Silver Smith's Stream

I was noticing in my email this morning that a few different pieces of spam had much more eye-catching, decorative subject lines: As you can see above, one email note for “magicJack Plus” included a little telephone symbol, while another one for printer ink included a little fountain pen nib symbol at the begining of […] No related posts. http://dlvr.it/16zpJH

I thought the Google logo commemorating the birthday of Nicolas Steno, popularly known as “The Father of Geology”, was a particularly effective logo treatment: The 3-D letters which are made to communicate the concept of cut-away views of earth sections to show layers of rock and sediment were effortless-seeming in their execution. This is a […] Related posts:

* Have Google Logos Jumped The Shark? Father’s Day Logo Illegible
* Google’s Happy Birthday Logo
* Google’s Jack-O’-Lantern Logo Celebrating Halloween http://dlvr.it/14gD65

In September, Wendy’s apparently formally launched their new line of hamburgers – cheeseburgers, in fact – after working for around two years on evolving their product recipe, according to news reports. Not normally prone to following or reading news about fast food, my first discovery of the new “Project Gold Hamburger” was a negative interaction […] No related posts. http://dlvr.it/yh5kN

Google Maps has introduced “bubble ads” which feature an advertiser in the info bubble/tooltip that appears above pinpointed locations in the map interface. Mike Blumenthal points these out with a “rogue’s gallery” of inappropriate ad placements. It’s not hard to find instances of ads which arguably should not be allowed to be displayed smack along […] Related posts:

* Google Maps Hates Small Businesses By Launching Local Folksonomy Descriptive Terms
* The Occupy Protesters Google-Bombed Maps http://dlvr.it/x31xS

The Atlantic Wire reported that Occupy Oakland protesters managed to get the name of Frank H. Ogawa Plaza to be changed in Google Maps to “Oscar Grant Plaza” — the name they dubbed it in remembrance of a man killed by BART police on New Years in 2009. After media began noticing the unofficial name appearing […] No related posts. http://dlvr.it/vMMX1

Infogroup‘s Monday announcement of enhancements for their Express Update service mainly focused upon how they could help businesses claim their listings, optimize through an expanded set of data points, and submit their information to the Infogroup database. But, the press release also contained an unhappy surprise for Internet Yellow Pages companies: declaration that Infogroup is […] No related posts. http://dlvr.it/vLf7q

Google’s Jack-O’-Lantern logo celebrating Halloween this year is particularly cool: It combines two-dimensional logo design, sculpting, and performance art, since it is a video showing the Google team sketching their designs on the jumbo-sized pumpkins, carving them, hanging out with each other, and then the jackolanterns are lit as dusk is falling, until you ultimately […] Related posts:

* Have Google Logos Jumped The Shark? Father’s Day Logo Illegible
* Google’s Happy Birthday Logo
* Google’s Earth Art Logo http://dlvr.it/t2xr0

Google’s Webmaster Help video by @MattCutts about spelling and grammar is quite interesting: In it, Matt answers the question of whether spelling/grammer matter to them when they evaluate a site’s quality for ranking purposes. I wrote about this exact thing in “Google Penalty For Low-Quality Writing?” over a year ago, and some commenters thought the […] Related posts:

* Thoughts On Local Search Ranking Factors
* Google Maps Labs “What’s Around Here?” Feature May Reveal Ranking Factors
* Trust Seals May Be Super Local Ranking Factors http://dlvr.it/pTxYD

I’ve written a few times about corn field mazes which can be seen using Google Maps – enter the newest “skyvertisement” promoting Whole Foods: It’s not the first time “crop art” or corn field maze designs have been used to promote a company. Whole Foods’ does have a coolness factor and logic to it, since the […] Related posts:

* Corn Maze Memorializes Deadliest Catch Captain Harris
* Google’s Earth Art Logo
* NY Artist Molly Dilworth Seeks Fame Through Painting In Google Earth/Maps http://dlvr.it/nmnVc

Matt McGee’s news piece on SEL caught my eye this morning, reporting that Google Maps now sports a new look and feel. The change was apparently announced late yesterday on the Google LatLong blog (I have to agree with Matt’s aside, their blog redesign is not an improvement). The change comes after a few weeks of […] No related posts. http://dlvr.it/nmC8X

Facebook has recently been rolling out new features and layouts, willy-nilly, risking the ire of many users who may be getting upgrade fatigue. One of the many changes I noticed was a new feature intended to leverage users into promoting “great places” more when they “Like” a location: Wasn’t just having Likes appearing on your […] Related posts:

* Google Maps Labs “What’s Around Here?” Feature May Reveal Ranking Factors http://dlvr.it/n6tg0

People have reported seeing the “7-pack”, or local integrated listings under Universal/Place Search, in Google SERPs less in the past few days (reported on Search Engine Roundtable and WebmasterWorld). I’m seeing some similar cases where local queries are not invoking the business listings as I would’ve expected previously (such as for “Memphis locksmiths”). So far, one […] No related posts. http://dlvr.it/mbdqS

It’s almost, but not quite, shocking to me that Amazon has launched another experiment into local business marketing with the Amazon Local daily deals service. I just got an email promotion for Dallas-Fort Worth area from them this morning: Amazon apparently uses LivingSocial, with which they are an investment partner, to power this service, and […] Related posts:

* Yellowbook’s Weforia: Could Group Deals Be Yellow Pages’ Game-Changer? http://dlvr.it/lnZyX

I happened to see Greg Sterling briefly at SMX East today, and he alerted me that Google announced that they’ve launched “+snippets” for Maps, allowing users to share Google Maps pages with their friends in Google+: Could this be what the “big changes planned for Google Maps” rumor I earlier reported was referring-to? I’m not […] Related posts:

* Rumored Google Maps Changes Could Involve Google+
* Penises Invade Google Maps ♂ http://dlvr.it/lWz17

According to Google Trends, it appears there may have been a significant drop in traffic from Google referrals to major Internet Yellow Pages (IYPs) sites: Yellowpages.com, Superpages.com, Yelp.com, Citysearch.com, and WhitePages.com all look like they’re dipping in sync. Is it possible that IYPs have fallen under the treads of a Panda update? It’s still perhaps […] No related posts. http://dlvr.it/lL1c9