JC Penney has just been dinged for black hat SEO techniques. According to the New York Times, JC penny was ranked number 1 for many unrelated keyword terms (such as bedding, area rugs) on Google. Once the search engine found out, JC Penny got demoted to lower ranks. Obviously Google wasn’t happy because it showcases how to cheat their most cherished algorithms.

Google and Bing rivalry heats up

Google claims Bing has been copying its search results. They setup an ingenious test to prove this claim. The test was simple – Google made some nonsensical search phrases and started pointing search hits to irrelevant sites. In a few weeks, Bing started returning the same search results… pretty fishy, huh?

Kik Interactive recently announced it had reached 3 million users on its mobile app. Kik had a very rapid adoption in the first few weeks of launch, but after being removed from the RIM app world, things started to simmer down.  Here’s the histroic timeline:

Mashable has a good piece on the Social Media Tech bubble. Do you think companies like Facebook, Twitter and Groupon have over inflated evaluations, with 30-50x their annual earnings?

I’ve been looking at Logo designs of a few companies for the past few days as inspiration for some new concepts of my own.

I thought it would be interesting to see how logo designs have changed for some of the  big guys in the industry. Sometimes having a simple and unique design is all it takes to be iconic.

A landing page is a simplified version of your website that showcases a single product or service.  The web visitor comes to a landing page from an external site (i.e. Google.com) and is enticed to try or buy your offer. A good landing page only focuses on a single message with a goal. This goal can be a download, registration, trial or a buy action.