SMTrends turns 100 today, and we’d like to take a moment to thank the over 1,400 subscribers for reading the newsletter and providing some great praise and suggestions.

When we started SMTrends, we knew there was interest in search news but also understood that many of us have trouble keeping up with the bulk of information that we already receive. SMTrends was designed to be a bite-sized newsletter that would provide value but not bog you down.

Based on the feedback and comments we’ve received, we are confident that we are hitting the mark. SMTrends really is an illustration of how the search industry changes… on a weekly basis.

Please to continue to send in feedback and comments so that we can continue to deliver a great product. We hope you’ll enjoy the next 100 issues as much as the first. Thanks for reading.

Sometimes, when we are optimizing our websites for organic search, we get so involved in trying to get to the bottom of the search engines’ algorithms and analyzing the technical aspects of a website that we forget the ultimate goal of a search engine: to deliver search results that are the most useful and helpful to the user.

Mahalo is a human-powered search engine that launched in May 2007 and is currently in its beta stage. Human editors employed by Mahalo review websites and create useful search engine results pages for each query. Each results page contains “The Mahalo Top 7,” seven websites that the editors deem most relevant to the search term, as well as several other useful websites and guides. For example, a search for your favorite television show on Mahalo may return the program’s Wikipedia page or IMDB page in the Top 7 as well as the official site. Other resources on the page could include YouTube videos of the program, an episode guide, photos, a link to where you could purchase DVDs of the series and other merchandise, fan sites, message boards, and links to cast members’ Mahalo pages, as well as information written by the Mahalo editor specifically about the program. Mahalo also offers custom-written “How To” guides on appropriate topics.

If you search on a term that doesn’t yet have a Mahalo page, you can suggest a page by using Mahalo Follow, a downloadable toolbar which allows you to suggest and submit websites for review. Your suggestion will go into a queue and will be reviewed by a Mahalo editor for inclusion. Mahalo is aiming to create pages for the 10,000 most popular English-language search terms on the Internet today.

While having an in-depth Mahalo page about your website could help increase traffic to your site, there is also an organic SEO benefit to Mahalo: some of the more established pages on Mahalo.com have been showing up in Google’s top 10 search results for their terms.

Mahalo’s goal is to improve its search results by excluding sites that distribute harmful malware, sites that engage in spamming or phishing, or sites with an inordinate amount of advertising. By delivering a bounty of useful information and links all on one results page, Mahalo is ensuring satisfying results to their users.

Article by Dana Forman

Since the birth of search engines, trademarks have been a sticky subject of contention. For more background copyright and search engine history, you find coverage in previous SMTrends issues here and here.

Big brands argue that other advertisers are using their brand name or other trademarked terms in paid search copy. This allows the advertisers to take advantage of the investment in time and money a company has already made in establishing their brand message. Some may even push a competing service while using a branded term.

For example, if you search for “Aquos TV,” you not only see an ad for the official Aquos site but also for companies that sell other televisions. Aquos has invested significantly in establishing this brand only to see six other companies advertising against that word.

While this issue isn’t new, it is certainly not going away. Branded search problems may also become more complicated as Google looks to both generate more advertising income from big companies and push into other advertising verticals.

Speaking to this issue, Northwest Airlines’ director of distribution and Internet strategy John Gustafson stated, "If Google has an inability to help us resolve issues about abuses of our brand, that would impact our decision to participate in future forms of advertising."

However, as Google maintains 71% of the search market share, Northwest might find it very risky to part ways over the branded search problem – no matter how “abused” they may feel.

Article by Joshua Palau

What’s more important: organic keyword rankings or organic traffic? Seems like a simple answer, but you may be surprised. William Flaiz examines this in his latest article, Keywords Without Ego.

The latest round of barbs in Icahn vs. Yahoo! feud took place over a series of released statements. Wouldn’t you pay to watch this debate live on Pay-Per-View?

Who will rule the Internet? Time.com asks this question, and it’s honestly not as cut and dry as you might think. Is it a platform like the iPhone? Social darling Facebook? Or de facto online starting point Google?