Posted by randfish Many of us in the web marketing space have a love/hate relationship with the practice of leveraging blog comments as a marketing strategy. On the one hand, it can bring valuable participation and content to our sites and provide an outlet for us to reach other communities and bloggers/comment-enabled communities. But, it’s also an endless source of spam and low quality contributions that teeter on the “publish-worthy” seesaw.

The CEO of TripAdvisor Stephen Kaufer said the company’s request to have their reviews taken down from Google Places sites has been denied by Google.

Following in the footsteps of several other locally-oriented sites, Google Places is now accepting user photos of local businesses.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today…

Okay when Matt Cutts speaks the search industry listens. So is his recent comment on the Google Webmaster Help Videos a good indication that submitting to article aggregators is no longer a way to build some link juice to your website? Click to read the rest of this post…

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Hot At Sphinn: Google Favoritism In Search Results, Eric Schmidt Steps Down & More The idea that Google might be favoring its own properties and content in… Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article

Search Marketing Now kicks off the New Year with answers to your questions about search marketing and advertising in 2011. Search Engine Land editors Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman will take questions from the audience — both before the webcast and during this one-hour special webcast taking… Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Google announced last year they were offering an opt out option in their Chrome browser. Now they have given it a name “Keep Mt Opt-Outs” and are trying to get more momentum for their effort to appease the FTC

The idea that Google might be favoring its own properties and content in search results was a big topic of conversation last week on a lot of blogs, forums, and social networking sites — and it was also the big discussion topic on our sister site, Sphinn. News that Eric Schmidt will step down..

Google has released a new report within the AdSense interface for monitoring the interest based ads displayed on some AdSense units. The new report can be found under the “Performance tab” and then click on the “Accounts by entire day” drop down.