This was discovered over at seomoz.org :

One of the questions I asked at the search engine Q+A on links was “how do the engines feel about pay-per-post services on blogs, where advertisers can buy links and product reviews?” The consensus answer shocked me and probably will shock you, too.

On the panel were:

Tim Converse from Yahoo!
Adam Lasnik from Google
Vivek Pathak from Ask.com
Eytan Seidman from MSN

Tim answered first and said that Yahoo! wouldn’t try to pick one post out of twenty or fifty on every blog that might be running advertorials or paid reviews just to stop link value from that particular post. If the engine looked at the site and saw that in general, the outgoing links were of high quality, there would be no discount of link value for paid blog material. Adam from Google agreed, but said little in particular. Vivek from Ask was quick to note that if the link were off-topic, Ask would be likely not to give that link much weight, but I pointed out that most advertisers would buy links from highly relevant blogs, not just for the search engine value, but because they wanted the qualified, relevant traffic from click-throughs as well as branding. Eytan from MSN agreed but didn’t expand and when Tim Converse from Yahoo! jumped back in to say that it really wasn’t worth an engine’s time to going picking out paid links with that granularity, all the other panelists were vigorously head-nodding and verbally agreeing.

Why am I shocked? Not because I thought SEs really would or could discount pay-per-post on an individual level, but because I’ve never heard that level of straight-forwardness about a near-grey-hat subject like that before. Kudos to all of you - more direct answers like that will continue to earn the respect and admiration of attendees and industry professionals. Consider me impressed (and thankful).

There is a new search engine, ChaCha Search, that is currently in the beta testing phase and offers the standard search bar as well as a new way to find the information you are looking for.  This is their “search with guide” offer, that according to their info page connects you with a real person who will do a specific search for your query.  So instead of having to browse through the tens or hundreds of sites returned with a regular search engine, this live person will just give you “quality, human approved results”.

According to their info page:

By searching with a Guide your query is sent to a real person who is skilled at finding information on the internet and knowledgable on the subject at hand so that you get the few exact results you want, not the millions of results you don’t.

After giving the “search with guide” option a few times, I’m a little hesitant to say I was actually typing back and forth with a real person, but most likely a ‘bot that is able to do more and more specific searches as it asks more questions.  If you are bored, try to stump them.

With the holiday seaon in full bloom, it is easy to get wrapped up in the shopping frenzy, especially when dealing with online shopping.  Fortunately there are a bountiful amount of search engines out there that claim to find you the best deals, but unfortunately, many of them fail to measure up to.

Over at Investment Judge contributor Steven Stoeterau has compiled an informative pro’s and con’s list when confronted with the overwhelming information from deal search engines and deal websites.

When you think you’ve found the deal of the day and whip out that credit card, take a breather and remember these helpful hints.  In the long run, they could save you some green.

What do you get when you mix the best browser with the best mapping service?

Yes, you get aerial photography of a huge crop circle of the Firefox logo.

Curious as to how the Firefox Crop Circle was made? Here are all the behind the scenes details.

With the news that Google Answers is closing, the Yahoo! Answers Team had this to say on their blog:

Some of you may have already heard, but it was announced yesterday that after 4+ years Google Answers has decided to close its doors to new open questions. While some may choose to celebrate this news, I feel a little differently. We still have a lot of work ahead of us as a product, and continued feedback from the community is helping us make Answers a better place to ask and answer questions.

So what does the Google Answers news mean for Yahoo! Answers? Well for one thing there is now a group of expert askers and answerers looking for a new place to call home, and what better place to turn to than Yahoo! Answers? 

We’d like to extend a warm welcome, so we’ve set up a Yahoo! Group for all of you ex-Google Answerers. Come in, make yourselves at home, and most importantly share your experiences with the rest of us? What worked? What didn’t? We know we have plenty of areas to improve upon in our own community, but what else can we do to make this place the best that it could possibly be?