December 2007: Search Engine Land's Most Popular Stories

Below are Search Engine Land's 10 most popular stories from December 2007:

1) Instructions On Tracking Santa With NORAD & Google: The 2007 Edition - I'm a serious Santa Claus tracker. When I was a kid, I used to get Santa updates from NORAD (the US missile tracking people) via the radio. As an adult, I've long used the NORAD Tracks Santa web site to keep up with St. Nick, Father Christmas, or whatever your local name is for the jolly red suited man. This year, Google officially partnered with NORAD, bringing the NORAD Santa tracking site some of its most substantial changes in years. Some of the changes I like, and some make me think I wish Google had stayed out of it. Here's how to use the site, what's different, and what's cool.

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2) Google Knol - Google's Play To Aggregate Knowledge Pages - Move over Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers, Mahalo, and Squidoo. Maybe. That's because Google's testing its own service to let people build a repository of knowledge. In fact, knowledge forms the core of the service's name: Google Knol. Screenshot of Google Knol page (feel free to use this and those below, just link to this story, please) Google Knol is designed to allow anyone to create a page on any topic, which others can comment on, rate, and contribute to if the primary author allows. The service is in a private test beta.

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3) Tracking Santa: NORAD & Google Team Up For Christmas - Every year, I enjoy helping my kids track the approach of Santa Claus through the NORAD site, as I've written about before. This year, Google's getting in on the action. You'll be able to track Santa in Google Earth on Christmas Eve with the help of a special file. You can also download a countdown for your iGoogle home page that Google offers here.

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4) Keeping It Private On Google Reader - Almost two weeks ago, I wrote my Google Reader Gets Social With Friends Shared Items post detailing how disturbing it was that Google Reader was now sharing items with people it considered my friends, on an opt-out basis. Privacy concerns over this finally exploded this week, with Google Reader itself now reacting mainly to highlight how friend sharing can be enabled or disabled. Lost in the outcry seems to be the point that it's always been the case that sharing any item would share it with the ENTIRE WORLD, and that hasn't changed. But the change was significant in making more public a list of items that generally was hidden. Below, a revisit on sharing for the privacy concerned.

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5) Sub Domains To Be Treated As Folders By Google - Matt Cutts of Google said at PubCon that Google will be treating sub domains similar to how they treat folders on a site.

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6) Ask.com Launches AskEraser, Giving Searches Ability To Search Anonymously - Ask.com has launched AskEraser, giving searchers the ability to search anonymously. Ask.com told us about this tool back in July, and six months later, it's now live for all searchers to use. When a searcher activates AskEraser, Ask will stop recording the searcher's search queries and cookie information. This information includes IP address, User ID, Session ID, and the complete query text. AskEraser is available across many of Ask.com's properties, including Web search, image search, AskCity, news search, blog search, video search, and Maps & Directions.

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7) How Changes To The Way Google Handles Subdomains Impact SEO - At Pubcon last week, Matt Cutts mentioned a change in the way Google handles subdomains. To better understand this change and what this means for search marketers, let’s revisit common site structure choices, how they’re handled by Google, and how that impacts SEO.

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8) Searcharazzi Saturday Spectacular: The Larry Page Wedding Details - Now that the “who attended which conference this week" gossip chatter is over, we have a bigger question: Who is attending Larry Page’s wedding today? As previously reported, Larry is getting married today, and Searcharazzi is reporting to you live from an undisclosed location at the island location, if only in our minds. In any case, Searcharazzi has spent the better half of the month gathering the details of Larry’s and Lucy Southworth's pending nuptials, to be hosted by Richard Branson on Necker Island.

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9) Google Launches New iPhone Interface - I went to Google on my iPhone, and I saw a new interface. I then did some searches and saw that TechCrunch has a piece on it named Google Pre-Launches New iPhone Interface. Here are some pictures of the new interface from my iPhone:

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10) Think Beyond The Click: How To Build Landing Pages That Convert - Landing pages are an important tool in any online marketing campaign. They are one of the best ways to convert web clicks into clients, and can help to maximize your online performance. Here are some tips for getting started and building an effective landing page that meets the needs of your clients.