Reflecting on events this week that I attended; a dinner in Chinatown Monday night where I met Jeremy Wright of B5 Media and Missy Ward of Affiliate Summit fame.

And then, I met the same people, and more, last night, at Mashable’s Motivational Meetup (Gary Vaynerchuk Videos from Motivational Meetup - 11-5-05) - Gary Vaynerchuk, who’s event footage is now up on this site and CenterNetworks (Allen Stern).

Spoke to Jeremy Wright last night about the penalty Google imposed on most Know More Media blogs, including Webmetricsguru.com, before I bought it off the defunct KMM Network.

The traffic today isn’t terrible, between 200 to 300 visits a day, about the same as when I bought the domain with Sebastian Wenzel for our BlogSpeedWay.com network.

But I haven’t been able to get back to the 1000-20,000 visits a day I used to get, before last January, when the penalty was applied.

Jeremy mentioned he had success with a few KMM blogs he bought, using Google Webmaster Console, which turns out to be another name for Google Webmaster tools.

3 inclusion requests after cleaning up the blog, and no real response from Google, via the tool.

But here’s the thing … A conversation is usually 2 ways, and fully Duplex, meaning you make a request, you get a direct reply.

That’s also Web 2.0 and how this last Presidential Election was won by Barack Obama with a brilliant Social Media Strategy that acknowledged his followers and made them (us) feel heard and acknowledged.

Why doesn’t Google not hear and acknowledge me, not by sending me more automated bots via Webmaster Central, but answering my reconsideration requests with a human voice and face, so that I know I was heard.

Lately I’ve been on rants with companies that sell you on ideas they enable, but don’t actually embody, themselves.

Last month I mentioned ComScore, who sells expensive intelligence to corporations who want to spy on each other (competitive intelligence) running metering software that none of those same corporations will allow to run on their own networks due to privacy policies - pathetic, but true. No wonder the numbers are so far off from the same webstats, when available.

Then last week, Radian6, did, more or less, the same thing, and I wrote about it. It was cleared up when Radian6 talked back, had a conversation with me.

And now, Google,the most successful Web 2.0 Company if them all.

Wha!

Google doesn’t want 2 way conversations, they just tell the rules, something happens and your in the Gulog, they throw the key away.

Here’s my point, and I haven’t even gotten to gotten to Gary’s rant with Howard Stern, today - why can’t Google start having 2 way conversations?

Why won’t Google acknowledge me or my reconsideration request, so that I know my concerns were addressed?

Just a thought, but you’d think, by now, Google would be acting Web 2.0 by just talking to me.

And it’s not like Matt Cutts is easy to reach, these days.

I don’t know, the wholething is frustrating, and, as usual, people who talk the talk, often don’t walk the walk.

Note: I wrote this post on the subway while heading towards DUMBO, Brooklyn, for an Art Opening.  I am finding, I can compose and post my work while commuting, and even, while walking, and my last post was done entirely while walking to work this morning.

Of course, I don’t recommend doing that kind of writing all the time, but feel good that it’s there for me, when I want it.

Search and the US President election - Wow! A lot of search and political campaign strategists are on the panel.

Motivations in getting involved in search and politics are varied but unlike other business it never shuts off and your in it to win.

There is no budget and there is a lag in knowledge in running campaigns for search and current spending is only 40-60 million in this election, and that is a drop in the bucket of all spend.

Also, the lady from Yahoo said there hasn’t been many or any studies on campaign effectiveness and paid search. But you need to communicate directly with the campaign manager and to a lesser effect, the canditates, need to understand the utility of paid search marketing and political campaigns.

Long Tail approach (misspell Sarah Palin’s name in every way possible).

Duh! Candidates don’t seem to understand geo-targeting and micro-targeting! They understand TV and Radio and media markets, but seldom do they yet understand the precision avaiable.

McCain’s campaign is very active in gel-targeting and Eric Frenchman, who runs McCain’s online search advertising, said so.

What I don’t hear is micro targeting on the actual DISTRICT level, or anything with RSS feeds.

