Flying Blind

You’ll have to excuse me if I’m a little slow on the uptake today. My Bloglines has decided to take the morning off so I must visit each one of my 40 or so blog feeds individually. Let’s just say things aren’t moving quite as quickly as normal. See what I do for you?

Here’s what I can decipher so far:

Nathan Weinberg has more leaked screenshots of CL2. What’s particularly interesting about the two new looks is that they hint at fun things. The first image gets me very, very excited as it suggests that CL2 may actually be integrated directly into Gmail. Take a look. That sure looks like a Gmail screen with an added CL2 feature to me! The second leaked image appeals to my inner geek, making it appear that after an event location is entered users are greeted to a Google Maps link. You mean I can get directions to my event, learn what local business are nearby and (I’m guessing) see where all the other participants are coming from? Let’s hear it for full Google integration!

CL2 get’s me very excited; if only because I have way too many events going on to keep track of them in my head. However, if CL2 is not released soon… well, Google will have to answer to my fists of fury.
Elsewhere, Andy Beal is poking fun at all of yesterday’s Google-Orion hype. It seems we weren’t the only ones to find the acquisition less than ‘revolutionary’, and saw it as, perhaps, an Ask rip off. But as Andy says, “If it’s Google, it has to be good right? Even if it’s not unique”.

In that spirit, Andy kids about two new Google products: Google Fire, a ‘very hot and amazingly colored element developed by Mr. Nee. Anderthal’ and Google Wheel, ‘a new technology that will enhance (or dare I say, revolutionize) how we get from one location to another’. Wow, sounds exciting. Make sure to keep an eye out for those two.

In the forum world, Rustybrick over at Search Engine Roundtable points to an interesting thread over at the DigitalPoint Forum that discusses a handy PageRank tool. What’s unique about the tool found at http://www.webmastereyes.com is that users can plug in their URL and see the PageRank for every link on their site via graphical bars. It’s especially cool if you have a properly linked sitemap, as you can easily get PageRank information for all of your inner pages.

It reminds us of Bruce Clay, Inc’s SEOToolBar currently in beta. The SEOToolBar offers a unique overlay system that allows users to view PageRank, back links and pages indexed for the top five results of virtually any search on Google, Yahoo or MSN. While PageRank is not the key factor in determining your Google rankings, users may find both tools useful, if not simply informative.

Chris Sherman at Search Engine Watch comments on two studies that alert marketers to what everyone already knows – that users rarely venture farther than the first page of the search engine results page, and the news that searchers are becoming more search savvy — learning how to redefine their searches and use longer query strings. We needed a new study to tell us that? You can read more about both studies in the SearchDay article entitled, Searcher Behavior Research Update.

Also of interest, have you caught the new Yahoo! Publisher’s Network blog? The blog is designed to help users learn and navigate through YPN. Only a day old and already some interesting posts.

Without my feeds, that’s about all I got.

Lisa Barone is a writer, content marketer & VP of strategy at Overit Media. She's also a very active Twitterer, much to the dismay of the rest of the world.

See Lisa's author page for links to connect on social media.