By: Stephen Hill | Source: searchenginechannel.com

Times are changing, the question is are you changing too? SEO has always been something which has divided people’s opinion but one thing is clear, time never stands still, what worked yesterday may not work tomorrow. Many people who are classed as experts give their opinion as to what is the best course of action to take and then wham everybody gives it a try. The result is quite clearly there for all to see, the idea was a good one but soon becomes over used and in a short while is worthless. The search engines get wind of what is going on, they change their ranking criteria and that seo technique has now died. The problem is that many webmasters continue to use the idea unaware that the times have changed. Come on guys changes are going on as we speak, take note and go with the flow.

For many a year all people were being advised was that you should be trying to obtain thousands of links pointing to your site. Backward links had been essential in reaching the top five of the search engine results in the early years of the internet but then the secret was let out of the bag. Automated linking software made the task of gaining backward links simple and for a short time certain webmasters made a lot of money, but boy did they cry when their sites were banned. There was outrage on the forums with people slamming search engines such as Google.

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Source: internetadsales.com

Google launched a new feature on the Google Personalized Homepage service. Users now have the option of selecting from 6 different "themes" to decorate their personalized homepage. The themes to choose from include: a beach, a city, a sweet dreams theme, a teahouse, a winter hills theme, and a bus stop.

To engage the user, each theme changes dynamically – based either on the user’s time of day or local weather conditions. For example, if you select the beach theme, the sunrise and sunset on your personalized homepage will correspond with your local sunrise and sunset times. Or, if you choose the bus stop theme, when it’s raining in your neighborhood, the characters in your bus stop theme will be equipped with umbrellas and rain gear. While each theme design is dynamic, it doesn’t interfere with the user’s ability to read and access information on the page. Our goal is to create an online experience that mirrors users’ local conditions (time, weather, etc.) and serves as a reflection of their own changing environment.

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Riding on newsweek statement that 2007 will be the year of Widgets, Yahoo! is relaunching its previously named Yahoo Widget Engine with a faster, lighter, and sleeker 4.0 version. Yahoo! Widgets is now ready for download with a barrage of new and exciting features such as:

• Widget Dock - a Google Desktop like feature which lets Widget users organized their favorite widgets better. It even shows mini-widgets that displays information snippets of whatever information the particular widget has,

• Updates and Widget Discover - Automatically updates widgets for newer version and easier and faster way of getting new widgets, instead of going to the widget gallery.

• Improved user experience - simplified interface, hidden or minimized widget running on desktop.

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