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Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) is planning to introduce a net neutrality bill in January, according to Reuters. President-elect Barack Obama has said he supports net neutrality, though it is not yet clear whether he backs Dorgan’s bill.

The bill would prevent Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from blocking web content. Net neutrality supporters say some ISPs have blocked content because of concerns over the amount of bandwidth used by customers. Others have slowed downloading activities for the same reason.

Internet service provider AT&T told Reuters it would be crazy to block content because the customers would just jump ship to an ISP that doesn’t. Blocking content would be akin to shooting themselves in the foot.

Indeed, the bill would pit ISPs such as AT&T, Verizon Wireless and cable companies against content providers such as Google and Microsoft.

Yes, in Washington, enemies make the strangest bedfellows.

Related Reading:
Uncle Sam Says: Thumbs Down on Net Neutrality
Without Neutrality, What Happens to Search?

The new Yahoo! front page went into testing a couple months ago. The redesign effort also coincides with the new user interface, YUI 3.

Here’s a peek:

Nicholas Zakas of the Yahoo! User Interface team expanded on the UI efforts by explaining the goals for the framework of YUI 3:

1. Eliminate global dependencies. We wanted each part of the page to operate separately from all of the others. Each part should have no knowledge of what else is on the page and therefore can’t depend on objects to be globally available. The 2.x library is based on the global YAHOO object, which we would have had to abstract away; the 3.x concept of YUI instances that could be individually manipulated worked perfectly to achieve this goal.
2. Make it small, make it fast. The Front Page can’t afford to be slow, so we needed to have as little code as possible to get everything up and running. YUI 3 impressed us with its organization into small, atomic units that allowed us to specifically include parts of the library that we wanted while eliminating parts that were unnecessary. Further, one of the goals of YUI 3 was to optimize for runtime execution and make it faster than the 2.x version. Once again, YUI 3’s approach was directly in line with the Front Page’s goals.
3. Create version independence. From the start, we didn’t want to have dependencies on specific versions of YUI components as this can lead to maintenance issues. What we really wanted was for each part of the page to be able to use whatever version of the components that they wanted. The sandboxing feature of YUI 3 opened up the possibility of having two (or more) YUI instances each loading different versions of various components while not interfering with each other.
4. Allow code portability. Having worked at Yahoo! for a combined five years, Steve and I knew that anything we put on a Yahoo! property could be a candidate for porting to someplace else. We knew that this possibility meant the code had to stand on its own and not make assumptions about the environment in which it was placed. We thought about the most difficult environment possible: a locked-down browser environment where the JavaScript code has no direct access to the DOM. Since YUI 3 can abstract away the DOM through its Node interface, we had the entrypoint necessary to make this requirement a reality.
5. Be forward compatible. The project to create a new Front Page is an incredibly long one and we wanted to be as forward-looking as possible. We knew that if we created the framework on YUI 2.x that we’d be hard pressed to get time to upgrade later on. By building on YUI 3 from the start, we eliminated the need for developing an upgrade path later on.

The Official Google Webmaster Central blog has posted steps on how to get reincluded in the search results should you find yourself in the unfortunate circumstance of being exempted. Mariya Moeva, of the Search Quality Team, hosts an entertaining how-to vid explaining the steps you should take when your site is Google-less. For those who can’t or don’t want to view the video, look below for the steps in text.

1. Check your access. Log into your Webmaster Tools account and check the Overview page to see what happened when Googlebot visited your site last. Also, check your robots.txt file to make sure there aren’t any pages blocked that you want seen by Google.
2. Check your messages. There could be a message in your Message Center inbox of your Webmaster Tools account regarding your site.
3. Read the Guidelines. Make sure you know what Google does and does not allow for sites it lists in its search results.
4. Help Group. When all else fails, join the webmasters help group where other webmasters and Googlers can help determine what’s going on.
5. Fix your site! Once you know what’s wrong, fix your site!
6. Submit a Reconsideration Request. After you’ve made the fixes, submit a request for Google to check your site again.

Have you ever submitted a reinclusion request? Tell us about your experience in the comments.

Related Reading:
Google Updates SEO Recommendations Article

Over at the Google Webmaster Central blog, Search Quality Team member Sven Naumann is tackling the issue of duplicate content. Naumann says there are two primary types of duplicate content, within a domain and cross-domain, and offers up tips in how to deal with each.

Within a Domain

This type of duplicate content is when the content from one page appears on other pages with your site. In this case, most webmasters or site owners usually have a preference as to which page they want to rank. Naumann offers up the following tip, “Include the preferred version of your URLs in your Sitemap file. When encountering different pages with the same content, this may help raise the likelihood of us serving the version you prefer.”

Cross-Domain

Cross-domain duplicate content is when content from your site appears on other site, usually through syndication or blogs that scrape content. When it comes to syndication, asking your partners to link back to your page is a good way to help Google know that your site is the original source. As for scraped content, Naumann insists that Google is good at knowing what’s scraped and what’s real: “You shouldn’t be very concerned about seeing negative effects on your site’s presence on Google if you notice someone scraping your content.”

