Google gains the spotlight with the story of the week. They added a new tool under diagnostics that shows you errors for URLs in your sitemaps. Sage walks you through his Webmaster Central account, showing you how to access these errors and explaining what they mean to you and why it’s important to fix them.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt is in a somewhat steamy situation since calling the internet a “cesspool” and saying “We don’t actually want you to be successful. . .The fundamental way to increase your rank is to increase your relevance.” Sage takes the cesspool analogy a step farther, saying that Schmidt views himself as the heaven to the internet hell, that it’s his job to “cleanse” the internet. What Schmidt fails to realize is that he lives in “hell” and makes his money there, so “Stop being a jerk!” says Sage.
Ads are in the air this week. Microsoft AdCenter announces the addition of a fourth mainline ad placement; MIVA tells us about its new advertising platform; and Google makes a strategic partnership with NBC Universal to display their TV ads on stations like CNBC, Sci-Fi and Oxygen. Google also takes an official stand on duplicate content, stating that there is no penalty for it, other than the possibility of the search engines picking the wrong content to search. Lastly, AOL pulls it all together by allowing you to aggregate Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo! email accounts through their site.