Back to the contest. To be honest, week 2 was very slow. Lots of voting, but very few submissions. The 2 submissions received were:

1) ‘We Are the Champions’ - Parody of the Queen Song by Angele

2) ‘Hello I’ll Link You’ - A Doors ‘Hello I Love You’ Parody by Umb

We’re off to Search Engine Strategies Toronto to set up the booth today because we’re sponsoring it. (The conference, not the booth.)

For those of you in Toronto, we hope to see you there.

For those of you visiting Toronto, we hope to see you there.

There look to be some interesting panel sessions not the least of which include the opening panel with Andrew Goodman and Chris Sherman, and Seth Godin’s keynote.

Eric Ward will be there. As will Mitch Joel, Adam Lasnik and Jake Baillie.

Our resident PPC dude, Sasha was wondering hither and yon over Google today and came up with this little nugget on a search for “business cards Toronto”.

This is everything that appears above the fold and if you look very, very carefully, very, very carefully and you’ll see it waaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyy at the bottom.

Why it couldn’t be, could it? An organic listing. A single organic listing.

There’s been a lot of chat regarding whether this is a good Google or a bad Google thing.

Kartoo is a visual meta search engine. The interesting thing about is the visual component that not only shows the circle of influence, but also shows the nature of that influence.

A search of our SEO lyrics contest, (Where by the winning, the winning lyrics could net a cool $1,000) delineates the influencers in the space.

Very cool.

And very informative if you take a moment to understand it’s relational value.

Have a good one.

~The (SEP) Guy

I’ve always had a soft spot for Ask.

I like the simplicity of their results and in particular the visual nature of their results.

The new design is again, terribly simple and good.

But Ask has a long way to go.

The luxury of being an also-ran is the propensity to try that much harder, and to take more risks.

Ask did that a couple of years ago when they fired Jeeves and introduced their first major makeover. They’ve done it again, reinventing the search page results. At first glance it appears that they may have left a lot of money on the table by giving up the paid revenue channel that typically runs down the far right side of the page.