1) You have a great (and uniqe) solution to a real problem. - If your product can really help people to solve a real problem and no other site offer it, go for it! This is what dreams are made of (as long as your dream is being bought by Google). Being able to save links, tags, or share video online is no longer a problem.

2) There is only one more site that delivers the same functionality and he is doing it poorly. If you really believe that your solution is better, go a head, build your own application. Don't forget, however, to try and understand why this site is doing it this way. it is possible that there is a reason. Be careful not to find it after spending too much money and effort.

3) There are only two other sites that deliver the same functionality and they are making tons of money. Sites like that will be delighted to share the market with you and your application. It is true, sometime they will rather buy you and get rid of the hassle, but most times it would be very easy for them to have one of their own developers develop a similar product and use their market power to kick you out.

4) If you can describe you site without using other successful web 2.0 sites. If you find yourself describing your site as "Something like digg for..." or "it will work just like delicious but ...", it is time to find another idea.

5) If there are no more then 2 web 2.0 buzzword in your site description (not to mention, in your site title). Let's see you not using: ajax, social bookmarking, user-generated, shared video, mash up.

6) If someone who never read techcrunch can understand what your site do. remember, techcrunch reader are your competitors not your audience! if you can explain what you site do to your non techi friend, you should be OK.

7) the combination of 5-6, if your site is meant for delivering bloggers feeds using ajax user interface and google api Mash up designed for sharing rich content in social network enviroment" you are in trouble. Even Michael Arrington will need a minute to understand this.

8) If you don't know who is Michael Arrington. Or maybe ...

It appears that the bubble is back in some form. Under every rock you can find at least two startups trying to convince VC companies that their application will be something like delicious, "you know, Web 2.0! Mash up of social networking, social bookmarking and tags, technorati combined with google maps or something like that". So here at extra dollar labs (my computer) we (me) came up with anew idea: Me Too Web 2. it is of course stil in beta (it is so easy to put a lnading page and call it beta) but I promise that it is going to be the next Digg. details will come soon in the Me Too Web 2 project blog.

It looks like Web 2.0 really wakes up the hi-tech industry. Suddenly it is OK (again) to say that you are building a website.

All you have to do is use the right words: Ajax, Mash up, Web 2.0, Tags, Social networking, social bookmarking, Google maps (that should cover 90%). It is important, of course, to avoid the wrong words: Eyeballs, clicks, bubble.

We have a new guru, we have a new prophet , we even have a new bible (for only 19 dollars) what do we need more? We need modesty!

We need to remember that this round is not about new technology. It is only about marketing and branding. None of the new web 2.0 sites have a revolutionizing technology. Basically, it is what we knew and liked, repackaged and re-branded (not that there is something wrong with it). In the last round, (anyone remembers 2001?) a lot of money changed hands between the old money and the tech Nouveau Riche. This time the old money will not be so stupid. We can only hope that the small private investors at the stock market remember their lesson too. But then again, Never underestimate the power of denial.

When Google introduced the clean white search they changed the industry. The Adsense - Adword concept revolutionized search as we know it. The first 1 Giga mail made quiet an impression as well. However, lately Google is adapting a new strategy.

Just like Microsoft they use their power to get into markets that are already developed. Their latest applications are IM (ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo like messenger). Google base (Craig's list like and an eBay wannbe) and a payment service (did anyone say PayPal?). Basically, the company that once was admired for its innovation learned the Apple trick of taking already proven applications and wrap them in shiny white coat. Now all you need to do is wait for your charismatic CEO to brand it and market it.

Since big daddy, this site ranking for a specific phrase fluctuates between 1'st place and non existent in the first 10 results pages. This phrase is not a money phrase and it is not competitive. In fact, these are only the two words that are the domain name. Therefore, I can allow myself to think of it at a regular search term that should be returning my site at least in the first results page (if not place).

Since this site is far from being a source of income, this process amuses me. However, I believe that these are extremely hard times for business owners that their income is related to the amount traffic they get from Google. This situation raises an important discussion.

First, Do we really want to rely on Google that much? we have un delete able e-mail, the content of our hard drive is in Google desktop, and the government is trying to get Google's (our!) data and will get it eventually (and no one say anything about it but this a different topic). This is not a good combination for people who fear for their privacy and this is before we discussed Google's level of evilness. This situation raises another issue. On one hand it is possible that Google is becoming really evil (and I mean Redmond evil without the donations). They are building an alternative internet that will demand worship and obedience of the mighty algorithm. I doubt that this is the case.

Of course they will do anything (and I mean anything) to make the shareholders happy, but The slightly less frightening scenario is that Google reached the limit of its ability. It is possible that the ranking fluctuates because the algorithm is not stable and it is possible that there is no way to clean the ad sense junk sites. Either way, Google appear vulnerable then ever in the past few weeks.

