It’s so attractive in fact that Larry King is a tweeting fool as well as Barbara Wa-Wa (Walters to you and me). In fact, Twitter is now so popular that neither could get their own names on the social media site and had to opt for something less brandable.

But, the big news perhaps is that AOL is rumored to have an interest in acquiring Twitter. Now the Wall Street Journal has pooh-poohed this idea but its really not that far-fetched. Right now Twitter doesn’t monetize itself through ads, so it makes sense that someone will want a payday with this large Internet property.

Google, where are you? If anything one would think the Big G would want to spread its domination to one of the hottest social media sites for now and sometime to come.

Instead of basing its search results on keyword as Google does, Powerset uses word relationships, concepts and meanings plus other linguistic aids in order to deliver more meaningful results. For instance, if a user types in a phrase or question, they may be directed to part of page where the answer appears and not just the page itself.

During user testing of Powerset, the Powerlabs testers will be able to give search results a thumbs up or down, which will help the developers in refining their algorithms. Google has also experimented with this feature on a limited scale.

But, Powerset may change more than how a search engine delivers results. It may change user behavior in those searches. When Ask.com was AskJeeves.com users were encouraged to type in questions that affable butler would try to answer.

Powerset semantic search may be similar in that it may urge users to type in longer search strings, sentences or questions in order to achieve optimal results. Perhaps if Microsoft passes on this technology, then Ask.com would then be interested since it would take them back to their roots in search.

If user behavior does change in this new semantic world of search, then this will also affect the SEO community. Will SEO’s optimize pages based upon keywords or semantics? Ten years from now, keyword searches may be a thing of the past.

Powerset may not be a Google Killer, but it may start changing the tide as to how searches are performed and results delivered on the Web. And, this changing tide may help Web surfers get their information more quickly and more accurately than ever before.

But, optimizing a web page for too many keyword phrases such as the website’s homepage is an exercise in dilution. For instance, if you try to optimize a web page for the keyword phrases green apples, yellow lemons, red cherries and purple grapes you could, at one time, rank well for all of these phrases. But, as time marches on, competition encroaches and more web pages are optimized for each of these singular keyword phrases, your fruit basket of a page will also drop in the rankings.

The solution is to set up a separate page for green apples, another for yellow lemons, etc. so that each page is well-defined and only optimized for one keyword phrase apiece. This will also making it easier to gain targeted back links to these pages with the appropriate keyword text.

Some clients think that because their homepage is optimized for several variations of the same keyword phrase that this dilution does not occur. But, this is a mistaken assumption. A page needs to a have a certain keyword density, otherwise it is diluted. It also needs to have back links with that same specific keyword phrase in it, otherwise it, too is diluted.

The trick is to be as targeted as possible on a page with the same keyword phrase emphasized on that page and on the links pointing to this page. When these elements are in alignment then the rankings most often fall into place.

Let me say, upfront, that I have never been offered a quality 3-way link trade. I’m sure some people have and they are out there, but I’ve only been offered a link in some third rate directory in exchange for a link from my site to someone’s prime homepage. These I delete quickly.

Second, a link page doesn’t have to have PR in order for my site’s link to be upon it, but it has to have the potential for Page Rank. Some webmasters will do all they can to hide this page from the search engines.

Some of the things to look out for are orphaned link pages, links with a nofollow tag upon them or links (or pages) with redirects upon them that mean that PR will never be passed from their web page to mine.

There are some webmasters who will conduct a linking campaign and a month later orphan the links page, put on nofollow or redirects or use other methods to taint the reciprocal link. So, it’s important to check on these links on a regular schedule to see that they are still intact.

Some software will check to see that links are still on the links page, but may miss orphaned pages. This is true if the software only checks to see if the link is at the specific URL.

Now, since I’ve just stated what to look out for in link exchanges, here’s what I look for when trading links. Is the web page relevant to my site? I only trade links with relevant sites. Does the page have PR or the potential for PR? Is the site itself well indexed and will it bring in direct traffic? If the search engines did not exist, would this be a good trade?

Be picky about whom you link to and who links to you. Remember, your link is a vote for another site. If you trade links with a few relevant sites, you have the potential to trade targeted traffic for years. And, this is a good situation to be in.

But, the basics of search engine optimization have not changed. The four tried and true methods of any SEO campaign include:

1. Keyword phrase research
2. On-page Optimization
3. Link building
4. Results tracking

Picking the correct keyword phrase for a web page is the heart and soul of SEO. If one picks the incorrect phrase, then no visitor or the wrong visitors will come to the site. If a too competitive keyword phrase is picked, then the page will be buried in the search engine rankings in favor of older, more authority pages.

On-page optimization simply means writing a web page around a certain keyword phrase and making sure that phrase is in the body text, headline, title, keyword and description meta tags and even image names and tags.

Link building involves getting links placed on other websites pointing to your website. The link also needs to have the correct keyword phrase in the title of the link. In addition, the link needs to be free of the nofollow tag or redirects that obscure Page Rank from being passed from one site to the next.

Results tracking basically means just what it says. Once the SEO has been completed, it is important to use software to track new visitors coming to the website so the effectiveness of the SEO campaign can be determined and adjusted if necessary.

