Over the past few months, cybercriminals have been using blackhat SEO techniques to manipulate search rankings. When it first began, they were marginally successful at following Google Trends to find buzzy search queries and elevating a newly created targeted webpage.

But after a short period of time, these same gangs appear to have become disturbingly effective. Last week, when researching a news story, I found the top five results all led to fake scareware pages.

Obviously if Google fails to do something about this manipulation, users will lose trust and the good ole days of Google will be over fast. A Googler speaking on condition of anonymity told WebProNews a ranking change is pending that tackles spam of this kind. Once the change goes live, users shouldn’t see it “nearly as often.”

A report from security company PandaLabs identified over a million links targeting malicious webpages ranking for auto part searches. Google noted that many of the phrases mentioned in the report were rare. A phrase like [1989 Nissan Pickup Truck Engine Check Light Troubleshooting], for example, only appears on attack sites set up by spammers, which explains why Google brought back so many attack sites in response to it and similar queries.

Google’s response seems also an admission of how difficult it is to provide fresh, timely search results while simultaneously combating spammers. Part of the appeal of Twitter to many people is the platform’s ability to provide real-time information; the live Web works remarkably well there so far because Twitter’s set up isn’t very conducive to spam (yet). At least Twitter has to some extent control over accounts.

Google, on the other hand, cannot control for content appearing on the Web at large, and historically its famous algorithm performed better than any other at weeding out spammy webpages and malicious results. Unfortunately, that was a version of the Web that was more static. The live Web presents entirely new challenges manifesting as the first major weakness the search engine has faced.

The company naturally didn’t have a comment on the recently pondered “link velocity” ranking factor. Search engine optimization experts have identified the speed at which organic links appear as a possible important influence.

Link velocity therefore aids in explaining how blackhatters were able to manipulate search results by dropping enormous amounts of link spam into comment and discussion areas of social sites. The freshness or buzzy nature of a query also aided in this pursuit, and cybercriminals merely have to follow Google Trends and Google News to know which keywords and phrases to target.

The final Space Shuttle flight to NASA’s orbiting Hubble Space Telescope is set for blast off on May 11 at 2:01PM EDT from Launch Pad 39 A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This will be NASA’s 5th and final shuttle mission to service and upgrade Hubble. The stakes could not be higher for this action packed, dauntingly complex and long delayed mission. It’s certain to be “High drama at the High Frontier” for this flight designated as SM-4 (Servicing Mission 4).

Hubble has suffered “significant deterioration” in its science capabilities since the last servicing mission (SM-3B) conducted in March 2002, according to Ed Weiler, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, DC. The seven year gap between servicing missions is “twice what it should be”, says David Leckrone, Hubble project scientist at NASA Goddard in Greenbelt, MD. “We need surgery to get back to 100%”.

On average NASA dispatched servicing missions to Hubble at roughly three year intervals. The long delay is a direct consequence of the destruction of Space Shuttle Columbia on re-entry in February 2003 and the death of the entire seven person crew of men and women. Indeed this final servicing mission was outright cancelled in 2004 as “too risky” by then NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe in the wake of the Columbia tragedy. The subsequent NASA Administrator Mike Griffin reinstated the mission in 2006 after exhaustive further analysis and development of a new plan which includes simultaneously placing a back-up shuttle on Launch Pad 39 B if required to mount a quick response ‘launch on need’ rescue mission.

The overriding goal plain and simple for the SM-4 astronaut crew launching aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis is to save Hubble from near term death and extend the operational science gathering lifespan by around 5 years to about 2014 and perhaps even a few years longer if critical components continue to function says Preston Burch, Hubble Program manager at NASA Goddard. NASA hopes for some overlap in operations with Hubble’s successor, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) set for launch on 2013.

Hubble has set “A Standard of Excellence” says Ed Weiler since the first servicing mission (SM-1) in 1993 when astronauts installed new instruments and corrective optics for the flawed primary mirror. Now however, “Hubble currently has only 3 working science channels. The Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC-2) is 15 years old and getting a little bit long on the tooth and will be replaced on this mission” adds David Leckrone. After SM-4, Hubble will have 14 channels, 11 of them new. Weiler stated that if all goes well, “Hubble will be at the apex of its science capabilities and will never have been better”.