We all used to love Google. It was fast and clean and with a promise not to be evil. What's not to love? We all used it happily and we were even happy when they became public and big. Google was our little way of "sticking it to the man" and the man was of course Bill Gates. However, lately google became so big that it becoming really hard to love it like we used to. In fact, google became so big and strong that we now have a new monopoly. .Of course, the new monopoly is in addition to the existing monopolies and although they like the rumor that they are going to fight Microsoft, google OS is not here.

Google became so big that when their stock burped they lost 15 billion dollar in value in one day wall street don't like it when such things happen therefore Google should pull out all the old tricks in order to show that everything is OK and that are going to keep earning the billions they promised. A new infrastructure update was pulled out fast. One would think that an infrastructure change should not affect the operation. Try and tell that to the thousands of honest site owners that just vanished from the first pages.

Big daddy turned out to be an abusive parent. We all must keep updating in order to satisfy the mighty algorithm so the net is becoming full of adsense sites. The algoritm is failing to ignore the black hat tricks so they use PR to fight BMW while millions of fraudulent sites pollute the results. Google, wake up we have one Microsoft. Although most of us like to, it is not that easy to change OS. A search engine on the other end …

Remember when many people had a website where they published their opinions? Of course you do, however, in the last year or two the new buzz word was Blogging. What is a Blog after all? That's right; a Blog is a website where people write their opinions and thoughts. The only change is that now the process is branded. Writing and publishing on a website have become Blogging.

The publishing process became simpler because many companies discovered that free content is a lucrative business and provided systems to make it easy. As you can see, the revolution of Blogging is not a technical revolution just a marketing phenomena.

The same process happens now to the new buzz word, "Web2.0". Many companies now understand that it is much cheaper to let someone else do your programming and marketing and open their API's. Other programmers improve the sites services at no cost and provide additional traffic at almost no cost. Other than referral fees in some cases, the process is totally free for the companies.

Imagine Google trying to reach an agreement with e-Bay regarding the use of craigslist's database on Google maps. This process would have probably required months of negotiating and hundreds of lawyers. It is much simpler to open your API , let someone else do the work , and call it synergy, mash-ups or Web2.0.

Is this the end of the Google dance as we know it? Many users complain lately that their placement in Google results page fluctuates daily. It could be a sign for a coming algorithm update, however it looks like the update is already here. I can only speak for my own sites but it is not hard to notice that lately they are indexed daily or more. Each post I add change my placement in Google's results page. Failing to update for a couple of days will result in a drop in placement. The only way to explain this is that freshness of content is the new main factor in Google's algorithm. In addition, your SEO efforts show results much faster now. Since the changes are daily, the updates will be continuous. Take a non-competitive term and see how each update in your page will change your placement, almost immediately, in Google's results pages.

New additions to the extra dollar beginners' guide to affiliate marketing. What kind of sites are out there and How to decide what kind of site to build. Is it better to choose your niche or to join a widespread affiliate program? Is it better to sell information products or real products? Some answers can be found on the extra dollar beginners' guide to affiliate marketing.

Google is looking for a Fraud Operations Director, Merchant Payment Solutions

Is it possible that Google has exhausted all of their recruiting methods and found no one? Apparently, the only way to hire a fraud operations director at the merchant payment solutions department is publishing an ad in yahoo’s hotjobs site.

A more reasonable explanation can be that google is doing again what they do best, “building a hype”. One small classified ad can create a wave of publicity and a bigger wave of rumors. Are they really building a google wallet? Are they finally going to do something regarding Adsense fraud?

This small ad is the teaser and the anticipation builder. Most importantly, it provides a lot of free publicity.

Rakuten , one of Japan's larger Internet portal, is trying to get into the U.S e-commerce market by purchasing LinkShare. LinkShare is a performance-based marketing company with the biggest affiliate network (over 500 clients). The expected price of the purchase is 425 million dollars and LinkShare management will keep their position. It will be interesting to see how this acquisition will influence affiliate marketing since LinkShare has 10 millions e-commerce relationships. Of course, the number of real sales generating affiliates is much smaller, nonetheless it says something about LinkShare’s market share.

Yahoo has finally improved their mail search. The new mail search will include search inside attachments, Search Refinements, and photo and attachments view. These improvements are going to make the life of a giga sized inbox owners much easier.

Mark Baard from wired reported that Mac Hacks Allow OS X on PCs. the hacked OS named OSx86 is available at several BitTorrent links.

Surprisingly, users of the tweaked OS, report that it runes faster on Intel machines. The common assumption is that it is a developers’ version that leaked to the web.