Interestingly, just as I wrote this, a question came up about bundling to the District level, did come up and Google and Yahoo, while they allow custom maps of Geo-Targeting, don’t actually facilitate that level of targeting.

And nothing about RSS feeds and Twitter integration on the local district level. It’s amazing to me how much of modern technology is not being utilized.

Amazing how campaigns use speeches of Biden (in the case of McCain) to a negative landing page on the candidate.

Also, Google and Yahoo haven’t yet offered geo-targeting on District Level but….. They are not, as yet willing to set up that specific a level if targeting yet, but are studying doing so in the future.

For some candidates, easing fund online is easier than others, and some times they can’t spend it all, so managing expectations is necessary.

Online Persuasion.

Do you need to be a true believer in the candidate and party ideology to work for a campaign as a search strategist for them.

However, now, there are many online digital strategists are on both sides.

Social Media and Search with political campaigns. Blog or not? Tracy Russo says no, not enough worth while content. I disagree. And Obama had people who were hired to write to the blogs, etc.

However, the community forming around a blog often continues after a campaign is over, win or lose, and, honestly, not fostering and nuturing that is foolish, I believe.

The idea that there is not much worthwhile to say is lunacy.

Twitter? Again, not as used as much as you’d think, by candidates. Amazing how much is being left, on the table, so to speak.

But, then again, I’m more of a visionary than anyone on the panel, or, for that matter, in the room, judging from the questions from the audience.

Facebook, what works? Buying admin rights for a group, Dan Steele, from Comedy Central.

Interestingly, the question of what kind of participation exists on November 5th, after the election, came up. It seems to me a new “channel” is being created via online media, Paid Search, FaceBook, Twitter, and targeted Blogs, along.

Justine Lam, worked for Ron Paul, and talked about all if that, and how it took a life of it’s own.

What tools used for monitoring Online Buzz?

Google Trends, Google Alerts, but many of the online tools are not useful, yet, to campaign strategists, yet.

Yahoo, Diane Rinalado, says Yahoo Buzz was sited as being better than Google Trends, and HotTrends, but not as highly used.

I brought up a few observations that I voiced including:

1. Increase links shown for embedded videos in Yahoo to include the long tail.

2. Data collected for Buzz Tools need to be refreshed hourly, not days or months later, as Goigle Trends and Yahoo Buzz often are.

Media Buys, as Eric Frenchman said, need to be decided in a few hours. You can see the gap.

Which campaign is doing better online?

Don Steele, Comedy Central, says he’s surprised media companies aren’t better at this yet.

Excellent Panel.

It's interesting to think about how People Search for Answers, not Keywords according to a post on Conversation Marketing.

"…75% of all those online will use a search engine to find you. But they're not looking for keywords. They're looking for answers."

"…People don't search for 'mufflers'. They search for things like 'low cost mufflers' or 'muffler for 57 Chevy' or 'How do I know if I need a new muffler'."

But those are all "long tail" searches.  Think about it - how many queries will a site for car parts have on "muffler for 57 Chevy" … maybe one or two a month.

Those queries need to resolve to the right landing page.  Probably, an easy way to do that is data-mine your search queries, pick some obscure but good one's and then  put them into Google along with the site operator and see what pages of your site come up on top - if it's usually the homepage that comes up first, or the home page is the only page that comes up - you have a problem.

And let's face it, if a generic page, or home page was coming up on almost every long tail phase your problem will be primarily a technology issue that search engine optimization will have a hard time fixing.  Until you fix the technology to serve up search engine friendly pages - anything you do is just going to be a band-aid when what's needed is structural change.

You can also see the same problem when running a ranking report - if you take your top keywords even, and end up with the same two or three pages for all of them you have a technology problem and perhaps a content problem.

So, I think it's important to think in terms of keyword buckets in terms of a channel or set of pages and try to make those pages the landing pages for the bucketed keywords.

All of this would be a lot easier if you built a site from scratch and had this concept to begin with - but that's not the way it usually goes - usually someone needs SEO/SEM to fix what they already have - and that's hard, in many cases, because you have to fix the technology (way the site is hosted, presented) and the content, often at the same time.