During the scheduled 11 day flight, four highly trained astronauts will conduct 5 back-to-back spacewalks (or EVAs) in a bold attempt to repair, refurbish, and replace science instruments and vital equipment to ensure that Hubble is at the cutting edge of science discoveries into the next decade.

The mission will put in place state-of-the-art technology that improves the telescopes discovery power by 10 to 70 times. Astronauts will install two new science instruments and repair two inactive ones, install new thermal insulation blankets and batteries, replace all 6 gyroscopes, perform maintenance on critical subsystems and components and attach a docking mechanism for a potential future de-orbit mission or Orion capsule docking. The result will be six working, complementary science instruments with discovery capabilities far beyond what is now available and that will contribute significantly to the expansion of human knowledge.

The seven member astronaut crew for STS-125 is a mix of veterans and first time space flyers for what will be the 126th shuttle flight. Indeed, three of the astronauts flew together on the last Hubble servicing mission including repeat Shuttle Commander Scott Altman, lead space walker John Grunsfeld (an astronomer on his 3rd trip to Hubble), and fellow Hubble spacewalker Mike Massimino.

This will be the first spaceflight for Shuttle pilot Gregory Johnson and Mission Specialist Megan McArthur who’s job is to grab Hubble with the robotic arm on Flight Day 3 and berth it safely and securely in the cavernous shuttle cargo bay. Rookie Mission Specialists Michael Good and Andrew Feustel round out the team of 4 spacewalkers who will work in alternating teams of two.

SM-4 blast-off was suddenly postponed from last October 2008 when a circuit in the crucial data handling unit which commands and controls all the science instruments and communications relay unexpectedly failed barely two weeks prior to blast-off. Due to the ensuing lengthy launch delay NASA officials opted to destack the shuttle components and I was fortunate to be on hand and photograph the rollback of Atlantis off Launch Pad 39 A and back into the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB).

Hubble cannot function without the data unit known as the Science Instrument Command & Data Handling Unit (SIC &DH). Luckily the team was able to switch Hubble operations over to the built in back-up redundant “B” side command unit. In fact as Ed Weiler pointed out, it was quite fortunate that the unit malfunction occurred before the launch attempt or the entire repair effort could have been for naught. This allowed the team to check and certify a partially disassembled ground spare SIC &DH unit which actually had never been flight qualified. And it has taken a Herculean effort by all involved to conduct performance testing and get the data handling unit ready and primed for installation on this mission as one of the top priority goals.

NASA managers gave the ‘Go’ for STS-125 launch following the customary Flight Readiness Review (FRR) last week on April 30 after assessing the risks of the mission and determining that the shuttle’s equipment and support systems are ready for flight. The back-up shuttle Endeavour sits on standby at Pad 39 B ready to fly within about a week in the unlikely event an emergency rescue mission is necessary due to irreparable damage to the heat shield tiles or other problems. Atlantis cannot fly to the International Space Station as a ‘safe haven’ for the human crew and has limited life sustaining supplies.

With Atlantis lift off now just 4 days away, launch and training preparations are in their final stages and the crew has entered the standard pre-launch quarantine. The crew is scheduled to arrive in Florida on Friday afternoon May 8 and the launch countdown begins at 4 PM, events which I hope to report on.

I won’t make the intro long. So here’s what’s I want to post. There are times before where I receive an instant message from an unknown Yahoo! ID. Well, simply, that was spamming. I suspect the spammers were able to get my email address from forums or at the Yahoo! Chatrooms. But then lately (I believe it started last year), I am receiving “wierd” IMs from my yahoo buddies (those are my friends). The first one, as I recalled, was in a different language (Korean or something). I then asked that friend if some one else was using here computer. She told me nobody’s using her PC aside from her, I suspected an account hacking.

I then asked some “pro” regarding this and they told me that most probably, this was caused by a malware or a “worm”. I asked my friend to do a virus scan. She wiped out her hard drive and made a fresh install. Since then, there were no more “spam” from her.