Unsurprisingly , the story works well for apple who switched lately to Intel processors.

Apple is known to enforce an extremely strict secrecy before a product is released; therefore such a major “leak” is suspicious. Time will tell if it is a major breach in security at Apple or another one of Jobs's PR stunts.

Google announced on their Blog that a wildcard search was added to their search. However, the wildcard search is still limited to a whole word.
Google example for the use of this type of query is "the parachute was invented by *"

According to Google, the wildcard query will provide better results than the parachute was invented by" (which theoretically should provide the same results) for the reason that they will be "promoting results in which the blank filler is relatively more frequent in the context of the query."

This innovative search can become a great tool for web professionals, since it can be used to find common queries and to learn what people are looking for. For example, "where can I buy *"

Yahoo publisher network (beta) is around for a few days. Reviews and guides are starting to emerge all over the web.

To our disappointment, the YPN was launched as beta for only 2000 sites. It is possible to ask for an invitation, but, I believe the odds are not in favor of a small blogger and , of course not automatic. Personally, I believe that two possible scenarios lead to Yahoo's low scale release of their new network:

The first, Yahoo felt that the market is expecting this product for a while and provided something. Yahoo was probably afraid to miss the buzz around it or to loose the public sympathy and came to the conclusion that it is better to come out with a limited scale product than nothing at all.

The second scenario is slightly more sophisticated. While the all purpose of this long anticipated product was to give small publisher another option; Currently, the situation is that mostly a handful of extremely influential mega bloggers have access to the new network and the average, less sophisticated, bloggers are out. As expected, these mega bloggers receive good customer support and usually provide good PR for Yahoo. Only time will tell if it is publicity stunt, good service due to the small amount of clients, or simply a good product. The simple people will have to wait until the service reaches the masses to learn how the new network really is.

Unofficial but reputable sources around the net are announcing that Yahoo will launce its well waited ads network today. Yahoo's answer to Google Adsense will involve a human editor in the process of ads selection.

The most important voice in the business searchenginewatch was sold to Incisive Media along with other ClickZ network sites and the Search Engine Strategies trade show franchise. According to Jupitermedia CEO Alan Meckler , the move is part of a strategy to focus on its stock photography and image business.

Ask Jeeves is to launch a new automated paid listings service. Searchenginewatch's Danny Sulivan posted a review of the new service. Currently, the service web page still says "coming soon". The new estimated date is august 15. The long waited service will allow advertisers to purchase their ads automatically. Until now, the only way to buy ads on Ask was thru Google or Ask sales rep. This situation kept small advertiser out.

Yahoo announced that they will provide news clips from CNN and ABC starting this September. The new service will be free for broadband users and will be supported by advertisement.

A9 released a new version for their toolbar. A nice new feature is the "site info menu". This feature will present a menu of the site content on the toolbar. The content of this menu can be easily set up by the site owner using a simple XML file in the root directory. A9 released this feature as an open standard and they allow other toolbars or browser to use it. Of course, the open standard release is basically for publicity purpose since it is not a giant technical advancement, just an xml file that can be read anyway by any search engine. Hopefully, this nice publicity stunt will catch and save us the need to write separate files for every toolbar.

Microsoft has released a beta version of Virtual Earth. The new beta has many features like direction signs on one way streets and a option to save your search as a link. Another feature is the "locate me" function that finds the user via a small downloadable program or his IP address. This feature is a great visualization for those who still believe in internet anonymousity.

As expected from Microsoft, the new tool is full of features but not intuitive to operate and not very stable. The maps jump when you zoom in and require you to reorient after every change.

Yahoo acquired the 3 workers "widget" company Pixoria. Pixoria's product, the Konfabulator engine, is used to develop small desktop applications ("widgets") that can access web content and other information directly from the desktops without a browser. The acquisition details were not disclosed.

While Yahoo failed to meet Wall Street expectations, google quadrupled their profit for the second quarter. Google earned $342.8 million, the results compared with net income of $79.1 million, at the same time last year. However, AOL and Ask jeeves growth pace was bigger than the Google and Yahoo

Less than a week after Google’s update, Yahoo made changes to their index last night. First look reveals a real change in results. However, Yahoo search blog reports that the changes will continue over the next week or two, we will first wait for it to stabilize and analyze it later.

Is it just me or this Google update takes its time to stabilize? It seems that Google's data centers are not synchronized at all. Whenever I use the same keywords to find my site's placement in the result I get different result. Not only that, the placement is different, some of the time the result are based on pages that were indexed over a month ago. In my case, the same search provides different title, different description, and different placement. I guess it will take more than week to stabilize.

