I’ve been sorting through creative director/interface designer resumes from job sites these past few weeks.

Here are two lessons for those hunting the same prey:
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The following should have been a paid review, but I couldn’t decide whether to post it or not, so I let the deadline pass and decided to give Jim a link to his free SEO tools section. That’s how much I love your tools man! :)

Better late than never. Thanks to Ian for tagging me in the SEO tag game. Ian was one of the movers behind SES China and I hope to see him again in the near future to talk search and Asia :)

Here are 5 things most people don’t know about me that I’m willing to share at this time:
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The penalties for link selling are clear. Matt has mentioned them before. Now it’s Stefanie’s turn (Stephanie Ulrike Dürr from the Google Webmaster Central Blog to be exact):

…there are two ways for optimizing the link-based popularity of your website: Either the meritocratic and long-term option of developing natural links or the risky and short-term option of non-earned backlinks via link spamming tactics such as buying links. We’ve always taken a clear stance with respect to manipulating the PageRank algorithm in our Quality Guidelines. Despite these policies, the strategy of participating in link schemes might have previously paid off. But more recently, Google has tremendously refined its link-weighting algorithms. We have more people working on Google’s link-weighting for quality control and to correct issues we find. So nowadays, undermining the PageRank algorithm is likely to result in the loss of the ability of link-selling sites to pass on reputation via links to other sites (highlights are mine).

The thing is, the average publisher doesn’t give a rat’s ass whether they pass reputation or not. He doesn’t care if his site is permanently condomized. Passing reputation is just too far up his heirarchy of needs.
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Microsoft may own the desktop, but Google’s moving to own the Web. What’s Google’s recipe for Web domination? They can dominate by offering better solutions (search and contextual advertising) or they can undercut the competition…but can Google compete with established players in the applications space?

Here’s a preview of how Google can topple online market leaders like Salesforce.com. It’s a win-win scenario, even if Google didn’t choose to compete head on, it would still make a killing licensing its software to 3rd party companies.
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I told you the domain quality FUD post wasn’t pure FUD :) now the next question is, will Google trust a domain registered through its domain registration service more? I know I would!
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How do you keep the buzz machine rolling? Do an interview. Lee fans the Yahoo! Panama buzz via a short interview with John Slade, Senior Director of Yahoo Global Product Management.

Some choice snippets:

What can you do now to run a campaign that you couldn’t before?
With the new platform, advertisers will have access to many new capabilities for managing their campaigns.

• Geo-Targeting – Enables advertisers to display their ads broadly or to narrow their distribution down to specific metropolitan areas, allowing them to better target their customers, customize their ads and control their costs.
• Ad Testing – Allows advertisers to easily test multiple versions of their ads to determine the message that works best for their customers. They can also choose to let our systems automatically optimize serving to the ad that performs best on clickthrough rate.
• Goal-Based Campaign Optimization – If an advertiser has business metrics they’re trying to hit, such as a CPA, ROI or ROAS goal, our systems can automatically adjust their ad rotation and bids to help them meet those goals.
• Campaign Budgeting and Scheduling – Allows advertisers to create, budget and schedule individual advertising campaigns for greater control over their advertising strategy and spending. Advertisers also have the option to place an account and/ or campaign daily spending limit to increase budget control.

Panama’s all good…but Yahoo! needs to focus on more important things like say, rolling out YPN for international publishers like me.

OT: how does he manage to get all these suits on his blog - that would be a nice Top 10 Tips on How to Get Bigwigs to Talk on Your Blog post Lee ;)

PayPerPost is now requiring publishers to state that they’re getting paid for their review posts, no doubt brought about the FTC’s requirement for advertisers to disclose paid WOMM tactics.

PayPerPost, the leading marketplace connecting marketers with bloggers, videographers, photographers, podcasters and social networks, announced the second phase of its full disclosure model, whereby participating Consumer Content Creators are required to disclose their sponsored status. The new Terms of Service, effective today, will bring greater transparency to the growing Consumer Generated Advertising industry.
Since creating the concept of sponsored posting, PayPerPost has allowed and encouraged transparency, enabling marketers and bloggers to disclose word-of-mouth (WOM) or buzz marketing relationships. The company provides bloggers with tools to empower disclosure and has popularized the concept of adopting a Disclosure Policy for all bloggers through http://www.DisclosurePolicy.org. Consistent with WOM industry guidelines, PayPerPost also prohibits marketers who use the PayPerPost marketplace from requesting no disclosure.

Picked up from TechCrunch.

Since the Sharmskee posted her wishlist already, I thought I’d throw in my wishlist now, a full week before Christmas (that should give her ample time to buy at least one of these babies).
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I’ve been looking at the same A-list blogs for the past year or so and it can get boring at times. Time to add fresh blogs to my daily reading list. They don’t have to be SEM-related (God knows I’ve got too many SEO gurus on Bloglines already). I’m looking for general marketing and tech related blogs. Got any recommendations?

I’m also interested in expanding my daily Philippine blog reading list. I don’t bloghop a lot so I don’t get to discover those diamonds, and I’m too tired to wade through the hundreds of TV and celebrity-related splogs on PinoyBlog and PinoyBlogoshere, so if you can recommend a nice, honest blog that you have on your feed list, please leave the URL via comments below. Hell I’ll even read a pink blog if you think it’s worth reading :)