However, another buddy got “infected” by this and sends out IMs also on a different language. But lately, I was surprised because one of my buddies were sending me IMs (in English) regarding a “diet pill” (sample of the message below). I thought he was just promoting something. But when almost 5 buddies were sending the message, I was alarmed that they might be infected by a worm or malware.

Yesterday, I asked my brother if he was receiving messages like that and he said yes. I the asked if he received one from me, I believe he said no but when I came to office, he had sent me an email with a message coming from me. We talked in the morning and the message was timestamped at 10:35 in the evening.. I left home 10 in the evening.
Before the message reach you, your “buddy” will first “buzz” (hitting ctrl+g on yahoo messenger client will buzz or shake the other contacts IM window to get attention) you and then send out the message. If you could notice in the image, the buzz was made 10:35:01pm and the message was sent at the exact same second. With the length of that message, it is imposible to type it in split second, unless you copy – paste very quickly. The worst thing is, I am using Pidgin, an opensource, multi platform/protocol (you can have AIM, Gtalk, YM, IRC, multiple accounts on same protocol) instant messenging client. And this program doesn’t have the “buzz” feature. I am sure my wife didnt’ use YM cause she knew about Pidgin. (Thought I’m not going to make this long??)

So the question is, is my account being “hacked”. Was someone able to figure out the passwords of these users (including me) and then send spam to all our contact on our list? Or it is a worm the controls not the IM client, but the connection itself so it can send messages and command without opening an IM windows and execute a feature (the “buzz”) even if it is not supported by your client. Most probably it is a worm or malware.

I tried searching the net but not enough info. My brother gave me a link to a forum (on a different language). But when I try google’s transaltor, it is filtered in our office. So my resolution is to do a full system scan. Also run anti-malware/spyware scan. Then reformat and reinstall everything (which I will be doing anyway since my partitioning sucks), and delete any programs I downloaded from the net that I don’t need (well, those are clean programs, but I don’t need it).

Another question is, how did I get that malware/worm. Honestly, I don’t know. There are actually 3 computers at home. Two desktops and a laptop. The other desktop, is owned by my wife’s sister. I used to secure that computer but my wife’s nephew wants to do it “his way”. I turned of file and print sharing then. However the laptop was being used by my father-in-law and other people. File and print sharing is active on that one. In any case, some worm/malware can penetrate other computers on the network even if file and print sharing is off. And there are viruses, worms, and malware on the other desktop.

The laptop’s LCD is broken, and I already disconnected the other desktop from the network. Maybe this time, everything will be fine after reinstall.

Lesson to learn: Don’t trust everything on the net (websites/files/etc.) and always do a system scan (anti malware/spyware etc….) once in a while. And buy a good router with good firewall settings (that’s what I’m going to do).

Google first introduced Quality Score years ago, but changes they rolled out in August of 2008 recently increased visibility of the score in the AdWords interface and via their API, and a great new video by Google Chief Economist Hal Varian has pushed the discussion to a fever pitch.

Part of the appeal clearly is the fact that it’s a numeric value judgement Google is making about our keywords and account configuration. Like PageRank before it, as a search community we’ve proven the ability to go slightly bonkers about Google numbers that indicate and/or drive our success.

But just how important is Quality Score, and how significantly should it factor into the way PPC campaigns are managed?

It turns out Quality Score actually is a big deal, one that you ignore at your own risk and expense. The reason boils down to its inclusion in two formulas that Google uses to determine where (and if) your ads appear and how much you pay for clicks.

The first is the formula for Ad Rank. This is the math that decides which ads appear in the top slot, which sit in position #2, and so on all the way down to the point at which ads don’t get shown at all. The formula is:

Ad Rank = MaxCPC x Quality Score

Right there we see the importance of Quality Score. It’s equally as important as your bid in terms of when and where your ads are positioned. It’s the sweat-equity of PPC. A chance to out-gun the big spenders with your wit, savvy, charm and hard work.

So if your keyword earns a Quality Score of 20 and your nearest competitor earns only a Quality Score of 10 for that same keyword, your $2 MaxCPC will earn you a higher Ad Rank (and display position) than your competitor’s $3 MaxCPC. Your Ad Rank = 40 (20 x 2) while their Ad Rank = 30 (10 x 3).