Here's an example - I had a client who launched a site on Tween Clothing and the web design firm created a nice looking site - she had content - but a lot of it was in Flash and much of it was not accessible to search engines.

Keywords - all of these brought up the same page - the homepage (should they?)

teen clothing

teen clothes

teen fashions

teenage clothing

junior fashions

teen girl clothing stores

junior girls clothing

tweens fashion

tweens junior fashions

trendy teen clothing

teenager clothing

girls clothing 

I think the idea of a site answering questions is good - it's the right thing to do - but unless you can organize and bucket your site - harness the technology to lead the search engines to the right pages (identify that they are and if they don't exist create them) plus go after conversions (site usability) over traffic - your going to have a hard time creating a site that answers questions in Search Engines and ranks well at the same time.

Just my two cents opinion. 

I'm scheduled to speak at the next Search Engine Super Powers Meetup which will be taking place on February 11th, 2008 somewhere in NYC (I can't find the actual location since it's not been formally scheduled yet, as far as I can tell).

I'm told that I'll be speaking along with Kevin Heisler, Executive Editor for Search Engine Watch and Kevin Ryan, content director for SEW and SES.  I've met Kevin Heisler a couple of times before (and we never got around to having lunch - which I think we were supposed to do maybe a year ago, or so) and know of Kevin Ryan, but I don't think we've formally met (or, at least, if we have, I don't recall - but it's possible, that I have).

Anyway, I suggested to Matt Mack, over at Conners Communications, that I speak briefly about Search Analytics combined with Web Analytics (seems like a good thing to mix - they kinda are the same thing as far as I'm concerned).

With that in mind - I'm going to throw out a few formulas I came up with for isolating high value traffic - but say no more about it until I formally present my findings at the NYC Search Engine Super Powers Meetup on February 11th.  I'll let my readers know more about it when I know for sure the meetup is posted - and I'm inviting all of my readers in the NYC area to attend.

And now - here's my formulas which were done using Google Analytics and a well known Art Site - I adjusted the thresholds around my client's traffic - but - you could adjust them, depending on who your working with.

Note: The formulas herein are based on my own reasoning and assumptions – they aren’t meant to work 100% - they just get you closer to the sites you want to contact, depending on we’re searching/sorting on:

1. Best sites for advertising to obtain New Subscribers to an website  Newsletter (per year):

Reasoning:  Based on a goal set up in a client's Google Analytics profile, you want to filter first on a relatively high percentage of visitors who signed up for the newsletter from that referral source (over .3%).  Also, you want a high percentage to be New Visitors (an assumption that has yet to be tested – perhaps that requirement is not necessary as it may take visitors repeated exposures to make a decision).  

Clearly, Newsletter Subscribers would be interested in the site, therefore, the bounce rate should be as low as possible (visitors leaving after viewing only one page) and you need a high number of visitors to make marketing on that site worthwhile, I set at least 250 visitors a year as a benchmark – but you can set your own.

2. Best Sites to Attract Engaged New Visitors to Website (per year)

Reasoning:  Similar to Formula 1, above, but without the requirement of Newsletter signups.  My thinking is that there are other measures (which haven’t yet been set up as Goals yet).

3. Best Keywords (Organic and Paid) that attract engaged visitors (per year)

Reasoning: Based on the way you sort/filter this list you’ll come up with the best keywords/paid and organic to market to.   In this case, I’m also considering pageviews per visit per keyword and average time on site – as Keyword Searches are active – not passive – they’re not the result of a link, but of searching on an active need or desire for information –therefore, it’s more appropriate to look at engagement levels (time spent, pageviews per visit).

4. Best Paid Keywords that attract engaged visitors (per year)

Reasoning: Based on the way you sort/filter this list you’ll come up with the best paid keywords to market to.   In this case, I’m also considering pageviews per visit per keyword and average time on site – as Keyword Searches are active – not passive – they’re not the result of a link, but of searching on an active need or desire for information –therefore, it’s more appropriate to look at engagement levels (time spent, pageviews per visit).

 If you want to get the story behind these formulas and get of them and how to best use them for Super Powering your Search Analytics using Web Analytics - come to my presentation on February 11th (once Matt Mack tells me where it is).

