Well, this has been a week with some important news and updates. I won’t go in each and every detail, but just few tits and bits.

• Google continues to play childish. It again strikes directories and paid links sites. Many inner pages of directories went down to PR0 or a gray bar. Some unlucky directories even got PR0 on their homepage. Yeah, i know how disgusting this is. But anyways, we just found one more reason to say “Goodbye Google Pagerank“.
• Larry Page, The co-founder of Google Inc has decided to tie a knot with his girlfriend next month. Larry and Lucy Southworth, his girlfriend, will get married on 8th of December’07. The location is still undisclosed. Larry is one of the world’s wealthiest man. As a matter of fact, he is the Silicon Valley’s richest bachelor with a fortune worth about $20 billion. Well, the couple will definitely be showered with all webmaster’s blessing… even from web directory owners..
• India won the Indian Oil Cup in cricket. It was a 5 match series against cricket rivals Pakistan. They clinched the series 3-2 and very convincingly. All of a sudden, Indian cricket looks promising with likes of Mahindra Singh Dhoni, Yuvraj Singh, Robin Uthappa, Master Blaster Sachin Tendulkar and Gautam Gambhir. Well, i wish them more success in the future.
• Matt Hulett, WidgetBucks‘ CEO announced that traffic from outside US and Canada (which they term as “International Traffic”) is unlikely to buy from a U.S merchant website because of various obvious reasons. This resulted in dropped RPC (Rate Per Click). From now on, merchants will not pay for the clicks from International Traffic and neither will the publishers get credits for any clicks coming from the same traffic. So best way out is to implement a geo-based ad placement service to determine when to display a WidgetBucks ad widget and when to display other advertising options. This new announcement however does not effect the Ocyober and first half of November earnings, by the way.
• WordPress 2.3 (The latest version) was a nightmare for many wordpress powered blog owners. Specially for the ones who upgraded their blog from previous wordpress versions. The new version has many new and exciting features. The built in tag option is an excellent feature. But problems came when the blog were upgraded from 2.2.x version to 2.3 version. Everything in admin panel stopped working. All one could see were bugs and lot of errors. Many wordpress plugins proved to be incompatible with this new version. Some even faced problems with the themes they were using. Well, a solution would be out soon, like probably a WordPress 2.3.1 or something. But if you’re upgrading your blog’s wordpress version, you better be taking backups before doing so.
• From the Formula One corner, well Fernando Alonso quit McLaren couple of weeks back. The news i last heard was that his former partner, Renault, are trying hard to convince Alonso to join them, once again. Other than Renault, there are good amount of talks going on between Alonso and Red Bull as well. Fernando Alonso hasn’t decided anything yet. It’s just a matter of time. I think he will go with Renault, with whom he won the 2005 and 2006 Drivers’ titles.

On my end…well i am thinking about dropping my idea on “Google Friendly Web Directory“. My “FREE” directory lost all it’s PR and finally came down to PR0. Remember, it’s a free directory and not a paid link selling directory. The Google’s PageRank algorithms and the kiddish behavior on paid links sucks big time. So there is no point making a blah blah friendly directory.

That’s all this week. I hope the forthcoming weeks have something good in store for me…. and us!

No it’s not that Google is ending it’s PageRank system. Rather it is the webmaster community that is ending the PageRank system. Today morning, the first thing i did was to remove Google toolbar from my Firefox browser. Also, from now onwards i would support Firefox without Google toolbar. This is being done, so that we all webmasters can enjoy our life. I would never want to see that green bar again in my life. So yes, it’s a goodbye to Google’s pagerank. And i am happy about it.

Google’s new pagerank algorithm has been pathetic. Their new algorithms against paid links and web directories has been disgusting. Their assault on web directories ain’t ending yet. Yesterday, i saw another PR Downgrade. Again on directories. Well, that was enough to spoil my morning. Now i have decided, that i won’t let Google rule my life. I will continue to do hard work on my directories and other site with paid links. That’s my business. That’s how i make my living. And i am not going to let any Google pagerank crap to stop me from making my living.

