Riffs and links from the author of the bestsellers, ''Survival is Not Enough'' , "Permission Marketing" and ''Unleashing the Ideavirus''

Most seem tongue-in-cheek. Some are campy. The bulk don't make any money. Blogging is popping up everywhere, from cocktail parties to online and offline pubs. What's all the hoopla? Perhaps it's the opportunity for commentary, free speech, opinion, analysis, satire, cynicism, and humor.

According to Blogger, in January (2002) alone at least 41,000 people created new blogs using their sites. Some put the total number of Web logs at more than half a million.

By Chris Sherman 
Associate Editor, Search Engine Watch

I'm often asked, "How in the world did you find THAT?" The answer, quite often, is by searching through blogs, the web's equivalent of a sophisticated early warning system.

Today there are literally thousands of blogs on the web. While many are little more than online diaries, others are produced by people who are constantly scouring the web looking for useful sites and information. A blog written by a specialist in a particular field can serve as an excellent "radar" that can rival or even outdo expensive online alerting services.

Many blogs are also useful for competitive intelligence research. Searching blogs for the names of companies or business people can often reveal some terrific scuttlebutt that you probably won't find anywhere else.

This article includes a list of blog directories.

Yahoo! has changed the way it displays search results - and we're celebrating!

If you're No.1 at Google, you're probably now No.1 at Yahoo! as well.

Yahoo! directory results and Google web pages are now combined to provide new "Web Matches".

Suddenly, getting a high ranking in Google is even more important than ever.

By Danny Sullivan, Editor
The Search Engine Report, Oct. 9, 2002