I was expecting more of a program where you'd input your requirements and it would recommend what kind of a campaign to run - this Search Illustrated: SEM Strategy Matrix diagram from Search Engine Land seems to do some of that, but is too simplistic.

It seems to me that when you talk to someone - what you get is something like a ball of yarn, once you understand what they want - maybe you end up with a chart like this….. but I don't find, and this is just me, that when speaking to clients, they actually know what they want in a way that fits into a diagram like this one, below. 

Great, if you can get to the strategy after discussing it for a short period of time. 

Graphic by Elliance.

According to the New York Times News Web Sites Seek More Search Control

 "…The Automated Content Access Protocol proposal, unveiled Thursday by a consortium of publishers at the global headquarters of The Associated Press, seeks to have those extra commands — and more — apply across the board.

With the ACAP commands, sites could try to limit how long search engines retain copies in their indexes, for instance, or tell the crawler not to follow any of the links that appear within a Web page.

If accepted by search engines, publishers say they would be willing to make more of their copyright-protected materials available online. But Web surfers also could find sites disappear from search engines more quickly, or find smaller versions of images called thumbnails missing if sites ban such presentations."

"…The new ACAP commands will use the same robots.txt file that search engines now recognize. ACAP developers tested their system with French search engine Exalead Inc. but had only informal discussions with others. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Corp. sent representatives to Thursday's announcement but made no public promises to use ACAP.

Google spokeswoman Jessica Powell said the company supports all efforts to bring Web sites and search engines together but needed to evaluate ACAP to ensure it can meet the needs of millions of Web sites — not just those of a single community."

Sounds like the News organizations didn't do that much testing, since the only search engine they tested with was Exalead - that's hardly enough.

I'm not sure about this idea - it sounds like it would be good - but then again, for every plus, there's minuses - sites disappear quicker - I'm not sure that's good or not …and what about the cached versions of pages, even one's that are supposed to be live for a short period of time? 

The major take on the Automated Content Access Protocol proposal is that it's the News Industry trying to tell Search Engines how to crawl - usually, though, Search Engines don't like those kinds of restrictions - they'd rather be the one to decide how they crawl - so I'm not really sure if Automated Content Access Protocol proposal well ever become a standard for Search, or not. 

Well, I guess we know now why many blog networks are losing PageRank - fundamentally, anything with sponsored links - is probably going to get hit, if not sooner than later.

"…Now, the week following PayPerPost's first conference, PostieCon in Las Vegas, Google seems to have dropped the hammer on its latest move to stamp out the nuisance that is PayPerPost (that is my own opinion and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of all the bloggers here at ReveNews):

Ted Murphy wrote the following on PayPerPost's Izea's blog on Nov 15:

Last night Google decided to go after some of the bloggers in our network, reducing their PR from whatever they previously had to zero. Once again Google has proved that PR has little to do with blog traffic, influence or relevance and everything to defending their monopolistic stranglehold on search and online advertising.

It is no coincidence that Google has gone after some blogs that utilize PayPerPost and many of our competitors services. We offer a very attractive alternative to AdSense and are leading a charge to provide real monetization for everyday bloggers. Unlike the Google AdSense black box, we are palms up when it comes to revenue share and give bloggers the lions share of advertising dollars that they deserve.

According to Murphy, Google is slapping PayPerPost and its publishers because they are worried that PPP will break the AdSense hegemony."

It's hard to say if that's really true or not.  What I do think is that a "paid endorsements" that shows up as a lift for "organic results" in SERPS might be what Google is going after.

But if that's the case, why do they need to go after blog interlinking that doesn't actually fit with a paid endorsement?   I can see them going after blog networks doing PayPerPost and Sponsored Reviews - but some networks that got penalized last month didn't do sponsored reviews.

So here's what I think needs to happen - if Google wants to punish sites by devaluing PageRank - they should explain what the devaluation is based on for every loss of Pagerank.   If they say it's because PayPerPost is against Webmasterguidelines - let they say that publicly - as they are devaluing PayPerPost's PageRank to zero - so it's actually clear what is being punished and why.