If two competitors have similar or equal bids, obviously the higher Quality Score will earn a higher position.

And since there are often more advertisers than available display slots, the Ad Rank impact of Quality Score in many cases is the difference between an displaying and not displaying at all.

A discount card or a tax?

After Quality Score is used to determine the position of your ad, it is used again to calculate how much you’ll pay for each click.

The formula for your CPC on any keyword is based on the Ad Rank of the advertiser who scored just below you and your Quality Score.

Actual CPC = (Ad Rank just below yours ÷ Quality Score) + $0.01

Using the previous example, our Ad Rank was 40 while our competitors’ Ad Rank was 30. Our cost-per-click is then calculated as 30/20 + $0.01 or $1.51.

For every point (or fraction of a point) our Quality Score goes up, our cost-per-click goes down. And each rise in our Quality Score literally costs us less money on every click.

Assuming that the average Quality Score is 7 (which is our experience), earning a Quality Score of 10 is like getting a 30% discount. If your Quality Score is 5, then you’re paying a 40% per-click premium.

These are quite approximate values, because the numbers Google reports to us as Quality Scores aren’t the actual numbers they use in their calculations. We can assume they have much more precision than they share, and their numbers may or may not be exactly proportional to those they show us.

Click-through-rate drives Quality Score

There is no doubt Quality Score plays a critical role in your success with the keywords you buy. That part of the ‘hype’ is real.

But there is a challenge in sorting out all the claims of what to do about it. Google has listed the elements considered in their Quality Score calculation, but they have not precisely defined the role of each in their calculations.

As Google’s Dr. Varian says in his video, click-through-rate (CTR) is the largest component of the Quality Score calculation. Get a better CTR than your competitors and you should get a better Quality Score.

The CTR on the specific keyword is most important, but CTR is also tracked for each target URL and for the entire account—which means earning a high CTR for one keyword can have a broad positive effect.

The most direct and effective way to improve your CTR is by writing better text ads, and testing them to prove they’re better. Narrowing the breadth of keywords in any ad group so that all the queries those keywords attract are well suited to the text ads the ad group contains is also a very reasonable strategy.

Note that a great CTR from one keyword may be a lousy CTR for another. I don’t believe there are any absolutes so you can’t tell how good your click-through-rate is without knowing those of your competitors. You just have to strive for the best you can achieve.

Google has made clear that Quality Score is computed in real time and takes into account the search query and geography of the searcher. So if you get great CTR from New York and lousy CTR from Kansas, your Quality Scores should react accordingly.

Speaking at SMX West, Nicholas Fox, Director of Product Management at Google characterized the focus on CTR as the primary driver of Quality Score as relying on the “wisdom of crowds”—if lots of people “tell” Google that an ad is “high quality” by clicking on it, then Google believes it’s a high quality ad.

The non-CTR factors

It is my belief that most of the other Quality Score factors—including all the forms of relevance and the landing page items—are only seriously meaningful before a particular keyword has a well established CTR track record. In other words, Google use these factors to provide clues about the potential performance of a keyword that hasn’t yet proven itself. But once it has, they’ll go with the actual results.

The one exception is that landing pages which are deceptive, entirely unrelated, extremely slow or have other shady characteristics can lead to what is in effect a Quality Score penalty. Conversely, reasonably relevant and generally standard or even hyper-optimized landing pages can’t help Quality Score. In fact, Google has confirmed that landing page quality is not a factor when Quality Score is used in the Ad-Rank formula.

In my view the bloggers and tweeters out there who suggest that every keyword must be in the text ad and on the landing page, or that super-narrow ad groups, or any other non-CTR “secrets” are the way to achieve high Quality Score are mistaken. Like the SEO “keyword density” crowd of yesteryear, they’re reading more into the tea leaves that is there to be read.

Life in a Quality Score world

It wasn’t long ago that paid search managers could afford to ignore Quality Score in AdWords. Not Anymore. Today your low Quality Score keywords are lowering your volume and ROI, and your high Quality Score keywords are boosting your results.

