SEO and Search Engines: Which came first?

Over on my AskDaveTaylor blog, I wrote this morning about the fact that Google has, through its popular blogger Matt Cutts, come out and said that it is okay to use the nofollow tag to manage how PageRank flows through the pages on your own site. The article's here: Use nofollow links to channel pagerank.

The more I've thought about this issue today, however, the more I realize that it's a fascinating example of how search engines and search engine optimization are locked in a weird symbiotic relationship, and how anyone who isn't paying attention to search engine optimization techniques -- even if they don't use them -- is also missing the boat on how search engines work and why one page ranks higher than another.

I'll be talking about blogging at the Denver Social Media Club in two weeks!

Thanks to my friend Jim Turner (of One by One Media), I've been invited to come to the Denver Social Media Club and speak on blogging and the world of new media on September 4th.

I'm excited about the opportunity: it's been such a busy summer that I haven't actually spoken at any venue for a few months now, other than a two hour blogging discussion to the cameras on the set of The Next Internet Millionaire, but that won't be airing for a month or so yet...

If you're in the greater Denver area or are going to find yourself in our fair city over the 4th of September, you are more than welcome to join us. Click here to register: Dave Talks about Blogging at the Denver Social Media Club.

Web 2.0 gurus who don't get it, redux

The irony is delicious: my friend and colleague Scott Allen wrote an interesting piece on his blog entitled Pet Peeve: Web 2.0 gurus who don't really get Web 2.0 and then promptly asked people to Digg the article in an email he sent to LinkedIn Bloggers, a mailing list we have in common. Hmmmm.... what's wrong with this picture?

In his email to the group, he notes: "I rarely (in fact, I'm not sure I ever have) ask for a Digg / Stumble / del.icio.us, etc., but if I ever I wanted one, this is it. Please consider helping me tell these Johnny-Come-Lately gurus that they still don't get it."

Now, when you have to ask for a Digg or StumbleUpon rather than just relying on the strength of your message, you are eating some of that "don't get it" dog food in my book. I admit that I too have occasionally asked my colleagues for a quick Digg on an article -- and indeed that it's not only reasonable to do but consistent with the intent of social bookmarking sites like Digg -- but to write about how so-called gurus are clueless and are just trying to game the system, then ask for Diggs on the article... well!

But let me be fair here and dig into (uh, "more closely comment upon") Scott's blog entry...

$500 million revenue across 50,000 blogs is probably low...

A few days ago blog ad network Chitika released a study [PDF] co-sponsored by University of Texas, Dallas that projects revenue for the top 50,000 weblogs at $500 million.

Various bloggers have been quite skeptical of this figure and their research methodology, including TechCrunch, Just Make Money Online, and various other blogs, though the main response seems to have been simply ignoring the data.

But if you do the math, it really does make sense and the numbers are not only reasonable, but perhaps just a bit low...