UPDATE: currently, the results from all data centers are from over a month ago. Is it possible that Google rolled back parts of the index?

According to comScore Networks (via ecommercetimes.com. ) Google had increase its market share in the second quarter by 1.6 percent to 37.6 percent. This increase came mostly from Yahoo and MSN. Google is still dominating the market followed by Yahoo (30.4 percent) MSN (15.6 percent) AOL (9.2 percent) and Ask Jeeves (6.1 percent)
While Google increased its market share in the second quarter, Yahoo Inc. posted almost 45 percent rise in quarterly revenue. However, Yahoo's revenue (875 million) was not enough for Wall Street analysts which expected larger growth.

All over the net, seo professionals try to analyze the effect of Google latest page rank update on the their clients’ sites.

It seems that this specific update is somewhat more substantial than the previous ones. The consensus among the seo experts is that google is raising the bar on page rank. It is now harder to earn or keep higher page rank. So what are the actual changes?

First of all, it is important to wait until the new update is stabilized. It usually takes few days to feel the influence of a change. Nonetheless, here is my two cents on the update.

Two major changes are obvious: the way incoming links are calculated have changed and the value of these links have changed. The sites presented when checking for links using “link: www.extradollar.net” is different from the number that is presented when writing www.extradollar.net on the search bar and choosing “find pages that links to …”. Both numbers are significantly different from the links provided by Yahoo and, of course, from the real number of links.

In addition it seems that Google lowered the value of incoming links from directories. It is now harder to find incoming links from directories on the links pages. My feeling is that Google increased significantly the number of “poisoned words” that they look for around the link. These words, once found, make Google to ignore the link or give it a lower relevancy. Another possibility is that identical phrases around the links now cancel each other or lower their importance.

It may be just a gut feeling but if feel that after the last index, some links can hurt your rating. I have noticed that the rank of sites without links did not change or even improved, while sites with many incoming (but probably less relevant) links suffer a drop in rank.

It will be interesting to see the long term influence of these changes.

Msn launched a new beta shopping search engine. MSN promised improved search, price comparison and reviews. The new engine marks the entrance of MSN into the comparison shopping market opposing Google's Froogle. As expected, the engine is not a new technology and it is based on price grabber.

A wide-ranging change in Page Rank was observed today (July 15, 2005). Many sites earned higher rank and many more lost rank. If your site ranks lower than yesterday, here is Why You Shouldn't Worry About the PR Update.

google have updated their adsense terms and policies. Some important changes where made. For example: additional contextual ads on the same page with Google adsense will require Google’s approval, Explicit restriction on code change, and changes regarding CPM ads. A detailed explanation of changes can be found on jensense .

along with change in the adsense terms and policies, Google have launched a new adsense interface. The new interface provides easier statistics access and some color changes.

Google added an additional operator to their search. “Numrange” searches for results containing numbers in a given range. Separate two numbers by two period (..) and Google will return your search results in that range. This operator can find ranges of years, months, dollars, and any other unit as long as you specify it. However, the results include pages that have a number within the specified range anywhere on the page; therefore dates can become a real problem. for example Wine $0..35 .

Yahoo has introduced a new mobile search . The new service will allow users to perform a query on the yahoo search engine using text messages (SMS). The new service is planned to compete with the existing Google Mobile and it is currently limited to the United States. As the number of mobile searches arises, are we expected to return to shorter queries?

Google is releasing the google toolbar for Firefox. If someone will ask you how do you know that, you can tell them that you have a secret source inside google. This secret source only told you and the rest of the internet users but he asked you not to tell anyone. . All is fair probably in war and PR. Information leaks are the new press release.

While google whispered loudly about their firefox toolbar, yahoo launched an additional feature on their Hotjobs site extremely quietly. The jobs search result pages now show “Jobs result from the web . The quite launch was probably in order to prevent cannibalization or premium-jobs-publishers anger. According to yahoo, sponsor companies still get better placements in return for the premium they pay.

After google canceled the download option of google earth, some of the important voices in the Search engine community . suggested that that google earth, just like google web accelerator and google X, are either a PR stunt or resources problem. I must admit, None of these possibilities makes google look good, however, I do hope that the resources hypothesis is true in these cases. I will always be in favor of a company that keeps on trying and sometimes slip even when the firm is the strongest in the field. Microsoft, for example, shares the same problems. They announce their future products. They pump up the media with small bits of information and yet, many years pass until a new product is released. Of course, until their OS really reach the market it is far from the expectations. The long wait is not preventing bugs and security holes. Google, on the other hand, announce their product when they are almost in the market. In addition, they are not afraid to pull them back when they are not performing well. If Microsoft would have pulled back their problematic products we probably would have still using DOS.