Art Clokey was the pioneer of stop motion clay animation, bringing to life Gumby and his horse Pokey, who first appeared on the American kid’s show Howdy Doody. Art Clokey died last year, but to celebrate what would have been Clokey’s 90th birthday yesterday, Google’s home page featured the tribute doodle you see pictured.

The initial image shows a toy block and 5 balls of colored clay representing the letters in GOOGLE. Clicking on any one of the clay balls launches a delightful animation of the clay taking the shape of one of Clokey’s famous animated characters. A link above the doodle takes you to SERPs for Art Clokey and his life.

One of Google’s better doodles!

To celebrate, Google’s home page sports a tribute doodle 3D birthday card. The card features a retro-inspired birthday party scene complete with party hats, balloons and nanna’s flowery tablecloth. Clicking on the doodle takes you to SERPs for, (unsurprisingly) Google.

Seems like just yesterday that Google was still in diapers, clutching lovingly at the legs of it’s users at every opportunity. Teething was tricky, with quite a few painful months sucking on everything across the web in an effort to stop the pain. Independence came early, with Google spending less time with it’s family of users and more time with those naughty shareholder kids in an attempt to grow up too fast.

Then Google went through that greedy stage, eating everything in sight, including smaller competitors. No wonder it’s grown so large, although we did warn it.

Last year was a challenge, with Google getting bullied by the neighbor kids Bing and Yahoo. But this year has been the hardest of all, with Google getting all emo over Facebook status updates.

Let’s hope the rest of Google’s teenage years aren’t full of angst and acne.

Just before Xmas, I spent a fun few hours testing out the new tool and tracking down the earliest reference I could find to the term *Lord of the Rings* – way back in 1815!  You can check out how I did it via the article I wrote for SiteProNews about my experience.

Happy New Year to you all!

If you’re anything like me, you get bombarded at every Xmas function or family get together with the dreaded “Will you fix my computer?” question.

While there are tshirts you can buy that tactfully state your opinion on the matter, they don’t actually address the problem itself, which is the computer issue keeping your friend / colleague / relative awake at night.

Never fear geek friends! Some Google staffers with too much time on their hands have put together the solution in the form of the web site Teach Parents Tech.

Now you can simply avoid awkward technical conversations by sending helpful tech support videos to all the non-geeks in your life. You simply choose the most appropriate wording for your email care package (with tone ranging from condescending to helpful) and attach one or more video tutorials.

There are over 50 basic instructional videos available, divided into the following categories:

* The Basics
* World Wide Web
* Communication
* Media
* Finding Information

Now, instead of dreading a drunk Uncle Dave cornering you after Xmas pudding with the question “I want to be an Internet zillionnaire. How do I schtaart my own webblog thingy *burp*?”, you can simply pre-empt it by emailing him a helpful How to Make a Blog video tutorial.

When your school secretary contacts you complaining that her computer is broken because nobody in her 2000 member email list has received her 20MB newsletter attachment, you’ll be ready with a helpful How to Share a Big File video.

When your elderly neighbor asks you to switch out her David Hasselhoff screensaver for one featuring Justin Bieber, you’ll be able to send her the perfect video instructions to do it herself.

Geeks Unite! Now the only thing you have to dread is the awkward silence next Xmas when Uncle Dave asks why nobody is visiting his blog.

But today’s Doodle, (Google’s nickname for their holiday logos), includes a little extra surprise. When you click on the Doodle itself, a short audio clip from Lennon’s haunting ballad Imagine plays, accompanied by an animation sequence inspired by the music.

The Doodle itself incorporates the famous self-portrait hand drawn by Lennon from the ‘Bag One Portfolio’, an artistic chronicle of his wedding ceremony to Yoko Ono, their honeymoon and their plea for world peace.

After the animation clip plays, the Doodle morphs into a drawn style and then you are naturally redirected to search results for “John Lennon”.

A fitting tribute and much more inspiring than some of the more recent Doodles being churned out from Mountain View.