In psychology class, back when I was in collage, long time ago, I remember behavioral psychology had the stimulus - response model - you put some meat in front of a dog, he salivates.  But a curious thing happened when you intermittently rewarded a stimulus (in this case, the loss of Pagerank) - people became nervous and anxious because they did not know what to expect - so they started living in a state of higher anxiety - because they never knew what to expect.

In this respect, by withholding direct explanations on why PageRank is being devalued (aside from the argument of "if it should be devalued or not") there's no real explaination of the reasoning behind those actions.

That leaves people wide open to make up their own reasons - which may or may not have any truth to them.  But it would be much better for everyone if Google just came out and said - PayPerPost.com - we're devaluing your PageRank because paid posts are against Google's Webmaster Guidelines - read paragraph xxx on page yyy and it clearly explains this".

OK, then PayPerPost reads it - disagrees - nothing happens, except maybe they get to change their behavior - and get their PageRank scores back - but that doesn't happen now because no one bothered to explain clearly the reasoning behind "why" it's being done at all - by Google (I don't care about what SearchEngineWatch and SearchEngineLand says about anything - I care about what Google says they're doing - that's the explaination that's needed).

Given the recent actions Google took against Blog Networks, including Know More Media and Syntagma (both that I'm associated with) but not against Corporate Interlinking, using human reviewers, I found the following commentary and video by Arron Wall to be very relevant, both to me, and many others who have had some success at blogging and driving traffic.  

Here's the Video, and the I'm put in my two cents:

The problem for me with what Google did last month is:

1) human reviewers decision are arbitrary and don't always make sense and they're applying rules that haven't really been shared (not the whole Webmaster Guidelines thing - but the cheat sheet they use to decide if a blog should be devalued or increased in value/PageRank - that sheet).

2) Arron Wall correctly points out that Corporations (and I know this well) did and are doing the very same kind of interlinking and self promotion that blog networks have done, and didn't get penalized (because they're large corporations and spend a lot of money supporting Google?).

OK, who knows, maybe next month Google will penalize Corporate sites like they have penalized many bloggers - but then again, it's more likely that Google won't ever penalize large corporations - because Google has become too much like them - they're now too much like Microsoft, too much like the big, glizy corporate sites - they identify now, more with the larger enterprises than with the average user.

3) if you have success as a blogger and drive too much traffic (by Google's standards) and are mentioned to predominately in an SEO blog, your PageRank is automatically devalued one a human reviewer looks at it.

OK, now, I understand Google's position - they have to police the rankings …. I really do …the algorithms can't do it alone and there are always people out there gaming the system and they need human reviewers to make corrections.  No one is arguing that.

What we're arguing is the arbitrary way those decisions are made - what they're based on, specifically in each case, and what sites can do (in each case) to correct the issue (without the devaluation).   

Sure, it's OK to hire a bunch of testers to go though and have them look at "offending sites" (that they may hear about via popular SEO blogs, according to Arron Wall) and arbitrary, based on some cheat sheet the testers are given, make a decision - maybe even have two or three testers look at the same time and then take a vote - that's OK…. but it's not OK when Google does to not have the time or wish to explain and qualify that decision to each site, so affected. 

Perhaps, it's time for there to be standards and guidelines - something like the Bill of Rights for siteowners as they relate to Search Engines. 

Since Search is such a big part of most site's traffic these days, it makes sense to me that it's time for some kind of council where grievances can be taken - that is not part of the Search Engines - but whom they must answer to.

For example - if your PageRank is suddenly devalued - you can write and ask for an explanation of why and then be given the opportunity to explain what you did - and if the council agrees with your side, they have the power to ask Google to reinstate the PageRank within a certain amount of time (IE: two weeks), and if Google doesn't they get fined, bigtime.  That's just one proposed solution - but in some way, Search Engines need such a body to answer to, because without that - they're free to make any decision about sites they want - for whatever reason they choose.

