Search Engine War published a post today outlining a test they conducted to see if Googlebot is really following URL's embedded in SWF files. It looks like they are! They are crawling links in SWF files placed on a page with embed tags, and with SWFObject. They are even crawling links in hidden layers.

 Search Engine War also coined the term "flash bombing".  Basically they are saying it may be possible to embed tons of links in a flash file to get them crawled by Google. Sneaky! Search Engine War is planning further testing of Google's ability to crawl and index SWF file content and links.

SEO

I just read this morning that Microsoft has purchased semantic search engine Powerset for $100 million +.  Powerset attempts to uncover the meaning of an entire search phrase and return results bases on its analysis of that phrase. It's different than Google search, which looks at individual words and not the phrase as a whole.

 The Powerset technology has only been available to the public for about a month, and currently only searches wikipedia. An SEO's dream right?  Hopefully Microsoft can take the Powerset technology and improve it's own search engine with it.

 Another interesting note, Powerset is currently monetized with Google Adsense. Wonder how long that will last?

As a final thought, in my opinion, Microsoft would be wise to work on branding their search engine. A lot of people I talk to who are casual internet users (and not people who breath http packets like me) know nothing about live.com. They aren't even aware it exists. Given Microsoft's $50 billion, how about dropping another $100 or $50 million and do some real branding of live.com ? Their SERPs aren't bad, it's more about consumer perception.

SEO microsoft, powerset

If you don't watch SEOMoz Whiteboard Friday you should.  Here is today's video. The first tip is killer LMAO. Love it.

SEO