According to Microsoft, Yahoo advertisers will be able to start porting over to their ads to the AdCenter interface starting this week. The full integration of the Yahoo Interface to the Microsoft interface won’t happen until the end of October, however.

This is a scary proposition for some advertisers as they don’t want this transition to impact the upcoming holiday season. If you’ve been around long enough you’ll remember the infamous Google Florida algorithm update just before the holidays in 2003.

Since then, Google and the other search engines have learned not to rollout major updates in November and December (Google has toed the line of this ever since).

Microsoft says that if the Yahoo to AdCenter transition doesn’t go as smoothly as planned that they will delay the full integration until the beginning of 2011 in order not the impact holiday sales.

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I recently took a look at this humorous t-shirts page, number 77 to be exact that says, “WWGD – What Would Google Do?” This got me to pondering how some people treat Google as if it were the “God of the Internet”, sort of like this almighty being that lives in cyberspace and passes judgment on which businesses succeed and which fail.

But, then I started thinking that if I were Google, what would I do? This is not as easy as it sounds. I just watched a video (I can’t recall where) of Matt Cutts stating that Page Rank was not all that important and that Google has over 200 other pieces to its ranking algorithm that helps it rank pages accordingly.

So, if I were Google and wanted to thwart the spammers, keep the SEOs off-balance and generally deliver excellent rankings I would take a few steps. Here is some of what I would do:

• Deliver inaccurate or incomplete results in the green PR bar of the Google Toolbar. This section is given too much weight anyway by the community, so what is the motivation to keep it accurate?
• Since there are only so many tools in the bucket in which to use to rank a page (on-page and off-page) I would periodically place some of these tools outside the bucket such as devaluing the weight some directories or social media sites. Or another idea is to devalue the sites for a while, hide the PR and then silently add them back into the algorithm.
• In addition, since there are only so many tools in the toolbox I would periodically swap the priority of the tools in order to keep those who wish to manipulate the rankings off-balance.

Anyway, those are my top 3 WWGD ideas. What would you do?

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By now you’ve most likely noticed that the Google logo is now 20-percent brighter without using any kind of Internet bleach. It must be challenging for Google to keep its homepage clean and free of clutter and at the same time update its product to keep up with the times.

Marissa Mayer, Vice President, Search Products & User Experience, has been around since 1999 making sure the homepage of Google stays clean and yet is user friendly. The Google logo may change depending upon what special holiday is upon us or someone famous is having an important birthday but then it snaps back to the old logo again.

Along with Google’s new brighter and more colorful logo they have actually introduced a bit of clutter on their results pages. Now, when you do a Google search there is a bit of real estate taken up on the left side for a tab that says, “Everything” with a More below it and a tab that says “All Results” with a More Search Tools underneath it.

Google is attempting to give searchers more choices on how to search, putting a more powerful choice at one’s fingertips. Yahoo found out that when given more choices users tend to stay on the website longer and report a better overall experience.

It’s a fine line that Google is treading. One the one hand what makes it so attractive is the lack of clutter and the superior organic results it delivers. On the other hand, some people will want more powerful tools and options.

My hope is that Google stops the clutter creep. One of the original reasons people turned to Google in the first place is that Yahoo and other search engines websites were too crowded other information. Yes, I’m old school and prefer the Original Recipe Google to the Extra Crispy version.

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Some people like to communicate through email, others through texting. But nothing has beaten the telephone in talking one-on-one. This is why Google has just introduced the Nexus One based on the open source Android operating system.

In the past Google has rolled out click to call on their Maps section for local businesses. The search giant also introduced Google 411 service at 1-800-GOOG-411 in order to help consumers find local business via their landlines or cell phones.

Now, Google has decided to offer click to call through their Adwords ads delivered to the iPhone, Palm and Android phones. What this means is a cell phone user searching Google will see ads with a phone number. Users can then click on the phone number, which is routed through the Google servers for tracking and connected the business’s phone.

The business placing the ads only pay when someone clicks to make a phone call. And both business owners and their SEM’s know how important tracking is. Google click to call is yet another way to connect consumers to local businesses that otherwise may be lost.

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Many webmasters, SEO’s and Internet business owners loath scraper sites. They believe that scraper sites take away business from their own website. Now, this can be a reality if a scraper site’s pages consistently rank above your own pages in the search engines.

In this case you can do a DMCA copyright request or do a Google spam request to have the pages removed. Some people worry that duplicate content on scraper sites will hurt their own web pages’ rankings. But, this only happens in a tiny percentage of the cases.

For the most part scraper sites help the original website. “What, did he just say that!” many are saying right now. Okay, not many, but maybe just you.

How scraper sites help is that first many of them will provide a link to the original article, thus giving your website or blog credit. Second, this link may provide a little link juice to your website. And, third if you have internal links to your other pages, this may provide added link juice as well.

For example, if a scraper site were to scrape this blog posting and I have an internal link to SEO Expert, which I do here to serve as both as an example and self-promotional purposes, then this will provide a little link juice to my main website.

Also if the scraper site would provide a link to this SEO Expert Blog I would receive even more link juice. As I am a fan of link juice (8 oz. or more in the mornings) plus the promotion and some direct traffic to my website or blog I couldn’t be happier with the scraper site.

The only time I would be unhappy if I were to believe that the other website or blog is so popular that visitors are staying on that site rather than traveling to my own. But, this is the trade off I’m willing to make for a higher position in the search engine rankings.