It's a fact that Google needs human beings to correct problems with it's algorithms - it's well known that even the best algorithm needs human oversight - but once you bring in humans - they will make arbitrary decisions.  When arbitrary decision are made it's necessary to also give people and explanation specific to them while giving them an opportunity to make corrections (remedy) - or to give their side of the story (in case it was just human error by the Search Engine employees).  That's not being done today and Google Webmaster Central is not the solution since many people still don't use it and it's still just you and Google - it's not an impartial, outside, council.

It's known that Google is unwilling to get into actually dealing with people - that's why the perception of Google, overall, is spiraling down -even as they get bigger and more successful financially.  It's not Google's success that people are worried about - in fact, Google's success is what is powering the Internet, mainly.  If Google were to suddenly fail - a massive depression would follow - too much is bundled into Google now - for it to fail - it must succeed. 

However, there needs to be checks and balances in that success - there needs to be a place to go to complain to and get action taken when Google acts too imperialistically, and there is no place to go, today - not to Google, really, and not outside of Google, at all.

Again, it's not the human reviewers adjusting PageRank of sites that is the real problem here (it's more like a symptom)

Were Google to, in fact, explain to me, individually, why a human reviewer(s) decided that Webmetricsguru deserved to be a PageRank 4 instead of a PageRank 6 - they'd get into a whole human range of emotions - of feedback, of, perhaps, legal issues, they don't want to deal with.   So they say nothing and just change PageRank as they see fit.

That's why, I believe, they don't want to explain what they're doing. 

But what Google is doing now is not really a good, long term solution either; every time they fix one problem, they create two or three others - because the basic algorithm no longer works as well and it's too easy to game it or confuse it - that's a fact.  The more they expand the ranking algorithm - the more problems they also create as they get away from textual ranking to universal search and metadata, clustering results, etc. 

Besides, every couple of months, they'll do it again to the next set of offending sites - and at the end of the day - nothing has really changed - the Google Pagerank/backlink algorithm has to continually be "patched" and manipulated, by humans - who don't need to explain what they're doing.

Even at the cost of slowing things down (and maybe that's not a bad thing, after all) there needs to be a way of regulating the decision Search Engines make about sites - some mechanism to talk back when a decision is made - and to go outside the Search Engine to complain - today there is no such a mechanism
or body to go to.

Sure, if you can work it out with a Search Engine (most of the time, Google) with out going "outside", that's great, but right now, there's no compelling reason why Google needs to do anything for any individual - because there's nothing telling them they have to.

I guess as SEO becomes more of a commodity there's just more and more of the same thing - more tools - decent one's, for as far as they go like the Search Engine & End Searcher Optimization Tools at SeoWorkers which is OK, as far as it goes.  Will it get you all the way home….no; but no tool will.

However, in order to get you have to give the more people come up with useful stuff that other people want to use, the more they're going to be linked to.

So, as far as I'm concerned, those who win now are those who are competing on who can help their communities the most - and often, the best way to help your community (I'm thinking of SEO as a community in this context) is by offering free stuff that is different enough that people want to link to it).  

But look, it doesn't even need to be much different - you'll still get links, like the one I just gave to SeoWorkers.   I'm tempted to think of the old saying that goes like this: "the more you give out the more you get back".

But it's really true.

You know what, there's 51 tools you can use to improve the quality of your search marketing and Seo work - according to Rob Garner of Search Insider - I'm familiar with most of these and have used many of them but some, like SeoDigger, I've never used before. 

Advanced Link Manager  - Performs deep crawl analysis of links for any site by crawling all linking sites and providing analysis of links by domain and gains/losses over time as well as PageRank. Also, fully manages extensive reciprocal linking through one tool.

Advanced Web Ranking - Keeps track of all your rankings and competitor sites at the page level, and maintains historical results for performance analysis. Also, generates numerous reports at the keyword or URL level, and compares the results over time and against competing sites.

Agent Web Ranking - Rankings checker; simulates a browser approach.

Archive.org  - Historical Web page archive. 

ClickTracks - Search analytics and PPC management.

Combine Words - Free keyword list expansion tool.

Deep Link Ratio checker - Analyzes how the deep link ratio of a site affects its rank in search engines. DLR is the proportion of inbound links into all pages of your Web site, compared to inbound links pointed at the homepage. 

