100 Fun Things to do With Google Maps Mashups

Google Maps Mania has this great post on 100 fun things to do with Google maps mashups that will keep you entertained for hours. Check it out here: 100 Google Map Mashups

Exalead - The Little Search Engine That Could

Exalead is a French search engine involved in the Quaero project.

Background about the search engine as per Wikipedia:

The company is a société anonyme based in Paris and founded in 2000 by François Bourdoncle. Its name comes from the association between

- the prefix exa which means 1018 (used as a generic term for size, to imply large coverage of pages)
- and the verb lead (as the customer is led through the search options)

Exalead tries to integrate research functions in one piece of software, combining Internet, desktop and enterprise functionality.

Exalead employs approximately 100 people in 6 countries (Paris in France, Milano in Italy, Weinheim in Germany, Glasgow in UK and New York in the United States).

What is interesting about this small engine is that it seems to be popping up everywhere as of late. First, I noticed that my Web CEO SEO software now incorporates Exalead within many of its ranking, backlink and saturation functionality. Then I noticed that Wikipedia has even included it as one of its search engines - click here to see (click drop down menu). What is interesting to me is that Ask (which is a bigger engine with more marketshare) is not included.

Finally, seeing an opportunity to get some additional exposure and possibly some new customers on the enterprise search side, Exalead has decided to take on Microsoft. The recent announcement of Microsoft's intent to purchase the enterprise search company FAST has opened an opportunity to grab some of FAST's potentially upset or concerned customers. Exalead announced a new migration program called Accelerate With Exalead that's designed specifically to help OEMs that tailor FAST for enterprise customers migrate to Exalead. The funny thing to me is that Exalead just announced (12/28/2007) that they had become a Microsoft Partner.

I would love to see Exalead become a major player, especially with Microsoft potentially taking over Yahoo and the pool of major search engines dwindling, but they still have a long way to go. I hope that Exalead keeps up its aggressive tactics, increases the size of its index and works on its search results relevancy which could ultimately make it the little engine that did.

Free Online Webmaster and SEO Tools - Audit My PC

If you have not already discovered the Audit My PC website you are missing out. It has a great collection of free online webmaster and SEO tools which include:

- A great (looking and performing) Internet speed test - check you connection speed.
- Probably the best online sitemap generator I have seen in awhile.
- Plus a lot of additional tools...

Check it out to today at - Audit My PC

Great New Free SEO Tool for Detailed Backlink Checking

Link Diagnosis is one of the best free SEO tools I have found. It is not perfect as I am not sure that it is correctly identifying all the backlinks and there tends to be a lot of data missing, but overall it is pretty cool and compares with my paid tool SEO Spyglass.

The site has a blog which gives you a little insight to the commitment and passion of the author. I am sure this tool will only get better and better. As of now, there is no way to provide any financial support (no ads, no donation requests, no information), but if there ever is, I will be the first in line to make a donation.

Now go check you backlinks - Link Diagnosis

Free and Paid Web Directory Lists

People ask me all the time as to where they can find a list of directories for this or that and I am always trying to tell them to go here or there, so I decided to create a quick post on some of the best sources for free, paid and niche directory lists (in alphabetical order):

Best Web Directories
- Some good listings based on their ranking system, but somewhat limited on quantity.

Directory Critic
- Great resource for a lot of directories sorted by quality.

Info Vilesilencer
- The original free list of quality Web directories, now includes paid and niche all in easy to view online and downloadable version! Probably the best maintained list on the Web.

In addition, 5 Star Directory has a great and ever expanding selection of free Web directories under its Free Web Directories section.

Good luck!

Manage Your Online Reputation - Trackur is Now Live!

The well respected Andy Beal just quietly launched his new online reputation management tool - Trackur. I am sure there will be an announcement over at Marketing Pilgrim soon, but in the meantime enjoy. Below is the site's explanation of the new service:

Trackur is an online reputation monitoring tool designed to assist you in tracking what is said about you on the internet. Trackur scans hundreds of millions of web content--including news, blogs, video, images, and forums--and lets you know if it discovers anything that matches the keywords that interest you.

Using sophisticated monitoring and filtering techology, Trackur is your reputation guardian. It does the heavy-lifting for you--scanning the web for any mention of you name, brands, and products--so you don't have to.

Link - Trackur.com

Uber SEO Company

I stumbled on this site the other day and just had to share it.

Uber SEO Company

I think my favorite quote is, "We put your site in the 'Sandbox' to protect it from your competitors". Also, look at the creative URL structure for all the sub pages, they are the best.

Have fun!