You can monitor the Quality Score of your keywords easily in the new AdWords interface, and in a few of the better paid search management tools. By: Craig Danuloff

What’s so exciting about an API? The API will allow developers to extend Google Analytics in new and creative ways that benefit developers, organizations and end users. Large organizations and agencies now have a standardized platform for integrating Analytics data with their own business data. Developers can integrate Google Analytics into their existing products and create standalone applications that they sell. Users could see snapshots of their Analytics data in developer created dashboards and gadgets. Individuals and business owners will have opportunities to access their Google Analytics information in a variety of new ways.

For example, how would you like to access Google Analytics from your phone? Now you can, with this Android application from Actual Metrics. How about accessing Analytics from your desktop? It’s here from Desktop-Reporting.

And if you’re interested in seeing how integrating Google Analytics can enhance your own business take a look at these examples. MailChimp has integrated Google Analytics into their email marketing platform and ShufflePoint® provides a service for adding Google Analytics data into PowerPoint® presentations. See how youcalc has created apps that allow you to mashup Google Analytics, AdWords, Salesforce.com and other enterprise data.

Check out more customer examples on our developer site. These apps demonstrate only some of the creative possibilities and we know you’ll discover other interesting ways to use the Analytics API.

So, how does the API work?

The Data Export API is easy to use and provides read-only access to all your Analytics data.  Any data that’s available through the standard Analytics web interface is available through the API. The Analytics API is a Google Data API. This is the same API protocol for Google Calendar, Finance and Webmaster Tools.  If you’ve used any of these APIs, the Google Analytics Data Export API will look very familiar to you.

For the JavaScript and Java programming languages, we’ve provided client libraries to abstract and simplify the process. We’re also working on supporting more programming languages. In the meantime, for any programming language you want to use you can make requests directly to the API over HTTP and access the data in XML.

How do I get started?

There are three key resources you’ll want to use when you start developing on top of the Google Analytics API.  First, all the documentation you need can be found on our Developer site at Google Code. Here you’ll find example code, a developer guide, FAQ, and the complete API reference.

Second, be sure to sign up for the Google Analytics API Notify email group so you get the key announcements on feature updates, code changes and other service related news that relate to the API. (Don’t worry, this will be a low-traffic email list and we promise to only send emails when there is something important that affects developers.)

Finally, you’ll want to become a part of the Google Analytics developer community by joining the Google Analytics APIs Group. This user forum is a great way to share ideas and get feedback from other developers. We also check in on these forums so let us know what you think about the API there, and share your ideas and your applications with us. We look forward to seeing your creativity! By: Nick Mihailovski and the Google Analytics API Team

One is “Similar Images” which uses the colors and shapes of one image to become the basis for a subsequent search on similar images. For example, I searched for “Jerusalem” and two clicks later on pictures that are closest to the view I want, and I have about 600 pics simply of the Temple Mount viewed from the Mount of Olives.

The other new release is Google News Timeline. It is mainly intended for more recent history, and one can specify a view (day/week/month/year/decade), a date, and then apply additional filters either by search term or news source. (Click on “Add More Queries” to include additional Wikipedia items, a number of newpapers [Pittsburgh Post and St. Petersburg Times] or magazines [Time, Baseball Digest, Popular Science, and Vegetarian Times: go figure!], and other options with varying degrees of accessible material.) It appears that one can only go back to 1400 to find material.

For more ancient events, the other option you have is to use one of the Google Labs Experimental projects and enable “Alternate views for search results.” Google also updated their Google Labs page, and you can have some fun checking out some of their other projects.

The agreement with Oracle came about two weeks after I.B.M. ended its talks with Sun. The Sun board balked at that deal after I.B.M. lowered its offer to $9.40 a share from $10. Still, Monday’s deal represented a 42 percent premium over Sun’s closing price of $6.69 on Friday.

Oracle and Sun said in a statement that net of Sun’s cash and debt, the deal was valued at $5.6 billion.

Lawrence J. Ellison, Oracle’s co-founder and chief executive, and Scott G. McNealy, Sun’s co-founder and chairman, have been two of Silicon Valley’s closest allies over the last 20 years. Their companies turned into two of the superstars of the Internet build out, and both executives made ribbing their rival Microsoft a favored pastime.

