This week’s search engine news headlines plus a few words on the “diggs” of search engine marketing.

We have spent some time over at Sphinn this week, testing out this new forum for search engine related discussions and link sharing. Danny Sullivan’s new forum is different from the one in initiated over at Search Engine Watch, in that it is more digg-like. You suggest and vote for articles, the ones with most votes hopefully being the most newsworthy.

As a discussion forum I think it works very well. Danny has attracted a lot of SEO-savvy experts that are able to find new and original angles to search engine related questions.

it does not always work equally well as a search engine news discovery site. It is not that the “sphinners” fail to put up the most important links, they do. The problem is that they tend to drown in links to more generic “practical advice” kind of articles, which are great for beginners, but do not provide food for those who have been around for a while.

That being said, we have identified quite a few interesting stories through Sphinn, and some have found their way into this weeks edition of the Pandia Weekend Wrap-up.

By the way, Sphinn is not the only Digg-like search engine forum around. BUMPzee started out as a SEO/affiliate forum, but has now expanded into a wide range of topics.

SEO Voter continues to be a search engine optimization and web development forum only.

And now, this week’s headlines:

Search In The Year 2010
Gord Hotchkiss suggests a search engine building dream team (SE Land Aug 10 2007)

Google to Webmasters: Reciprocal Linking will get you BANNED!
Does this apply to blogrolls and trackbacks as well Search Engine Optimization 2.0 asks (Aug 9 2007)

Interview with Google's Sep Kamvar, Lead Software Engineer for Personalization
On the use of Web History and more. Google wants to compute PageRank for every single person. (Read Write Aug 9 2007)

Is Google Shortening The Description Meta Tag It Shows?
Google may be planning to shortening their snippet text limit from about 150 characters to 95 characters. (Unofficial SEO Aug 11 2007)

AOL May Kill Their Netscape Digg Clone
AOL is considering redirecting traffic to the Netscape portal instead. (Techcrunch Aug 10 2007)

New Google Adwords Formula = Just Pay Us More
Graywolf does not buy Google's explanation (Aug 10 1007)

Google Wants Feedback on Removing PageRank Score
Adam Lasnik of Google is wondering whether they should drop the PR on the Google toolbar (SE Roundtable Aug 9 2007)

Google Mistakes Own Blog for Spam, Deletes it
Google's Custom Search Blog was temporarily removed from the blogosphere and hijacked by someone unaffiliated with the company. (IDG Aug 8 2007)

Demystifying Google's Supplemental index
Short and sensible introduction to what some consider a valley of death (RedAlkemi August 6 2007)

Google will be displaying reader comments on stories in Google News
People or organizations who were actual participants in the story in question may comment (Google News Blog Aug 7 2007)

More Disgusting FUD Tactics: Google Bans Reciprocal Linking
Maybe Google would be better advised to set up their own private Internet (fantomNews Aug 8 2007)

Rand Fishkin & The Troll Defense
A search engine marketing scandal? Tune in to the SEOmoz/Aviva controversy (Smackdown Aug 6 2007)

Yahoo Adds Search Suggestions To Toolbar
All new downloads of the Yahoo Toolbar will contain 'as you type' search suggestions. (Yahoo Search Blog Aug 3 2007)

Personalizing Google: Read/WriteWeb Files
I still think Google has much to do in terms of innovation in search personalization (Richard MacManus Aug 5 2007)

Google’s desperate gamble
When it comes to Web search this is still Google’s game to lose but they have made some spectacular technological blunders over the past year (SEO Theory Aug 6 2007)

AlexaRank, Compete, Google Toolbar PR, and other SEO quackery
SEO Theory July 31

Finally, some weekend humor:

The Google Pagerank Update Disorder Support Group
“I’ve doubled the size of the clinic so we can at least treat the patients with the most severe cases of ‘Post Google PR Update Trauma Syndrome’.(Threadwatch Aug 12 2007)

Friday Fun - Help Matt Cutts Fight SEO Spammers
A fun Flash SEO game where you get to help Matt Cutts fight spam - literally! (Marketing Pilgrim Aug 3 2007)