Advice for my fellow webmasters: Everyone has been effected in one way or the other by the Pagerank system. I have taken a wise step today, by removing that green bar. There are other ways to judge the sites as well and i am going to do just that from now on. I think it’s high time that we stop trusting on Pagerank system and start believing on our own quality of judgment. Say Goodbye to Google Pagerank!!!!

Search Engine Optimization is every webmaster’s dream. To be a successful webmaster, one needs to have successful websites. And to have successful websites, you needs to empower your search engine optimization skills.

The fact is, that Search Engine Optimization is the only way out to achieve better Search Engine rankings. If you think you know SEO basics as well as anything, you might be badly mistaken. Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and others, work day in and day out to improve their algorithms, so as to give better rankings and results. So the SEO techniques keep on changing very frequently. All we need to know are the very basics of optimization to help us keep up with the ever changing trends of the search engines.

Keeping that in mind, i was searching for the various ebooks and information on SEO. And my search ended at Aaron Wall’s SEO Book. Aaron Wall, as many must be knowing, is a big name in SEO industry. His work, achievements and experience earned him a lot of name, fame and respect in the webmaster’s world.

Aaron Wall, launched SEO Book in 1994, wherein he shares his knowledge, experience and techniques. His “to the point” guidance has helped many young and old webmasters. Since 1994, about 10,000 professionals have learned Search Engine Optimization, just by reading The SEO Book. The result has been unanimous. Each and every professional, who has read this ebook and implemented the SEO techniques has found a new and a better life. They all witnessed much better web visibility for their websites.

The SEO Book is a 328 page, instantly downloadable ebook, which comes for a price tag of $79. Considering the quality and importance of information that SEO Book contains, i think $79 is just a very small amount. The benefits if thought of, can be many thousand times compared to what you pay. The ebook is written in a very simple english. The techniques are well classified in chapters. So even if you are an independent web professional or a first time webmaster, it will still be that easy for you to become an SEO expert.

Now this is supposed to be the best SEO guide on web right now. I am already in. What about you? Still thinking?

Get your copy of SEO Book, right now. It’s really worth << BOTTOMLINE

Finally, WidgetBucks has just updated the publishers account monthly earning reports.

If you check the “My Bucks” area, you will find three kind of earnings. One would be the $25 signup bonus, which is available even now if you sign up. The second would be the earning your widget made in the month of October. Lastly, is the earning from the referrals which is 10% of what the referrals made in the month of October.

Though WidgetBucks advertising network is only five or six weeks old, i have a funny feeling, that they are gonna stay in the market for long. Not only that, WidgetBucks is gonna stay as one of the stronger advertising networks.

Frankly, i am much too amazed with my WidgetBucks earnings. They surprised me. They really are outperforming Adsense and Adbrite as for now. The referral revenue shows that my referrals are earning pretty well as well. So far, it’s more than satisfying. But are they going to stay that way forever? Only time will tell.

If you ask me right now, whether you should or should not go with WidgetBucks on your site, i would probably say yes.

Well, the title is different this time, however this post is supposed to be the official “Movies This Week” post. I changed the title to the movies name because strangely, there are just two movies going on right now. That’s right, two movies, 20 shows a days, ten a piece. Now that’s what i call real entertainers. Okay, so the movies we are talking about are Om Shanti Om and Saawariya.

Om Shanti Om is by Farah Khan. Casting includes Shahrukh Khan, who is the leading actor in this movie. Definitely going to watch this. I mean, it’s already a blockbuster. The previews and trailers are great. It’s well gossiped. Looks to be a promising movie. So why not?

On the other hand, Saawariya comes from one of my favorites and a very successful director, Sanjay Leela Bhansali. He has always given film industry, some fabulous award winning films such as Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and Black. The story is about a couple as far as i know. For the first time, Sonam Kapoor (Daughter of Anil Kapoor) and Ranbir Kapoor (Son of Rishi Kapoor) can be seen in a movie. Debut film for both. But we do have Salman Khan in the movie. He will definitely have some good role to play in the film. Definitely worth watching again.

Expecting lot of entertainment and romance from the two. And Om Shanti Om and Saawariya are definitely going for the awards. It’s just a matter of time. We will see in few months as which film bags more of the awards. If you have seen any of these movies, please let me know how you feel about the movie.