Historically, most of Oracle’s database sales have occurred in tandem with Sun’s servers. Over the last few years, however, Oracle has moved to make Hewlett-Packard and Dell stronger allies, as Sun’s business has declined.

“This combination is a natural evolution of our relationship and will be an industry-defining event,” Mr. McNealy said.

Sun’s directors have unanimously approved the transaction. It is anticipated to close this summer, subject to Sun stockholder approval, the companies said in a statement.

Oracle said it expected the purchase to add at least 15 cents a share to its adjusted earnings in the first year after the deal closes. The company also estimated that Sun would contribute more than $1.5 billion to Oracle’s adjusted profit in the first year and more than $2 billion in the second year.

Sun shares were up 36 percent, to $9.10, in early trading, while Oracle fell 5.6 percent, to $17.99.

The deal immediately disrupts the traditional relationships formed between some of the technology industry’s largest players and thrusts Oracle into the hardware business.

Oracle, for example, has long-standing partnerships with Sun’s rivals, including Hewlett-Packard and Dell. These sellers of server computers work to fine tune Oracle’s database and business software for their computers.

I.B.M., which competes against Oracle in the software market, also comes under new threats with the deal.

For years, I.B.M. has used its homemade servers as leverage for selling higher-profit database and business software. With Sun, Oracle opens up the same opportunity and gains access to thousands of existing Sun customers.

In addition, Oracle has now obtained the MySQL database, which Sun acquired last year for $1 billion. The open-source software has proved popular with companies looking to expand their Internet operations.

Last year, Oracle began a flirtation with the hardware market. It started reselling a server computer from H.P. that relied on its software for managing and analyzing large volumes of data. By: Ashlee Vance

Less than four years later, the do-it-yourself social network site with a $500 million valuation has reached another major milestone — 1,000,000 Ning networks.

On their way to 1,000,000 social networks, Ning’s come along way from their early days, when they experimented with three distinct sites that let you build your own YouTube, Flickr, or MySpace. We’ve since seen these services rolled into the core product that now allows for video, photos, and groups to harmoniously coexist in one place.

Being at the forefront of the social web, Ning has also seen a myriad of direct competitors who’ve done little to throw the social network hub off its way to the top of the social food chain. Sites like Me.com (which no longer exists; the domain is now home to Mobile Me), Big Tent, and BricaBox (shutdown in summer of 2008) did their best to copy Ning’s style, but pretty much failed at replicating Ning’s success and popularity.

Now at 1,000,000 networks strong, you’re bound to find an active social group on any topic, cause, or event that strikes your fancy. Some examples include the very popular Twitter Moms group with upwards of 13,000 members, the This is 50 fully branded social hub for 50 Cent’s 400,000 adoring fans, and Ning’s MuggleSpace, where 15,000 plus Harry Potter fans gather together.

Demographics – provides a demographic breakdown for virtually any site, including gender, age, education and more.

Clickstream – shows the sites visitors were on before and after any site.

Search Traffic – shows how much traffic a site gets from search engines.

Let’s take a look at each of these features a little more closely. First, let’s take the demographics for Oprah.com:

We have heard from media planners and ad-buyers that demographic data can be useful when planning a campaign to make sure your ad campaign hits your target audience. It can also be useful when looking at your competitors to help you decide if you have an opportunity to grow your audience by expanding into a new demographic. Looking at the demographic data to the left, you’ll notice that Oprah.com skews toward Females, Ages 45-54, with a college education, browsing from home . That sounds about right. You can get this type of information for just about any site on the Web, even sites where the demographics might not be so obvious, like yelp.com for example.

Next up, let’s take a look at the clickstream for careerbuilder.com:

The Clickstream feature contains two separate sections, Upstream Sites, which shows where visitors were before coming to careerbuilder.com, and Downstream Sites, which shows where visitors went after leaving CareerBuilder. The list of upstream sites can be a great way to identify affiliate relationships or significant advertising placements. You can see here that CareerBuilder has an unusually large percent of traffic coming from MSN. With a little digging you’ll find that this is due to a partnership between MSN and CareerBuilder.

