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The folks over at Digg re, ucently announced several major updates to the website’s dupe detection technology. The changes were implemented in an effort to better identify and eliminate duplicate submissions on the site.

According to Digg, the most common duplicate issues involve the same stories from the same site, but having different URLs. The Digg R&D team has developed a new document similarity algorithm to identify these submissions in a more reliable manner.

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StatCounter has already released its June search engine market share data which shows Microsoft Bing increasing its share of searches from 7.81% in May to 8.23% in June. It is worth noting that MSN Live actually saw a larger increase in market share from April to May (7.21% to 7.81%), so it is hard to say that the increase is anything special. On the other hand, Google saw its market share drop from 79.07% to 78.48% between April and June, so there does appear to be a slight shift there. Personally, I’m would have expected to see a larger gain for Bing provided the huge marketing campaign that Microsoft has created for the new search engine. I think that once July’s numbers are available, we will really be able to see if Bing has made a real dent in Google’s armor or not.

Amazon has now added Rhode Island and Hawaii residents to the list of those not eligible for its affiliate program. Current affiliates in these states have also received emails notifying them of the cancellation of their affiliate accounts. The changes are due to each state’s passage of the so-called “affiliate tax”, which would have resulted in Amazon being required to collect sales tax from its customers who are residents of the states.

While this most recent action only affects a handful of affiliate marketers, the implications are profound for affiliate marketing as an industry. States have been looking to collect sales tax from online purchases for some time now, but declining revenues have pushed several states to step-up efforts to force online retailers to collect and send in sales tax to the states. Currently, online retailers are only required to collect sales tax from customers that live in states in which the retailer has a “physical presence” (ie warehouse or processing center). Affiliate tax bills have been introduced in several states as a method to change the definition of “physical presence” to include any sort of sales agents which would include affiliate marketers.

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I am a huge fan of Sitepoint and have used the Sitepoint Marketplace many times in the past to buy and sell websites and blogs. Just this week, Sitepoint spun off its website marketplace to a new site, Flippa, and has included several new features and a nice, clean layout. While I think some of the new features and changes are great, they have come with a very high new pricetag.

Listing a website for sale on the old Sitepoint Marketplace cost anywhere from $10 up to $50 for premium websites. It was an amazing bargain to be able to sell a website for thousands of dollars and only pay the reasonable listing fee. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case. In addition to setting the listing fee for Flippa to a flat rate of $20 for all websites, the owners also decided to implement a new 5% “success fee”. The fee comes with a minimum of $10 and a max of $499  which automatically makes the cheapest possible sale on Flippa cost $30. The 5% fee will hurt even more on larger sales where these fees can quickly become a couple hundred dollars.

Maybe I’m being naive and the old pricing was too good to be true, but the new Flippa fees will make me consider other alternatives for selling websites in the future. The new marketplace seems to be functioning well, so time will tell whether users accept the new fess without much fuss, but some website flippers will be squeezed very tightly now when all of the fees are considered.

Despite the last toolbar Pagerank update occurring late last month, it appears that Google started another PR update last night (June 23). Typically these updates only take place every three months or so, making this a very strange occurrence. I haven’t noticed any Pagerank changes for any of my websites yet, but there are hundreds of reports  today of others seeing an update.

Each PR update usually takes a couple of days to fully take effect, so even if you haven’t seen a change, you still could. All I can assume is that perhaps Google is updating PR based on some of the recent changes to its algorithm. If I find any better details on this oddly timed update, I’ll pass it along!

As the founder of many different blogs, I am naturally one to promote the benefits of blogging for companies and website SEO. As the importance of fresh content becomes more and more important to the search engines, blogging has become one of the best methods of feeding the search bots with unique and fresh content to keep them coming back to your site.

With that in mind, I have helped to develop a new website MyBlogWriter.com. My Blog Writer is a professional blogging service that can keep your blog up to date with fresh, keyword-optimized content. My Blog Writer will allow you to get all the marketing and seo benefits of having a fresh and unique blog, without having to spend your valuable time keeping it updated. There are a few packages being offered, but we are also able to create a custom package if you so desire.

We have also launched the My Blog Writer affiliate program and we are accepting new affiliates. Currently, affiliates earn 25% on referred sales which can very quickly add up to a lot of money. Banners and links are included in the affiliate section of the site to help you market our services and increase your earnings. It is completely free to sign up for the affiliate program, so head over to MyBlogWriter.com and start making some money today!

If you aren’t taking advantage of social media to promote your business, you are missing out on huge marketing opportunity. The problem for many business owners is that they simply don’t understand the dynamics of all of the new social media websites and how to profit from them. A buddy of Emarketing Newsletter, Mitch Mitchell (President of SEO Xcellence)  is offering what is likely to be an excellent 90 minute webinar on the topic next week on June 30.

The webinar is entitled “Social Media, SEO and Your Business in 90 Minutes” and is scheduled for 11 am on Tuesday, June 30, but it will be recorded and made available for download for those that can’t make the session. The session promises to be very informational and will include a Q&A session for any questions that aren’t addressed in the presentation. Mitch is very knowledgeable when it comes to social media and SEO and the fact that he is offering this webinar for only $37 makes it a really great value. If you could use some help with your social media strategies, be sure to check it out!

Social Media, SEO and Your Business in 90 Minutes webinar info and signup

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google is launching a test for a new form of advertising dubbed a “product ad”. Unlike the standard text ads that users are used to seeing on search results pages, product ads will “feature product specific information directly in the ad such as price and product image,” says Google. The product  ads will only show when users use Google to search for retail products like shoes or camcorders.

Google is currently making the product ads visible to a small number of US users and the ads will be displayed along with standard text ads on Google.com. Unlike Google’s standard search ads, the company will only be paid for each user that makes a purchase. In the past, Google has priced its search ads based on a price-per-click methodology. Advertisers will be able to set the commission that they pay to Google and Google will decide which ads to display based on the commission level, how often the ads are clicked, along with other factors.

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