Of course, although SEO is simple, it is not always easy. What I’ve just listed is a primer in search engine optimization. Anyone can do it. Not everyone can do it well, however, or has the time to devote to it and that is why SEO professionals are most often enlisted.

What customers who are new to SEO, don’t often understand, though is that SEO professionals don’t have any control over the search engine rankings as a person might have when they sign up for a Google Adwords or Yahoo PPC account. Customers, in fact, have more control with Google or Yahoo PPC, but they end up paying a lot of money for that control, compared to SEO in the long run.

This myth of SEO control is perpetuated by companies seemingly offering SEO in their ads that say, “Get your site to the top of the search engines in 48 hours.” What these companies fail to say upfront is that they are not talking about SEO but rather sponsored listings from pay-per-click (PPC) programs.

Some customers are also confused as to how the search engine results pages (SERPs) are divided one area for the organic listings and other areas for the PPC sponsored results. It is the duty of the SEO to educate the customer on the differences.

Now, what guarantees can an SEO give? Search engine optimizers run the gamut from giving no guarantees whatsoever to guaranteeing the number one result on all search engines. Neither of these extremes is realistic. Why would a customer pay money to an SEO when a guarantee of no results is offered?

On the other hand, some fly-by-night SEOs will try to lure customers in with guaranteed number one results that no SEO can deliver. The most logical guarantee that an SEO can give a customer is something along the lines of letting the customer know that their results will be better off than before the SEO was hired and that the SEO and customer can track the results and make adjustments if necessary somewhere down the line.

Though customers who start with a PPC program may find this SEO guarantee vague as this does not give the same control that paying Google or Yahoo for sponsored results does, this will satisfy most people. SEOs have to contend with proprietary algorithms, competition from other websites and other SEOs and even their own customers unknowing hurting the SEO of their own sites.

When working under these conditions, the organic listings are just as the name implies: a growing, changing and moving target that can fluctuate in unexpected ways. The most any SEO can guarantee is giving the customer better results than the customer can achieve by themselves and that SEO is indeed cheaper than paying for PPC over the long haul.

According to Ask, “Aspiring rappers and poets are a huge, untapped market,” said lead engineer Keith Hogan. “Someone will win a Grammy one day using this product. Or, at the very least, an Open Mic Night.”

Google, not to be outdone, has rolled out Google Romance featuring Soulmate Search, and Contextual Date, which is the ultimate search for singles wanting to make a connection. When one tries to post their Romance profile, however, he or she receives this error message, “Profile Upload Rejected : You gave it your best shot, but things don’t always turn out how you expected.”

When one tries to bulk upload multiple profiles they receive this error, “Data Capacity Exceeded (Again): That’s just great – once again, the sheer volume of our users’ thirst for our products has exceeded our capacity to quench it, therefore, deja vu, this service is not available at this time (at least not to you).”

Last year Google unveiled the Google Gulp drink and a few years ago they let slip their cutting edge PigeonRank technology.

Yahoo has also decided to get in the game and buy Web 2.0. All of it, that is.

Its good to see big companies who still retain their sense of humor.

You can also check out my entries, number 56 on the list. This contest is a good example of link bait as many sites like mine will be linking to this contest. This winners will receive a free limited edition t-shirt. If you have a few good ideas, why not join in?

According to Brin about the government imposed censorship, “Essentially the great firewall is sophisticated enough that it would block connections based on sensitive queries. The end result was that we weren’t available to about 50 percent of the users. Universities can’t afford the international bandwidth, so for example students at Tsinghua University – and I saw this myself – had to pay in order to use Google, and I mean pay a lot, even 25 cents a megabyte, which would be unaffordable even by American standards.”

Brin goes onto say, “The practical matter is that over the last couple of years Google in China was censored – not by us but by the government, via the ‘Great Firewall,’” said Brin. “It’s not something I enjoy but I think it was a reasonable decision.”

According to Brin, this type of censorship is already going on in the U. S. and Germany as well. In the U. S., Google is obligated to filter out child porn sites and in Germany, Nazi-related sites are also filtered out. Each market has its ‘culturally sensitive’ words that need to taken into account when delivering results. Google has decided to use self-censorship in China rather than have the government involved.

Concerning Google’s compromise to the Chinese government, Brin said, “I totally understand that people are upset about it and I think that is a reasonable point of view to take.”

One of the real issues, I suspect, is will Google be of value to searchers or simply frustrate them with an overly strict filtering system that blocks all of their attempts to find what is important to them? The real success of Google in China will revolve around answering this question.

This new SEO contest targets Google and the winner will receive $1000 in cash, with those in second, third, fourth and fifth places also receiving lesser amounts of cash.

The Nigritude Ultramarine contest proved back in 2003 that the website with the most back links won. At this time, it showed skeptics that off-page optimization for Google was more important than on-page optimization.

Since, 2006 is a new year, and many changes have taken place Google’s algorithm since back in 2003, it will be interesting to see if the “one with the most toys wins” maxim still holds true in regards to back links being the most important part of SEO.

The contest ends May 15, 2006 with the website with the highest Google rankings, for the announced keyword phrase, winning. Anyway, it should be a fun contest, worth following and there are bound to be many SEO lessons learned along the way.