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Searching for the Beijing 2008 Olympics

I love the Olympics! Every 2 years (summer and winter games) I am glued to my TV to watch the world’s finest compete for gold. Back in 2002 the Winter Olympic Games were here in my home town, Salt Lake City. They turned the city and all the surrounding venues into a magical place. I went to half a dozen events and loved every second of it. I really want to see the summer games in person one of these days. I enjoyed the events I went to a lot, but on the whole, I get more excited about the summer games. I am especially looking forward to the track and field events, swimming, and taekwondo. There are always a few events that end up being surprisingly entertaining, so I’ll be recording everything on my DVR to be sure I don’t miss any of the action. I watched several of the US Olympic qualifying events over the past month or so and it got me all pumped up for the games.

This morning I noticed that Google has already started to show their Olympic spirit with the custom Olympic logo for the opening ceremony, which is tonight. Well, with the time difference I’m not sure when it is, but for us it will be aired tonight. Anyway, I remember for past Olympics Google had a series of different logos that they changed every day during the games. I’m sure that’s the plan this year, too. If you click on the logo, it takes you to a search for Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Google also has some handy one box results showing schedules of events such as this search for taekwondo olympics. (source: Search Engine Land)

Yahoo is getting into the Olympic spirit as well, with a cool little flash overlay on their logo that has a bunch of little guys running across the logo. If you click on it, you go to a much more extensive content section on Yahoo featuring everything Olympic. Yahoo also has some handy shortcuts like a search for Olympic medal count and not to be outdone by the big G, they also display the schedule of events if you search for the specific sport like this.

So far I’m not seeing any customized logo on MSN/Live, but they do have a one-box-type search results for olympics, medal count, and specific sport names.

I didn’t see a lot of particular attention to the Olympics on Ask.com, but they do have some useful results pulling TV listings, news, images, and of course web results when you search for things like 2008 Olympics.

Other sites I’ll be checking out for updates on the Olympics include:
The official Beijing Olympics site
NBC Olympics site
ESPN’s Olympic coverage
New York Times Olympic coverage

Let the games begin!

Death Knell of Google: Could it be SEO?

A few days ago an article by Chris Williams was published in the Guardian UK about the death knell of Google—and that the perpetrator of this death would not come by competitors like small-time Cuil or Yahoo!, but by SEO.

Am I biased? Well a little (this is a blog at “SEO”.com). However, I believe, realistically, Williams’s prediction won’t happen anytime in the near future. I don’t honestly believe that quality “white hat” SEO will fell the Silicon Valley search giant.

Search engine optimizers have an indirect relationship with Google (or any large search engine that holds a majority of the search market). If Google dies, they die. I believe SEOs and Google hold a symbiotic relationship somewhat like the cleaner fish and its larger host. Without Google, SEO is pointless. The cleaner fish without its larger host will starve to death or become easy prey. “White hat” SEO also helps inexperienced website owners make their sites more relevant. Though they may have images of personal injury law cases and the Wyoming Mountains on their website, they will never be found for “Wyoming personal injury lawyer” until they’ve got relevant, index-able content (this method may soon transformed as Web 3.0 advances). Thus Google benefits with more relevant search results.

However, I think Chris Williams was really referring to the spamming tactics that “black-hat” SEOers employ. Frankly, I consider these folks further from SEO and closer to Search Engine Deceivers. Spammers are like parasites that kill their host. As science goes, parasites that kill their host will eventually die-off from a lack of hosts. If all SEO turned to spamming for results, then Google might have a problem.

But I’m really not worried about Google’s health on the spam battlefield. Google continues to evolve in immunity against spamming parasites. It’s their specialty. Isn’t Google’s progressive, anti-spam tactics the reason for its successful grasp of the market share?