The official press release announcing Live Search Cash Back went out shortly before Bill Gates, Microsoft’s Chairman, introduced it to the crowd in his closing keynote at Advance08. The premise is simple: searchers get cash rebates when they purchase from advertisers in the program.

At launch, the Cash Back program boasts over 700 advertisers and includes over 100 million product offers. When a searcher enters a relevant query, live search returns regular results intermingled with a Cash Back program ad and icon. Users can compare product prices, cash back offers, and bottom-line prices from several advertisers without leaving the interface.

The offering seems to be a win-win situation for advertisers involved in the program. Microsoft is giving advertisers a CPA (cost-per-acquisition) platform, removing the risk of the normal CPC (cost-per-click) model. Plus, Microsoft passes on 100% of that CPA cost in the form of its cash rebates to users.

For advertisers not in the program, they will be competing against Microsoft for their ad placement on the Live Search results page. Microsoft has said it will purchase CPC ads on behalf of the Cash Back advertisers, but will not go for the first place spot.

So what is Microsoft getting out of the new offering? Microsoft can show they still have some fight in them and try to chip away some of Google’s ever-growing market share. Microsoft started testing the waters about a year ago by offering prizes for searching with the Live Search Club. This offering could be the first step in a larger action plan to creatively lure searchers.

Check out the new Live Search Cash Back website and the FAQs for more information on the program.

Article by Nicole Keiter

Every year mobile is cursed with being the tactic that has been more hyped than the next Britney Spears' comeback. Don't get me wrong -- I wholeheartedly believe that mobile search has the potential to become an ultimate game changer. The challenge is that it is also one of the few tactics that require true third-party cooperation. No matter how many trail-blazing mobile companies emerge, they are still forced to operate where the control is not fully in their hands. Consumers have also been disenfranchised by the limited applications and clunkiness of the devices available.

Read the rest of Joshua Palau’s article in iMedia.

It’s a given that almost any SEO campaign should require some sort of link development effort – but how to evaluate the value of those links can be a tricky road to navigate. Theories abound about whether buying links is a viable tactic; visit any SEO blog, including SMTrends, and you’re sure to find something about why you can, can’t, should, or shouldn’t buy links to boost your site’s link popularity. But that’s not what this article is about because that’s been debated to death – to no real conclusion. What you don’t read about, or at least not quite as often, is how the value of those links is being evaluated. Or more importantly, how can you evaluate them after you’ve got them.

When kicking off a link building strategy and after you’ve decided on the organic keywords you’ll be targeting, you then need to find places to get those links. There are a ton of resources online offering lists of directories, free and otherwise, that offer opportunities for link submissions. Some are as simple as getting to the site or directory and clicking “Add URL” while others will require you pay a fee to be added. Unfortunately there is no guarantee that those you pay for are any better than those you can find for free, unless of course we’re speaking of highly influential directories such as the Yahoo! Directory and DMOZ. There are also services that allow you to pay a company to find such sites for you, though you’re still going to have the problem of not knowing exactly where your links are going to come from. Bottom line: A lot of research is needed to determine what’s what, and where you should submit beforehand, but even more could be spent after the fact in order to figure out if what you just did was a worthwhile use of your client’s budget.

We pass around a lot of fun little tools here in the AARF SEO department, and a colleague forwarded a link to this free and fun little diagnostic tool. You simply input your site, and it’ll tell you all the links coming to your site, complete with their own algorithm (determined by a formula that incorporates Google’s PageRank number and some other popularity factors, such as amount of other outgoing links on the site), as well as the anchor text of the link that is pointing to your site. While this won’t tell you immediately that this link is “good” or that link is “bad,” it will allow you to create CSV files to investigate these links. What you might find is that getting just any link isn’t necessarily helpful. In fact, it may be harmful, akin to buying links from what’s known in the SEO industry as a “link farm.” Just make sure you’ve done your research so you don’t waste your own time, let alone your client’s money.

Article by Josh Spiegel

According to Google if you actually want to get paid for your copy written content you are threatening the freedom of the Internet.

Taking on a large search engine optimization client can be a daunting proposition. But it's simple, when you break it down and give them what they don't yet know they need.

Despite being Patrick Dempsey’s best movie, the NY Times thinks that Microsoft can’t buy me love.