So to recap, in a global, general sense, scraper sites are good. Of course there will always be a few exceptions. But, I say embrace scraper sites as a compliment to your site. It tells people that your website is good enough to scrape and republish elsewhere and your website will most likely benefit from this endorsement.

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It’s no secret that those who are frustrated with the lack of competition to Google’s Adsense publisher’s program want to know when Microsoft will step up to bat? Yahoo’s publisher program is by invitation only and has been in beta since August 2, 2005.

Windows Vista didn’t even take this long from beta to release. And yes, Microsoft does have its own beta publishers program, which is also by invitation only with no signs of going public soon.

Now while Google continues to spread its Adsense tentacles over the Internet, the engineers at MSN Live Bing or whatever the Microsoft product of the month happens to be can’t seem to come up with a workable publisher program.

After a couple of years of toil at Ask, they simple gave up trying and decided to sign a long term deal to deliver Google Ads on their searches. But, Microsoft has money and Microsoft has the engineering pedigree and presumably are still recruiting the best and brightest (that Google has obviously taken its chunk).

So where is the Bing MSN Live publisher’s program? Still in beta. Still struggling with geo targeting, IP addresses and getting enough advertisers to deliver targeted ads to websites. If the new search engine Bing picks up speed and starts to take a bite out of the Google and Yahoo traffic, then what? You still need advertisers and publishers to make a profit. And, it’s hard to believe that only one company started by two students at Stanford is the only business that able to achieve this goal.

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Twitter is hot right now and has been for a while. But, right now it is red hot as Twitter has gone mainstream. You know an Internet property has gone mainstream when Larry King and Barbara Walters are tweeting.

A couple of weeks ago Larry King and Aston Kutcher had an on air bet about who could reach 1 million followers on Twitter first. Yes, it was impressive that CNN with it’s name recognition and vast resources could squeak out a victory. But, what was more impressive is that one B-list celebrity could actually come in a close second.

Now, the rumor mill is flying about the possibility of AOL buying Twitter. Why not? What Twitter hasn’t done yet is monetize their website. Tweets are free and there is no advertising yet. But, expect this to change. There is way too much traffic and too much money to be made so advertising in inevitable.

But, tweets are sweet, so try it out if you have 150 characters or less of something to say.

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LocalAdLink, which is a new and upcoming local ad search network, featuring over 200 high traffic websites and search engines is set to rollout to the public in a couple of weeks. SEO’s need to take notice and this can be considered a complimentary service that many optimizers can offer current and future customers.

LocalAdLink may not be a Google killer, but what it does offer is a broad reach that includes Google, Yahoo, Myspace, Facebook and even Boomj, which is owned by the mother company of LocalAdLink, Beyond Commerce. The mother ship also owns iSupply.com as well.

LocalAdLink is a zip code and IP address localized search appliance that includes the main website, LocalAdLink.com as well as the network of high traffic websites previously mentioned. This network also includes some specialty high traffic websites like Rollingstone.com and WallStreetJournal.com.

The reason why LocalAdLink doesn’t compete with SEO is that most of the LocalAdLink results show up in the paid listings of Google and Yahoo (competing somewhat with SEM’s not SEO’s) or for long-tail searches that can’t really compete with well optimized websites.

What LocalAdLink does well is offer customers of SEO’s a low-cost alternative. Some localized small businesses can’t afford thousands of dollars of upfront costs for SEO. So, for around $50 a month, the SEO can offer LocalAdLink to customers who need local Web traffic, yet without the steep bill.

Another advantage of LocalAdLink is that small businesses don’t even need their own website in order to have an online presence. This means they don’t have to hire web designers, web programmers and others just to get online and maintain their websites.

The advantage for many SEO’s is that they can offer both services at once. They can optimize a website for the customer and instead of costly PPC in the near term, they can offer LocalAdLink for customers that just can’t wait until the SEO kicks in and starts to generate revenue for the business.

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After an uncomfortable acquisition and ownership of Performics, Google has decided to call it quits and offload the affiliate marketing division. The Publicis Groupe in France is picking up Performics in order to simplify its own offerings.

Historically, Google has been at odds with search engine marketing and optimization companies, so some have been screaming conflict of interest since the DoubleClick acquisition. Critics have been concerned about possible insider information going from Google to Performics that would help in the rankings.

Performics is now a 10 year old company with around 200 search engine marketing specialists onboard. In order to abate these calls, this is a deal that needed to be done.

It’s a pity though that this deal is going through as I am just getting used to receiving the Google Performics emails about new advertisers coming onboard.

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The Digg Recommendation Engine has been unveiled in beta and increases the social aspect of social networking. The first feature people will notice about the Digg Recommendation Engine will be the list of users on the right who are Digging the same types of articles as you.

One of the intentions of the Digg Recommendation Engine is to thwart those who want to artificially inflate the rankings of their stories. The stories that you Digg and categories that you visit will be reflected back to you in the form of other similar users who parallel what you’re doing.

What’s missing for me, however, is the popular stories section on the right side under the Upcoming tab that is filled with new articles with a decent number of votes. Besides the slew of articles that get on Digg on the front page of the Upcoming section, the sidebar has been of interest to me as well and something I regularly check out.

One recommendation for the Digg Recommendation Engine is to cut down on the number of “Diggers like you” from 25 where it’s at now, to around 10 and re-introduce the sidebar with the popular new stories.

Just how this new feature from Digg will finally shake out is anyone’s guess. But, my vote is not to replace tools, just add more tools and choices of how each user can arrange their own personal space as this will make for many happy Diggers.

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