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This morning the Guardian UK published a scathing analysis of Google, SEO and the launch of Cuil. In his article, Chris Williams claimed that the greatest threat to Google is spam. No argument there.

But Williams takes the argument one step further and states:

Plenty of digital ink has been needlessly spilt this week over the launch of the suicidally-monikered new search engine Cuil.com. But the only threat to Google is itself and, in a roundabout way, the legion of spammers and “search engine optimisation” (SEO) consultants that buttress its dominance.

It’s clear that Williams is crying over “spilt ink.” He’s right in saying that Web sites have adapted their design and structure to accommodate Google.

But Williams would like to think that all companies - including competing search engines - are in the business of “reverse engineering” Google.

The people at the vanguard of reverse-engineering Google are not its jealous search rivals. They’re the spammers and SEO consultants. They have driven an ever-closer relationship between the quirks and whims of Google’s algorithms and policies, and the structure and content of the web. It’s a feedback loop that was unavoidable once Google’s early rivals proved unable to respond to its better search results and presentation.

He feels that techniques such as “adding needless internal links, creating PageRank-friendly URLs and distorting normal grammar” are all widely deployed with varying degrees of dastardliness.

While grammar may be distorted, the fault doesn’t lie with SEOs but with writers lacking sufficient command of the English language.

Somehow Williams connects Google’s share of searches with SEO efforts, rather than user preference. If that’s the case, then SEO must be producing superior SERPs.

Williams writes, “Thanks to the mutualistic process driven by spammers and SEO consultants, that dominance is only going to increase, and it’s the only ‘Google Killer’ on the horizon.”

Williams envisions a future “when the favours spammers and SEO consultants have been doing for Larry and Sergey will become dangerous, anti-trust style.” He believes regulatory intervention now seems the only bar to a complete Google autocracy over the Web economy.

Compete has enhanced its Web analytics product features to include a breakout between organic search traffic and paid search traffic.

Compete just announced Paid vs. Natural Search Breakouts in Search Analytics.

This new metric takes an even deeper dive into competitive search data by showing the percentage of search referrals that a Web site receives from paid search, trended over the last six months. This metric can be found in the Site Referral and Compare Sites tools in Search Analytics.

Users will be able to compare a site’s paid vs. natural search traffic to uncover even deeper insights into a site’s search strategy.

Users can find out if rivals are relying more heavily on Search Optimization (SEO), or Search Engine Marketing (SEM). Spikes in SEM campaign activity with 6 months of trended data can be found as well. It will be possible to benchmark paid search activity against rivals.

Though Wal-Mart dominates the global brick and mortar retail scene, even it had to watch Amazon surpass it in online traffic.Amazon.com has become as much a fixture of holiday retail shopping as any store one would care to mention. Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, Circuit City - none of those companies enjoyed a bigger percentage of [...]

Universities have been opting for email services managed by Microsoft or Google as a desirable alternative to running email as an in-house operation.The choice looks relatively straightforward: spend money on maintaining and upgrading email systems for college students, or participate in a Google or Microsoft program that provides student email and other web-based applications for [...]

A little more than two weeks ago, Google’s stock hit $600 per share.  We all “ooh”ed and “aah”ed.  Now the search giant has hit $675, and it may be only a matter of time before it passes $700.
You can practically see minds being boggled left and right, and that isn’t necessarily a result of [...]

Yahoo’s put out some amusing commercials, and we’ve had a good time making fun of Ask’s strange offerings.  Yet in all of this, where is Google?  The search giant almost doesn’t seem to believe in advertising.
Except, of course, that its business model depends on the concept.  So the AP notes, “Google Inc. feeds advertising [...]

Google’s stock closed last week at $637.39, Wall Street thinks Google’s third quarter earnings announcement may come in 50 cents higher per share than last quarter, the company gets two-thirds of the web searches and 40 percent of the ad revenue. They’re screwed.I don’t remember reading the ‘weakness due to strength’ argument in Suzuki, but [...]

The remaining frontier is in the sky, as you might guess, and AT&T’s buyout of Aloha’s chunk of 700 MHz spectrum in advance of January’s government auction is a strategic move to conquer that frontier. AT&T announced today that they will pay about $2.5 billion for Aloha Partner’s 12 MHz of spectrum, which covers about [...]

The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) released an antitrust analysis of the proposed Google and DoubleClick, and suggested the deal would harm DoubleClick’s display ad clients.A Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on the Google and DoubleClick merger takes place later today. SSRN fanned the flames of antitrust controversy by publishing its study ahead of the hearing.
Robert [...]

If Wikipedia’s users get to determine the next president, it seems like we’ll be seeing Ron Paul in the White House; according to an analysis of four different factors, the Republican candidate is popular in just about every way.
In regards to the first of the factors - the number of people who read a [...]