Search Engine Tigers

Google announced yesterday that Google Transit has moved from Google Labs and is not integrated in with Google Maps. This is great news for those of us that want to travel into a city using public transportation (there’s no way I’m driving into DC and fiddling around finding a parking space when I have a decent metro system available). Unfortunately, they don’t have every public transit system in the application yet, but they will be rolling out over time. So if you live in / travel to the Bay Area or Orange County in California, Tampa in Florida, or Hampton Roads in Virginia (among others shown here), you can play with it now. For me and trips to DC, I’ll just have to wait…

Recently Sony and Walmart have hit trouble when they’ve been found out for generating reviews of their sites / products / stores that were not actually user generated, but were instead paid for by the respective companies. In the EU legislation has now been passed that declares this practice illegal. Will it only be a matter of time before that happens here in the US? Will this affect your linking / self promotion strategy?

“Businesses that write fake blog entries or create whole wesbites purporting to be created by customers will fall foul of a European directive banning them from ‘falsely representing oneself as a consumer.’ From December 31, when the change becomes law in the UK, they can be named and shamed by trading standards or taken to court. The Times has learnt that the new regulations also will apply to authors who praise their own books under a fake identity on websites such as Amazon.”