Well, it appears as though Matt Cutts and company are embarking on another initiative to rid search results pages of spammy links, and they’re calling on YOU to help. In a post on Cutts’ personal blog, the Webspam guru has requested that users submit reports on sites with spammy links. Those who want to help out should keep a look out for sites with paid links that pass through PageRank, blog spammers, and guestbook spammers.

While it’s unclear exactly why Cutts and his organic search squad are refocusing their efforts on this initiative now, there has been plenty of speculation floating around the net. The most logical explanation is that Google wants to highly refine their search results and get everything in place for when Caffeine launches.

That said, this will be good news to WhoLinksToMe users who are focused on putting together a reputable link profile. If it works, and we have no idea how successful a largely populace-led initiative like this can be, those with link profiles built the “right way” will find themselves to have a much greater advantage over others. Remember, in the end, cheaters never win.

Those looking to help can report spammy links here.

For experts this could very well be a walk in the park, but everybody else should be able pick up a great deal of knowledge from the quiz. If that’s the case and you struggle through it, make sure to get a print out of the correct answers and use it as a guide when you go about your future endeavors.

Get smart while you can. Google plans to run the quiz until January 27.

Basically, if you have valuable information in the orange section of the graph, only half of your site’s visitors are seeing it on first glance. Another reminder that when designing your website, you want to keep the important stuff in the top left.

Recently Google announced that it would implement a ‘Click to Call’ feature onto AdWords, a development that could change the way PPC ads are viewed and treated. According to Search Engine Land, Google will place a location-specific business phone number alongside your company’s destination url on all ads appearing on high-end mobile devices. Advertisers will in turn be charged for the click to call service the same way you are in the PPC model.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens to the conversion rates of AdWords now that there’s a phone number attached to the service. The PPC game has long been one built around flooding the market, mostly because users are likely to click on a number of ads and whittle down their options based on how credible each site appears to be. Now, if users can get on the phone with a company before having the chance to go with another option, your chances of converting on your ad greatly increases. As Thenextweb.com suggests, Click to Call leads are warm leads; there’s a bit more of a foundation already established when contact is made.

Chrome + Mac = Shiny Mac?

Touchdown! This is fantastic news!

Since first using it at work on a PC, I’ve been waiting for Chrome to be available on Macs for months, and it’s finally here. Oh, this is just great news.

Related posts:

• Google Chrome for Mac and Linux Finally Hits Beta; Very Fast, Pretty Stable [Downloads] (lifehacker.com)
• Web 2.0: Google’s Sergey Brin admits Chrome for Mac delays are disappointing (digital.venturebeat.com)

UPDATE! Well, it only took me five minutes at home before I realized that I was jumping the gun. Google Chrome is only supported on Leopard and later operating systems, making my MacBook with OS X insufficient. Kind of a bizarre move to close out so many possible users, right? Here’s what Andrew Heining of CSMonitor.com said about the move:

Most times when folks talk about the speed of computers, it’s Moore’s law – the theory that processor speeds double every two years. But this development has us pondering the speed of obsolescence. Has it really increased that much? (Or are our computers really that old?)

When it launched Chrome for Windows in October of 2008, Google stipulated that it supported anything Windows XP and newer. XP was released seven years before, in October of 2001. If that timetable is applied, Chrome for Mac should support OS 10.2 Jaguar, which came out in late-summer 2002. But Jaguar, Panther (October 2003), and Tiger (April 2005) have all been left out in the cold by Chrome.

It should be noted, however, that between Panther and Tiger, Apple undertook a significant change to its OS architecture, switching from PowerPC to Intel processors. Many applications, including Apple’s own OS, have dropped support for pre-Intel Macs. But that was over four years. With Chrome for Mac, even-handed Google is taking a new product and saying that to use it, users must have purchased new hardware or software in the last two years.

As Google’s blog details:

Let’s say you’ve heard about a boxing club in Canada called “Capital City Boxing.” You try a search for [capital city boxing] to find out more, but it’s hard to tell which result is the one you’re looking for. Here’s a screen shot:

None of the results provide any location information in the title or snippet, nor do they have a regional TLD (such as .ca for Canada). The only way to find the result you’re looking for is to refine your search ([capital city boxing canada] works) or click through the various links to figure it out. Clicking through the first result reveals that there’s apparently another “Capital City Boxing” club in Alabama.

Inserting region takes makes it so that your specific location is detailed in your listing even if you haven’t included it in your header title or meta description. In the case of Google’s example, the fourth listing will now have a green address line that reads “www.ccityboxing.com/about.html – Canada.” Americans need not apply.

Organizing your region tags is easy:

1. Log in to Google’s Webmaster Tools.
2. Choose Site configuration –> Settings –> Geographic Target.
3. Pick a region or country to associate with your site.

So far Google’s only set it up for Top Level Domains that may run across many countries (.com, .org, .net, etc.), but there isn’t much need to specify your country when your TLD is .nz or .ca.

This seems to be the trend lately. You might remember that Facebook added their own version of location targeting just a few weeks ago, too.

As they’ve done for the past few years, Google’s Zeitgeist has released the year’s most popular search queries in six categories: In the News, Celebrities, That’s Entertaining, Around the Home, Sports, and City by City reports. It’s always a cool feature, because this isn’t a list made by one particular critic or “expert.” Google’s lists are compiled from all the searches we, the people, have made over the past year.

What’s been on the American mind? Check it out.

Remember when the Swine Flu hit?

It’s beautiful out in Austin today, but something about a sunny day in the Texas hill country pales in comparison to the shots we’re getting on Google’s new street views of Honolulu. Dayyyummmm.

Who’s making the Piña Coladas?

Report a problem? No problems here.

As seen on Matt Cutts‘ blog, Google Caffeine is set to be deployed full-scale right after the holidays.

Although Matt has stated several times that there should be no major notable changes in the search results, we believe that social media / real time updates will have greater impact in the overhauled search engine.  Interestingly, Google has taken down the sandbox, the area in which you used to be able to compare results over the last few months.

Our take is that Google Caffeine is Google’s response to Bing.  If you have noticed, Bing’s index updates at a much faster rate than Google.

Social media is likely going to be a more predominant role in search in the upcoming months.  Twitter has signed definitive agreements with Google and Microsoft, and Google has been rolling out Google Wave, Sidewiki, and has better universal search results (better music integration has been the latest).  Only time will tell.

It’s not just lyric sites and links to YouTube videos anymore. Google’s newly developed Discover Music function may be the best way to listen to choice songs yet, top-level sound quality that you can stream straight from a search results page. I decided to try it out with one of my favorite songs from 2008.

Here’s what happened when I typed “Delta Spirit trashcan” into the search bar.

All you’ve got to do is press play and a new box pops up streaming the song pretty immediately. Usually it’s on Lala.com, which Lala founder Bill Nguyen says is intentional, but you can also stream most songs on iLike (which was recently purchased by Myspace), Pandora and Rhapsody. From there you can buy the song as an mp3 or click on for album, song, or artist information.

What’s sweeter: if you don’t know the name of a song, Google can still find it for you. Say you’re driving home, listening to the radio, and you hear “Trashcan.” When you get into your house you want to listen again, but the DJ never said the name of the song. All you remember is the infectious chorus.

With Discover Music, all you have to do is type “My love is coming I can barely hardly wait” into Google’s search bar and you get the same results as typing “Delta Spirit Trashcan.”

It should be noted that Discover Music is great and will be useful to all kinds of people, but it’s not the “iTunes killer” everybody originally hailed it as. Odds are that it’ll stay a step or two below Apple’s dominant music player until Discover can start streaming albums.