Bing is now using Facebook data to display websites your friends have “liked”.  This is influencing the ranking of the search engine listing results in a way that is personal to you and will display results on the first page which could previously have been several pages deeper.

If you don’t want to see results liked by your friends, you can avoid using this feature by simply not signing into Facebook.  But I suspect the people you want to reach will be using it.

I was thinking a long time ago that if I owned Facebook, I would develop a search engine to correlate search results with sites that friends like.  Although this is not something that I would like in a search engine that I use, I think this is good for Facebook and a good search engine niche.

Lawyers have a lot of common sense. It’s probably the single most important trait of a lawyer, but when it comes to issues outside the scope of a client matter, some lawyers get lazy and put away their common sense.

I was at a seminar on May 20, 2008 about attorney advertising on the Web, where FindLaw was the featured speaker/presenter. FindLaw was presenting some useful information about websites and website advertising, but they also were promoting FindLaw websites for attorneys.

A FindLaw employee stated that “4 million people per month are coming to FindLaw to look for an attorney”. That’s quite an impressive figure. That’s not 4 million people per month coming to FindLaw. That’s 4 million people who are coming to FindLaw specifically to look for a lawyer! Surely, if even a very tiny fraction of that traffic should come to my website, it would be worthwhile. A lot of the lawyers at the seminar seemed very impressed and not one lawyer questioned this amazing statement.

On March 3, 2008, Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s anti-spam team made several predictions for 2008, one of which was, “A top-level domain (TLD registry) will offer domains for under $4. The result will be another TLD blighted by spammy domain registrations.”

Because of the low cost of .info top-level domain names, they have been used by spammy web masters. What are spammy websites? That’s a topic for another article, but basically they are worthless websites, designed only to make money for the webmaster and which Google has no interest in presenting to their users. You can read about some of the characteristics of spammy websites here.

GoDaddy is now offering.info names for only $.99. Such a low cost allows a webmaster to cheaply set up thousands of spammy websites. Google has been trying to get rid of spammy websites for a long time through a myriad of methods. Google results have substantially improved over the last few years specifically because they have been successful in eliminating many spammy websites from the search results.

An e-mail was just sent out to advertisers participating in Yahoo! Search Marketing, formally known as Overture, advising of the proposed class action settlement for bidders advertising during the period of January 1, 1998 in July 31, 2006.

Affected bidders should submit the Assertion of Right to Participate in Additional Claims Review Process form by November 20, 2006, indicating that you intend to file a claim form for Yahoo! advertising credits and give up your ability to sue Yahoo! over the subject matter of this case. The Assertion of Right to Participate form is available for download at
www.checkmatesettlement.com.

The Plaintiff Checkmate Strategic Group, Inc. claims that Yahoo! has breached its contracts with Class Persons and committed unfair business practices including improperly collecting revenue by charging and/or overcharging Class Persons for clicks that were fraudulent, click spam, invalid clicks, etc.

Your personal injury law practice needs a website as an online brochure, but how do you pick a domain name for your law firm’s web site? What exactly is a domain name?

Your web site is located by an IP (Internet Protocol) address and looks like this http://67.15.4.94. Instead of typing a series of numbers which are difficult to remember, you can register an easier to remember domain name which becomes associated with your IP address. Similar to a 1-800 vanity phone number, some domain names pertain to the subject of the web site, while others may simply be the name or an abbreviation of your law firm.

For instance, lawyer-advertising-blog.com is the registered domain name for my blog, which is obviously for lawyer advertising. When you type that domain name, the domain name servers on the Internet know that you’re looking for http://67.15.4.94 and take you there. You can have multiple domain names pointing to the same web site.

Your law firm needs a website as a professional looking online brochure, but not necessarily to grab your share of clients who may be looking for your lawyer advertising on the internet. The second consideration is whether and how much to spend on Internet advertising which includes keyword bidding, search engine optimization and lawyer directories.

While printed brochures may still have a use for some law firms, their importance has diminished for law firms utilizing direct response advertising where clients will usually retain a lawyer at the initial meeting, such as personal injury, divorce, and individual bankruptcy. Potential clients responding to direct response advertising will usually meet with the lawyer and the personal relationship established, whether positive or negative, will overshadow any impression created by a printed brochure. However, clients who have retained a lawyer may later go on the Internet to view the lawyer’s web site. You don’t want your client’s latest impression to come from a poorly designed web site. With a professionally designed web site, your clients are more likely to refer you to their friends.

If you’re considering or already bidding on keywords on the Internet (known as Pay Per Click advertising or PPC), there may be important issues which you have not considered. If you know what you’re doing, bidding on keywords can be quite profitable, however, there are pitfalls which can cause you to literally throw your money in the garbage. This article will cover one of them, click fraud.

Click fraud occurs when a click is intentionally generated by a third-party who knows that a click will be generated without a valid visitor being delivered to your web site and that your account will be debited for the fraudulent visit.

There are several types of perpetrators who generate fraudulent clicks. Fraudulent clicks can be generated by competitors, PPC affiliate web sites, and even PPC companies.

Your law firm needs a website, but how do you pick a domain name for your web site? What exactly is a domain name?

Your web site address is also known as an IP (Internet Protocol) address or URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and looks like this http://67.15.4.94. Instead of typing a series of numbers which are difficult to remember, you can register an easier to remember domain name which becomes associated with your IP address. For instance, lawyer-advertising-blog.com is the registered domain name for my new blog, which is about lawyer advertising. When you type that domain name, the domain name servers on the Internet know that you’re looking for http://67.15.4.94. You can register multiple domain names, all pointing to the same web site. I registered LawyerAdvertisingBlog.com, which, when you type that into an Internet browser address bar, will forward to lawyer-advertising-blog.com.