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On Sunday, Web Guild spread fear around the internet by ‘exposing’ Google’s quiet layoffs, which were said to be upwards of 10,000 employees. And Google was supposedly getting away with it through secretive loopholes that only corporate lawyers know about. They were hiring workers and not paying them benefits.

Actually, those people are called independent contractors and they knowingly enter into those agreements.

Google is reducing its contractor workforce, but it’s something they’ve had planned for a long time. Of course, the timing of implementation couldn’t be worse. Especially since contractors generally don’t get unemployment benefits once terminated. Independent contractors are essentially self-employed.

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Google has released a new feature to its search results. It’s called SearchWiki and it lets searchers, while signed into their Google account, customize their own results.

When you do a search, you can move results around. If a result is third, you can move it to first. (You SEOs are going to looooove that [detect my sarcasm]).

You can make notes about search results. If you return to the same results, you will find them the way you left them last time.

Your changes only affect YOUR searches. Check out this vid for more:

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After news came that Jerry Yang would be stepping down as Yahoo!’s CEO, the immediate reaction by analysts, Wall Street, and your neighbor’s cat was: MICROSOFT ACQUISITION TIME!

But Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, is saying: Not so fast.

Ballmer has said time and again that Microsoft has moved on from the possibility of returning to the good ol’ days of negotiating a Yahoo! acquisition.

And while it’s tempting to think that he’s just waiting for that stock to drop to around $2-3 a share (hey, only $6-7 more to go!), consider this: Yahoo’s VP of Search Technology, Sean Suchter is leaving the Sunnyvale search engine. And I hope he likes rain and coffee, because rumor has it that he’s headed to Microsoft.

That rumor was reported by none other than Kara Swisher, who is pretty much never wrong. The only thing I’m wondering is: Where’s the noncompete agreement?

Amidst the rumors and denials, one thing is for sure. No matter how much Ballmer would like the speculation to end, it won’t.

During Search Engine Strategies San Jose back in August, I did a video interview with Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team. It will be uploaded to the SESConferenceExpo’s Channel on YouTube tomorrow.

Why the wait?

As Maury Sline explained to The Blues Brothers, “A gig like that, you gotta prepare the proper exploitation.”

So, here’s a taste of what you can look forward to seeing and hearing in tomorrow’s video interview: Matt talks about his job interview at Google before he joined the company as a software engineer in January 2000. He takes a look at trends in the industry, including mobile search. He praises an iPhone App developed by Barry Schwartz, President of RustyBrick. And he discusses the Cuttlets, the people who crowd around him at every search conference.

And what can you do today to ensure that you don’t miss the Matt Cutts video interview tomorrow? I’m glad you asked.

First, go to the SESConferenceExpo’s Channel and take a quick look around. You’ll find there are now 184 videos from SES London, SES New York, SES Toronto, and SES San Jose 2008.

According to YouTube Insight, these 184 videos currently have more than 45,000 combined views. That’s about three times more views than the number of people who attended these four conferences and expos this year.

And there will be more video interviews added during and after Search Engine Strategies Chicago, which will be held Dec. 8-12, 2008. That’s a lot of content — and a lot of insights from top search experts and the search engines themselves.

Now, some of these video interviews are uploaded to YouTube during each SES conference. But others are uploaded in the weeks and months following a show.

So, if you want to be alerted when the Matt Cutts video interview has been posted, all you need to do is hit the orange “Subscribe” button in the upper left hand corner of the SESConferenceExpo’s Channel, which already has 142 subscribers.

To embed one of these video interviews, just copy the code from the “Embed” box — which you can find in the “About This Video” box when you’re watching the video. Once you’ve copied the code, just paste it into your website or blog to embed it.

And if you want to embed several of these video interviews, use the Search Engine Strategies video widget. It will let you customize a SES Video Player Widget for the audience on your website or blog.

For example, in the header options, I selected the standard link and said I’m blogging at SES Chicago. For my playlist content, I selected videos of everyone, picked two thumbnails with a maximum of 25 results. And for my format option, I selected a vertical orientation. And the SES Video Player Widget generated the code for me to past into this blog post.

Now, I could have selected a customized header. And after going through an authentication process, I could have customized my playlist — and display only videos of my company. Or I could display videos of everyone, but with videos of my company first. You can see an example of this on the SEO-PR website.

Or, you can see an example of a more bi-partisan approach on the Search Engine Strategies Chicago home page — just below the fold. (By the way, if you register by Friday, Nov. 21, you can save up to $200 with the Early Bird rate.)

Now, I don’t need to explain the benefits of adding video to your blog. Search engine marketers and popular bloggers understand that already. But consider the benefits of adding relevant content from the latest SES conference and expo — quality content that can be customized for your audience. And, don’t take my word for it, check it out for yourself. It is useful content that your website’s visitors will find beneficial or your blog readers will find valuable.

What’s the catch?

Well, if you select videos of everyone, then you might end up with a Matt Cutts video interview on your website or blog. And if anyone watches it, that would give the SESConferenceExpo’s Channel on YouTube more views.

Or, as Elwood told Maury Sline, “I know all about that stuff. I have been exploited all my life.”

Google Analytics is now offering Flash tracking. The tracking code is translated into ActionScript 3 programming language. While Google Analytics has been able to provide workarounds in the past, this new feature simplifies the way to track Flash, Flex, and AS3 Content.

Sprout, a company that helps businesses create rich media content, used the code to track videos across MySpace and iGoogle. The Google Analytics team talked to them about their experience:

What do you think of the announcement? Leave us a comment and let us know.

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