Still, once in a while, scraped content may rank higher than your page. In such an instance, Naumann suggests the following:

• Check if your content is still accessible to our crawlers. You might unintentionally have blocked access to parts of your content in your robots.txt file.
• You can look in your Sitemap file to see if you made changes for the particular content which has been scraped.
• Check if your site is in line with our webmaster guidelines.

Wrapping up, Naumann assured webmasters and SEOs that, “In the majority of cases, having duplicate content does not have negative effects on your site’s presence in the Google index. It simply gets filtered out.”

What do you think about this duplicate content post on the Google Webmaster Central blog? Does it line up with your experience in dealing with duplicate content. Share your thoughts in the comments.

Related Reading:
Adam Lasnik comments on Spam Complaints and Dupe Content
Large Enterprise SEO: Content Development

Google FriendConnect friended Facebook. It looked as if Facebook (stocked with former Google executives) might become BFFs (best friends forever).

Then Facebook blocked Google FriendConnect.

The message is clear:

Dear Google,
Facebook is just not that into you.

Facebook says Google has forced them to break off their FriendConnect relationship. Apparently, Google has invaded the privacy of Facebook users without their permission.

Facebook hasn’t turned a cold shoulder or abandoned the search giant. The social network has “reached out” to Google to find a way to make it work.

We view this trial separation leading to divorce, not an open marriage.

Here’s what Facebook had to say in their developers’ blog, under “Thoughts on Privacy.” Read, “I want to be alone.”

Now that Google has launched Friend Connect, we’ve had a chance to evaluate the technology.

We’ve found that it redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users’ knowledge, which doesn’t respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect and is a violation of our Terms of Service.

Just as we’ve been forced to do for other applications that redistribute data in a way users might not expect or understand, we’ve had to suspend Friend Connect’s access to Facebook user information until it comes into compliance.

We’ve reached out to Google several times about this issue, and hope to work with them to enable users to share their data exactly when and where they choose.

What this means to you: the search engines are becoming more like car dealerships where certain models can be sold under the same roof. Facebook and Google will form their alliances and consumers will lose out.

The full text of the Facebook “Dear Google” blog post is after the jump.

Click to read the rest of this post…

I’m not sure about other bloggers out there, but we seem to get our fair share of comment spam.  Sure WP-SpamFree catches several hundred per day from automated bots and scripts, which is pretty cool.  I’m glad that they started tracking it and showing me the number of blocked messages in the dashboard - it [...]

Eric Goldman reported a Florida court made a default judgment that requires including negative keywords in search advertising to ensure broad match does not include their trademarked term. Obviously this only applies to the specific instance but there is a dangerous precedent being allowed.

Goldman sees the suit applying to just expanded match in broad match - but it is restricting the use of a trademarked term as just a keyword and not in the ad as Google currently allow and requires the use of negative keywords to ensure they get blocked - or at least then passing the culpability to Google.

With the isolation of responsibility to Google by following these rules - if that is the case - I wonder if Orion Bank will be going after them next… this one I don’t see them having a no show for a defendant.

Beyond the one to one defendant - the suit did allow for it to apply to any other company by including:

a) from any and all use of the term ORION, ORION RESIDENTIAL
FINANCE, or any other confusingly similar term;
b) from using any sign, advertisement, slogans, internet domain name,
promotional material, promotional communication, and/or printed or electronic
matter containing the term ORION, or any other confusingly similar term.

That would stop them from using orion as a term, the domain they own (but they could be a registered company with the name Orion Residential Financein Florida as the suit lists) OrionResidentialFinance.com, and much more.

They by default got Orion - which should have been ruled too broad.And that the defendants were ORION RESIDENTIAL FINANCE,
LLC, a Florida limited liability co.,
and VARIOUS JOHN DOES,
JANE DOES and ABC COMPANIES,

Does ABC Companies mean any future people trying to use Orion?

This has to get taken back to the courts soon.

Another health vertical, Mindsite, was quietly reported in the Seattle PI venture blog yesterday. Founder David Eraker explained that “information is often ridiculously watered down, locked up behind expensive subscriptions, editorially corrupted, biased, or not credible.”

Mindsite focuses on mental health, and has licensed American Psychiatric Association information that was previously unavailable on the open web. There’s a social dimension planned here as well, where people share treatments and what’s worked for them. This mental health vertical could become another useful, ad-based destination.

In this case, I think the odds are stacked against making this site a home run because it follows the “license and be found” model. You need traffic, stat. How will anyone find Mindsite among other specialized health sites, portals and search engines?

Click to read the rest of this post…

Online bookseller Abunga.com has blocked children’s fantasy novel "The Golden Compass."

The site allows its customers to vote on books to ban. On its Web site it states, "We watch all books being blocked, and when one gets enough blocks we will pull it from the database."
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Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Kevin Martin says the regulatory agency will investigate allegations that Comcast interferes with p2p Internet traffic. He also said Verizon Wireless would be under the microscope after complaints the company blocked text messages from an abortion rights group.
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