Downstream sites shows where visitors went after leaving CareerBuilder. This type of information can be very valuable to product managers identify why people are leaving their site. In CareerBuilder’s case, you’ll see that people are going to cbsalary.com, presumably to look at salaries in their region, and going to Facebook. In this case, CareerBuilder may want to build in a salary lookup feature and some social networking features if they want to keep these people from leaving.

Last but not least, we have a new feature called Search Traffic, which shows how much traffic a site historically gets from search engines. Let’s take a look at how Yelp.com compares with Yellowpages.com.

Search Traffic, is in essence, a measure of how well a site is optimized for search engines. Case in point, you can see here on the graph to the left that Yelp.com (in blue) is well optimized and gets approximately 50% of their traffic from search engines. Comparing Yelp to Yellow Pages.com (in red) you will see that Yellowpages.com has an opportunity to grow their visits significantly if they can improve their search traffic to match Yelp.

I hope that you find these new features helpful as you continue to grow your web businesses. If you have a success story that you would like us to share, or if you have discovered a novel use for one of our features, let me know. We continuing to build out Alexa in response to the comments and feedback that we receive, so don’t be shy. The best way to get in touch with us is commenting in the blog, or shooting us a quick e-mail via this link.

The nettlesome program, known as a worm, targeted Twitter’s network with four different attacks starting early Saturday and ending early Monday, according to Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.

The worm was set up to promote a Twitter knockoff, StalkDaily.com. It displayed unwanted messages on infected Twitter accounts, urging people to visit the Web site.

The worm was designed to automatically reproduce itself once its links were clicked on, but it didn’t filch any personal information from the more than 6 million people with Twitter accounts, Stone wrote in a posting about the incident. Nearly 10,000 Twitter messages, known as “tweets,” had to be deleted to contain the potential damage.

“We are still reviewing all the details, cleaning up and we remain alert,” Stone reassured Twitter’s audience.

Michael “Mikeyy” Mooney, a 17-year-old high school student who created StalkDaily, acknowledged unleashing the worm in a Monday interview with The Associated Press. Besides wanting to promote his Web site, Mooney said he wanted to expose Twitter’s weaknesses.

“I really didn’t think it was going to get that much attention, but then I started to see all these stories about it and thought, ‘Oh my God,’ ” said Mooney, who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. He first confessed his responsibility for the worm to BNONews.com.

Mooney began having second thoughts about what he had done after reading a part of Stone’s posting indicating that Twitter might pursue legal action against its tormenter. In a Monday e-mail sent to the AP, Stone said he didn’t know whether Twitter will go after Mooney.

“If I get hit with a lawsuit, I am going to have major regrets and a big brick on my back,” Mooney said. “I am backing off now. Twitter ignored its vulnerability (to worms) so I am hoping they can just ignore me now.”

In the mean time, Mooney is retooling StalkDaily.com to accommodate more users. He has temporarily closed the site after getting swamped by the traffic triggered by his worm.

The trouble with Mooney represents another rite of passage for San Francisco-based Twitter, which has emerged a popular way to communicate on the Web and mobile phones since its debut three years ago.

Twitter’s system, which limits messages to 140 characters, is used to broadcast both mundane and tantalizing information by a diverse group of users that include teenagers, celebrities, news agencies, politicians, police departments and companies.

Twitter’s broadening reach makes it an inviting target for mischief makers and scam artists. Two of the Internet’s biggest online hangouts, Facebook and MySpace, both have had to grapple with similar threats.

The widening usage also occasionally overwhelms the free service, whose 30 employees have been subsisting on about $55 million in venture capital until Stone and fellow co-founder Evan Williams come up with a way to generate revenue.

Although it doesn’t break down as frequently as it did in its early days, Twitter periodically remains inaccessible because its computer servers can’t handle all the traffic.

Such challenges have spurred speculation that Twitter eventually will be sold to a larger Internet company. Twitter already spurned a $500 million buyout offer from Facebook Inc. There also have been unsubstantiated reports that Internet search leader Google Inc. is eyeing a possible bid for Twitter.

Both Williams and Stone have said they intend to build Twitter into a profitable, independent company.