Elliott C. Back: In Aere Aedificare

Leekspin is a ytmd-like leek-spinning frenzy of otaku joy.

As 2006 comes to a close, a number of major search providers have released their top search queries. Even though the results may be heavily doctored, they’re still valuable insights into the PPC industry.

Yahoo: Britney Spears, WWE, Shakira, Jessica Simpson, Paris Hilton, American Idol, Beyonce Knowles, Chris Brown, Pamela Anderson, Lindsay Lohan

Google: bebo , myspace, world cup, metacafe, radioblog, wikipedia, video, rebelde, mininova, wiki

Lycos: Poker, MySpace, RuneScape, Pamela Anderson, Paris Hilton, Pokemon, WWE, Golf, Spyware, Britney Spears

MSN Live: Ronaldinho, Shakira, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Harry Potter, Eminem, Pamela Anderson, Hilary Duff, Rebelde, Angelina Jolie

AOL: Weather, Dictionary, Dogs, American Idol, Maps, Cars, Games, Tattoo, Horoscopes, Lyrics

You can view the Top 10 Searches of 2006 spreadsheet on Google Docs, if you’d like. The data came from the following sources: Yahoo, Google, Lycos, MSN, and AOL.

Initial observation shows that searches are primarily dominated by celebrity terms, and that AOL’s searches are corrupted by their “AOL Keyword” search system. Google’s are likewise corrupted by what I suspect is manual filtering to produce tailored techie terms. Yahoo, MSN Live, and Lycos share 50% of their terms with others’ top terms, while Google and AOL come in last at 20% and 10% respectively, an indication of poor search quality.

Our friends at the Adsense Blog have clarified their official image-placement policy. Basically, don’t put images near ads which could distract your readers into clicking them. One must not “suggest a relationship” between your images, and Google’s ads. Clearly, they want to disassociate themselves with anything unsavory a webmaster might do to increase his or her click-through-rate (CTR).

So, here’s an example of “badsense:”

I’m not sure if any of my blogs use this technique; I’m in the middle of a redesign and I’ll make sure to stay as far away from it in the future as I can.

So there’s yet another video games blog on the block, and it’s Om Malik’s GigaGamez. Visually, GigaGamez looks like his personal blog, but with more silver-tones. The colors could do better with the bold blues of GigaOM, but the logo is persuasive, in red:

Content-wise, there’s not a lot there. A “breaking news” story about WB buying into Eidos. Tons of ads. Second life gossip and anti-gossip and anti-anti-gossip, which would just be nothing. Of course, they also covered the infamous “wii strap replacement” story.

In their introductory post, they write:

Broadband is transforming the business of games, while games are transforming the business of broadband. Over the last few months I’ve doing my best to cover that evolution for GigaOM, and now I’m helping Om Malik launch this sister site, fully dedicated to telling that story in full.

I’m not persuaded that they can add more to the Video Game Blog scene than Kotaku, giant of game news, but I may be pleasantly surprised in the future. Give it a look; at worst it’s not bad writing.

I’m hoping there’s more enforced disclosure in the future. It’s better for all of our reputations!