This is an old post on Jeremy Zawodny’s blog about Google copying Yahoo for their IE7 download page. Jeremy’s countepart on Google, Matt Cutts, retailiates with something else. Based on user interface research, Yahoo has been copying more in ad formats, well that’s old news. But recent news is, starting today Yahoo Search Marketing will now include Ad Quality in it’s PPC ranking factors. Google was the first to create a PPC model that considered not only the bid price, but the CTR as well as the landing page quality score to decide on which ad ranks higher in PPC. Now starting today, February 5, 2007, Yahoo whose PPC used to only consider the bid amount to determine PPC ranking has now also added ad quality in the picture. Now who is really copying who? The clean interface, the AJAX maps. But I really don’t care, competition is always good since it will bring out the best in everyone. Make the world of search marketing even more interesting.

With several SEO certifications coming out left and right, I have recently tried ExpertRating Online Certification and Employment Testing. I tried out their SEO test, which will cost you $9.95. It consist of 40 random questions from their database and has a time limit of 40 minutes. If you do SEO, the answers should come as common sense. The only thing that you may need to know to help pass the test and get a higher ranking would be knowledge on the search industry news, some statistical Internet facts and some terminologies.

You may know SEO and know how to make a website rank high, you may be successful with your SEO clients and be earning money in SEO already, but you may not know all the terminologies for every step you do. In the same way, you can know so much about how to make a website rank high, but you are not aware of everything related to the search marketing industry news, like what is the estimated total number of webpages on the Internet? What is the percent marketshare among search engines? So passing the test just not requires knowledge on how to rank high in the search engines.

Now that I have passed, they will mail a printed certificate and you can use this logo on your site. In my opinion, to pass the test with flying colors, it is better to think of answers you know the search engines companies would like to hear, than think of the answers that you know work but search engines do not want to disclose.

After taking this, I will continue to try other certifications and give me review on more certifications later on.

I rely on Keyword Discovery data. As well as Google, Overture and Wordtracker data. For me, Keyword Discovery is one of the best tools out there for keyword research but I need to finish some work right now and I cannot do pretty much anything with my current work at this current point in time and I work in an agency where every minute is counted if you have billable hours or none. I need to get work done and Keyword Discovery is down. Since lunch time today, Pacific Standard Time, up to now, it is already 6:45pm, I do not know up to when this will be like this.  Oh well, I just have to rely on Wordtracker and Overture then.