Saturday, May 22nd, 2010 marks the 30 year anniversary of when the Pac-Man video game was released. To celebrate this phenominal interactive computing milestone, Google has changed their homepage logo to an interactive one that you can play the Pacman game live, online and right from Google.com. Pretty Cool!

Google PAC-MAN 30th Anniversary Interactive Video Game Logo

 
Watch a video of me wasting time playing Field Testing this interactive search engine feature:

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With Christmas only a few days away, those last minute acts of kindness probably aren’t going to be enough to get your name scratched off the naughty list and penciled into the nice one.  Sure, you might hope to slip by this year on some clerical error or a loophole in the revised 2009 Naughty and Nice Code of Ethics, but remember Santa is supposedly checking them twice (which makes me wonder if he has a Naughty & Nice app for his iPhone yet, or is still doing it by hand?). 

Yet whether your stocking this year will be filled with lumps of coal or gifts of joy, you are not alone.  We have sent out a request to our colleagues, associates and some talented search elves up north to come up with our First Annual Not Quite Definitive List of Who’s Been Naughty and Who’s Been Nice in Search for 2009.   

Nobody's walking out on this fun, old-fashioned family Christmas.

* Google gets lots of gifts for attempting to innovate search with real-time results, social search, and more.

* StumbleUpon.com gets lots of gifts this Holiday season for leaving the hands off of eBay, listening to its community, and implementing changes around their desires.

- Jordan Kasteler

* Bing goes on this list for bringing more seriousness in competition to the search landscape. They’ve got a long way to go, but it’s the first positive step in a long, long time.

- Rand Fishkin

* Google Adwords new ad formats. This was a long-time coming in my opinion.  I am curious to see if Yahoo and MSN try to follow Google, or, wait until their platform merger.

* Google Analytics upgrades since October….specifically, more “Goals” and “Alert” system. 

* Google Webmaster Tools upgrades….specifically, their “Parameter Handling”.

- Clint Danks

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Chris, James & Tony at SMX Advanced 09

Last Monday I made the quick trip up I-5 to Seattle for this year’s SMX Advanced.  Not only did this yearly expo provide our management team with an opportunity to meet and network with some of the search industry’s top minds, but to also attend some very informative sessions on Organic, Paid, Social and the Business side of search marketing.

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James, Chris and myself will be in Seattle, Monday June 1st thru Thursday the 4th 2009 to attend the SMX Advanced. We are all really excited about attending the conference and a chance to learn some new skills and ideas that we can apply to our clients’ search marketing campaigns to get them better results, and to meet other people in our industry. The conference is 2 full days of speakers and classes, with a few meet and greet evening social interaction sessions. We bought our tickets a month ago, and looking on their site today, the event is all sold out, glad we got our tickets when we did, as the event is only in Seattle once a year.