On v7n I have come accross this thread about the Top Ten Dot Com Flops of all time.
It was a definite walk down memory lane for me to once again look at some of the businesses we were all too familiar with that have since disappeared from the face of the earth.

I do believe that some of them were really great ideas, just the timing wasn’t right and the fact that they were being over-hyped took away from the actual business.

Here is the list:

1) Webvan
2) Pets.com
3) Kozmo.com
4) Flooz.com
5) eToys.com
6) Boo.com
7) MVP.com
8) Go.com
9) Kibu.com
10) GovWorks.com

There have been countless others, but those are the most memorable ones. Webvan was supposed to be the dawn of an era where you wouldn’t have to leave the house unless you go to work. It failed. Go.com is still a site and provides the subdomain name which disney.com is hosted on. Most of the others have been forgotten and should remain forgotten since there is no need to look back and say “if it didn’t work yesterday, it won’t work tomorrow”. I believe that we will start seeing a lot of the ideas from the late 90s come back to life, but this time better prepared. They will have different names, different business plans but similar concepts.

Feel free to agree or disagree. I remember the late 90s well and do believe there will be a lot of companies building on the original ideas, but without the StartUp.com sort of hype.

According to the European Union, Microsoft has failed to give competitors adequate information about its server programs. Microsoft was ordered to

to disclose complete and accurate interface documentation which would allow non-Microsoft work group servers to achieve full interoperability with Windows PCs and servers

The EU is also demanding the necessary information to be provided by January 25th and is asking for a daily find of 2 Million Euros ($2.4 Million).

More on the story …

Once again celebrities are dominating the list of Yahoo!’s top searches.
Britney Spears is once again the number 1 thought after search term as has been 3 times out of the past 4 years where she has only once lost to American Idol. She also tops the list of Yahoo! Video Search while Jessica Simpson was most sought after in images.

In product searches we have digital cameras, flowers and iPod while the Tsunami, Iraq and Michael Jackson’s trial have been dominating the news related searches.
Read more…

This new feature by Google is almost scary it is like Google will stop at nothing to achieve better search results…Check this out Google Trends, Google’s new toy, is supposed to give you more accurate results based on your search history, a sort of personality test based on searching…

It’s pretty amazing that Google has gotten so advanced at their art that they can simplify a human mind and predict what it wants…pretty amazing, I signed up and I’m looking forward to seeing how well it actually works…

Oh yeah, they also have this page where you can see what the rest of the world likes based on searches, probably the best world census…if not the only…

I’m very surprised to see that there are still sites of authority which are engaging in blackhat tactics. Here is an example:
http://www.dentists.com/ohio_dentists.php

Their lines are actually not lines but rather this:
Columbus Ohio Dentists Herbert G Roland DDS Columbus Ohio Dentists Herbert G Roland DDS Columbus Ohio Dentists Herbert G Roland DDS Columbus Ohio Dentists Herbert G Roland DDS Columbus Ohio Dentists Herbert G Roland DDS Columbus Ohio Dentists Herbert G Roland DDS Columbus Ohio Dentists Herbert G Roland DDS Columbus Ohio Dentists Herbert G Roland DDS Columbus Ohio Dentists Herbert G Roland DDS Columbus Ohio Dentists Herbert G Roland DD
which is

Columbus Ohio Dentists Herbert G Roland DDS Columbus Ohio Dentists Herbert G Roland DDS Columbus Ohio Dentists Herbert G Roland DDS Columbus Ohio Dentists Herbert G Roland DDS Columbus Ohio Dentists Herbert G Roland DDS Columbus Ohio Dentists Herbert G Roland DDS Columbus Ohio Dentists Herbert G Roland DDS Columbus Ohio Dentists Herbert G Roland DDS Columbus Ohio Dentists Herbert G Roland DDS Columbus Ohio Dentists Herbert G Roland DD

embedded in a font.

I’ve commented on Matt Cutts’ blog here and am curious whether there will be some more comments over there. I do have Matt’s email address and he does communicate with me from time to time, but I would much rather raise some awareness here. :)

No more second guessing, it’s finally final:
Google is going to pay 1 billion dollars for a 5-per-cent stake in AOL. In return the
existing agreements are going to be honored despite Microsoft’s attempts to replace Google as AOL’s search partner. Google has to provide around 300 million dollars worth of advertising on its web pages to AOL and will be able to place advertising onto AOL’s search results as well as share their Time Warner revenue.

Here is something fairly new:
Google Talk users will be able to communicate with AIM as part of the deal.
Read more …

Whether you’re an amateur web master or have been doing this web thing for a while, one thing you must realize is that a well thought out design could be the difference between whether or not a visitor decides to return to your site. So you’ve spent the countless hours making sure you have a great page rank, content, and that it’s easy for visitors to spot your glorious page on the web but haven’t figured out why visitors aren’t returning to your site. Web site design could be a key component as to why visitors have lost their desire to return to your site.

Read on …

Seems Google stand against SEO softens a little when they have a stake in the company. As stated at New York Times Google will provide technical assistance to AOL to help their web pages to appear more prominently in the search engine results.

Beating out MSN’s attempts to partner with AOL, Google bought a 5% share of AOL from Time Warner for $1 Billion. As part of the agreement “Google will offer promotion to AOL in ways it has never done for another company, two executives close to the negotiations said. If a user searches on Google for a topic for which AOL has content - like information about Madonna - there will be a special section on the bottom right corner of the search results page with links to AOL.com.”

Note to Google: I’ll sell you 5% of my business if you’ll provide assistance to get me to the top of the ranks. For Sale Cheep!

For those chafing at the bit awaiting Google’s every move, Google started updating their list of site back links. The last back link change was about two months ago around 10/20/ 05. As usual don’t expect major increases in what Google reports links back to you. On one of my sites, of the 950+ links MSN reports to be pointing to my site, Google reports 65.

Still with the increase of links has come an increase of visits to my site, the last two days has seen about a 20% increase in referrals from Google. Little soon to start planning my next trip to the Bahamas, but encouraging nonetheless.

It’s been a couple of years now since the “Nigritude Ultramarine” contest had been held. Back then it has revealed the importance of incoming and quality outgoing links in order to rank for a made up keyterm. One thing that the winner did was not just to get links into his page, he also linked to his competitors freely. To those who have paid attention, it has demonstrated that Google actually does look at outgoing links to pages with related content as an extension of your own site’s content.
The contest will start in January. It’s being held by John Scott who runs the v7n Network.
If you are interested in finding out more and also participating (as I think everyone in the seo industry should), you can get
more information on the upcoming contest and its rules.