Text Link Brokers
Rob has written an excellent article on website analytics, and what they need to do better.

E-Commerce Times
Solid numbers for Christmas 2005. What remains to be seen is whether the increase in online sales came primiarily from an increase in overall sales, or whether it was canabalized revenue from the offline world.

Boing Boing
They say money corrupts, but money also distracts.

John Battelle’s Searchblog
John interveiws Marissa Mayer (on her vacation, no less) to get further clarification on the AOL-Google deal.

Web Pro News
Google Base now inserts a jump page between itself and its linked content. This is likely a first step towards adding an advertising mechanism to their system.

SEO by the Sea
William Slawski’s blog is becoming one of my favorite SEM blogs.
Here, he looks at the acquisitions Yahoo! has made since they purchased Overture in October 2003. This sort of analysis is a good way to determine a large company’s strategy.

Ian McAllister’s Blog
MSN Program Manager Ian McAllister refers to a pending MSN deal with a “Tier 1 Internet Company”. Maybe Earthlink? I don’t really know, but MSN needs to make a big move here.

SEO by the Sea
William Slawski looks at a new Google patent (United States Patent Application 20050283468), which focuses on personalization of search results, based upon previous queries by the individual.

John Battelle’s Searchblog
I missed this entirely in the run up to Christmas, but the employment spat over Dr. Kai-Fu Lee has been quietly settled. No details seen so far.

The Search Engine Marketing Weblog
Brad Hill comments on the rumor that the AOL-Google deal will allow for seperate bidding on AOL keyword advertisements. More financial control on Google’s content partners would certainly be a welcome development.