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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Social networking is more effective than websites in generating targeted traffic according to an article in CMS Wire. The article actually outlines a 130-page report by the Gilbane Group called “Collaboration and Social Media 2008- Taking Stock of Today’s Experiences and Tomorrow’s Opportunities.”

What caught my eye is that social networking came in at 59-percent effective and websites as 58-percent effective. This is in stark contrast to the reports of many webmasters who are reporting huge traffic from social media outlets, but not quality traffic.

The report actually looks at the growing trends between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 technologies and how large companies are adjusting to the use of innovation and new communication tools. Social networking is said to replace Web conferencing in the near future as a way for large online businesses to communicate with customers and vendors.

The most popular form of communication remains with email with an effectiveness as 72-percent. The prognosticators of the report say podcasts will replace email one day, but it’s doubtful that this will be the very near future.

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There’s an article over at WebProNews by Jason Lee Miller that caught my attention today. He chronicles his Google search for the new Polaroid T730 Compact 7mp digital camera that has just been introduced to the marketplace.

When doing the search, the Polaroid website did not pop up on the front page of results for either organic or paid search. Neither did most other large retailers. I wrote a blog post on a different blog a couple of years ago wondering the same thing about the keyword “electronics” and which retailers would compete for this highly searched for term.

At that time, Sony and Samsung had the top two positions in Google. Now, they are both on the second page for organic results and not in the paid search results as of this writing. This does make me wonder why not all of the large retailers have embraced SEO and paid search marketing.

But, then again, those who have are most likely hoping their conservative counterparts continue to lag behind this marketing curve as they are smiling all the way to the bank. So it goes.

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At the recent Google I/O Conference in Northern California, the search giant said that speed matters. Not in so many words, mind you. But, what Vice President of Search Products Marissa Mayer did say was that users were asked whether they would like 10 or 30 results per page and they chose 30.

But, when the speed of serving those 30 results slowed down the search, the searches dropped by 20 percent. So, in essence the visitors wanted those 30 results on a page but at the same speed as for 10 results per page.

Mayer pointed out the same results for Google Maps. When the search giant cut the size of the maps by 30-percent, the searches increased by 30-percent. The faster load times meant people were willing to stick around and search more (plus click on more ads).

But, Google does not only require speed from within, it requires speed from without as well. In recent months Google has hinted that the bounce rate of websites may be a ranking factor in the SERP’s. This means, the faster a web page loads and the longer visitors stay on the site before leaving, it is assumed that this page is of interest and merits a higher place in the search engine results pages.

So, the bottom line is that Google requires speed from itself and speed from the websites it links to as well. With speed, visitors stay interested and get what they are looking for quickly. Perhaps at one time even Keanu and Sandra were hired as the “need for speed” consultants to help improve on this concept.

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