Domain Age checker tool  - It is widely accepted by most SEOs that domain age factors into the trustworthiness of a site. The longer the domain has had a positive history with the engines, the better.

Domain Stats - Quick hit site stats.

Elixir Link Quality Tool - Another nice tool that gives a quick overview of search elements for a given domain.

Firefox add-ons - Too many to list here, they include Live HTTP headers and Searchstatus. 

Google Adwords Editor - Allow you to download your AdWords account to your computer, make your changes, and then upload your revised campaigns. Work off line, copy and paste, do bulk changes, then upload all at once.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool - Provides new keyword ideas.

Google Cheat Sheet - Two-page quick reference guide to Google search products and useful operators.

Google Suggests - As you type into the search box, Google guesses what you're typing and offers suggestions in real time.

Google Toolbar - Checks PageRank, provides shortcuts to various Google properties — though some SEMs choose not to use it, citing the amount of personal data it captures.

Google Traffic Estimator - Tool provides quick traffic estimates of keywords

Google Trends - Shows trends in search popularity.

Google Webmaster Central  -  One-stop shop for Webmaster resources.

Google Website Optimizer - Google's free multivariate and A/B testing tool, helps online marketers increase visitor conversion rates and overall visitor satisfaction by continually testing different combinations of site content (text and images).

Hitwise - Provides competitive insights on keywords.

ISAPI Rewrite  - Rewrites URLs at the server level for IIS (similar to mod rewrite for Apache).

KW Density/Frequency Analyzer - Most keyword "density" tools don't really show density or weighted terms - they show frequency.  Still, they can be handy for educating copywriters, or analyzing longer documents.

Marketleap Search Engine Saturation tool - Comprehensive backlink and page saturation tool.  One of the first free tools of its kind that was publicly available to anyone who wanted to use it.

MSN adCenter Tools - Toolbox of advertising and keyword research tools including clickstream analysis and more.

Non-Personalized Google Search Plugin -  If you are logged in to any Google service - Adwords, Gmail, etc., then Google takes the liberty of showing you personalized results, which are different from the "objective" results that the rest of the world sees.  This tool allows you to remain logged in to Google Services while viewing nonpersonalized search results.

Overture's Keyword Selector Tool -  Provides  popularity numbers from Yahoo.  Good for keyword brainstorming.  It's a little bit like search engine Groundhog Day, because all of the results are stuck in January 2007.

Quintu
ra - Visual search navigation tool that extracts keywords from Yahoo! search results, and builds a word cloud.  Good for keyword brainstorming.

Search Engine Relationship Chart - Visual diagram of search engine distribution relationships.

SEO Toolbar for Firefox - Gets back link info by domain type, domain age, PageRank, Alexa rank, cache date and more, right on the search results page — along with many other features, too numerous to list here. 

SEODigger.com - Competitive ranking report tool, shows ranking history in Google. 

Server Header Checker - Allows you to check the HTTP status returned by a server.  Useful for checking redirect status (301, 302, etc.).  One example of many other tools that perform a similar function.

Site Explorer - Yahoo!'s back link and indexed page count tool.

TouchGraph.com - Free link node mapping and visualization tool, good for educating clients on how link networks work.

Trellian/KeywordDiscovery.com - Provides keyword ideas and aids in brainstorming.  The group agreed that most SEMs have chosen this tool as a standard for directional keyword search frequency.

VeriClix - A free pay-per-click auditing and click fraud monitoring tool. (Disclosure:  DFWSEM board member Jeff Martin operates VeriClix).

WatchFire WebXact  - Site diagnostics tool.  Assesses broken links, checks meta tags, code validation, etc.

We Build Pages' Toolset - Free SEO Toolset, including back link and anchor text checker, class C back link analyzer, keyword density (frequency) analysis tool, spider viewer and many more.

Web Position Gold - Checks natural search engines rankings.

WordTracker - Provides new keyword ideas; helpful for brainstorming and discovering new keyword ideas.

Certainly there are many more truly great search tools out there, but hopefully you found a few new ones in this list.  For a PDF copy of the full presentation and all 51+ tools, click here.