Nicely done Google.

Search Engine Wiki is basically a collaborative online library of search engine marketing (SEM) resources. With the search community’s help, Search Engine Wiki has now grown to include thousands of SEM resources, freely available to the public.

Some of the most popular resources on the Wiki include:

• Lists of regional search engines categorized by country, type and industry.
• A glossary of definitions for common terms used in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) and Search Engine Marketing.
• An extensive library of search engine marketing articles.
• Employment resources where you can find SEO, PPC and SEM jobs.
• A collection of popular search engine marketing blogs and newsfeeds.
• Frequently Asked Questions about search engines and SEM.
• A list of popular search engine marketing tools and time saving software.
• Links to upcoming search industry conferences and events.
• A list of social media sites and related tools.

View the entire list of wiki categories.

Search Engine Wiki is now out of BETA and celebrating three years of activity. Read our official Press Release.

We’re so excited about Search Engine Wiki’s birthday, that we’re giving away a geeky Search Engine College tag cloud tshirt every (business) day this month to the first person to find Ms Parker on the Search Engine Wiki website.

You can see a picture of Ms Parker on this page. She’s always on the move, tidying up resource pages and messy aisles of ebooks, so she can be very hard to spot. If you see her first, make sure you tweet the phrase “I found Ms Parker!” and a link to the page that you found her on to: @sewiki.

So what are you waiting for? Go Find Ms Parker!

Wikipedia defines comment spam or blog spam as:

“Spam in blogs is a form of spamdexing. It is done by automatically posting random comments or promoting commercial services to blogs, wikis, guestbooks, or other publicly accessible online discussion boards.”

Being a WordPress user, I find that most spam is caught by WordPress’ built-in anti spam plugin Akismet, but sometimes a few gems make it past the filter and into my comment review list.

Most comment spam is completely non-sequitur to the post it is dropped on, making it highly amusing. Having chuckled on a daily basis at the comment spam received on this blog, I thought the comments deserved a blog of their very own. Therefore, this week I launched Comment Spam Comedy.

The goal of Comment Spam Comedy is to publish the most amusing non-sequitur blog comments posted across the web. I welcome submissions so if you have a worthy contender for publishing, please contact me via the site or via the Twitter account.

When you submit your comment spam, please include the commenter’s name, the URL he/she link dropped and the URL of the post it was dropped on.

Enjoy the randomness!

To commemorate Pac-Man’s 30th birthday, Google created an interactive Home Page Doodle:  a Flash-based mini game of Pac-Man incorporating the Google logo. The “I’m feeling lucky” was replaced with a new button “Insert Coin” and you could play Pac-Man complete with 1980′s sound effects without leaving the Google home page. Apparently, it’s the first time Google have ever used Flash on their home page.

The game proved so popular with office procrastinators, that Google has kept it live so you can play it to your heart’s content. To play, you simply click that button or wait a few moments and the game will start by itself. If you click twice on “Insert Coin” then two people can play. Ms Pac-Man joins the game, with the second person controlling her movements using the WASD keys.

If you’re a Pac-Man freak, Mashable has shared how to download Google’s Pac-Man game to your PC so you can play without an Internet connection any time you like.

Happy Birthday Pac-Man.

The conference had a completely different feel this year. With registrations topping 1,000 for Day 1, a new venue in the Sydney Hilton and some seriously impressive speakers, it was almost as if the industry had grown up.

When I had a client ask me a few days later what my biggest take away from the Cofnerence was, I was surprised to find myself answering “Facebook is the most powerful business tool on the web”. What? A social media epiphany at a search conference? I guess that means that social media is no longer a value-add, but a key component of any search marketing campaign. The number of sessions dedicated to social media this year underscored this.

I’ll write a longer post about the Conference soon, but if you don’t mind poor grammar and typos, you can view my live blog posts of some of the main SMX sessions.

If you’re more interested in a visual snapshot of the conference, check out:

• my public SMX 2010 Facebook album
• the brilliant photo coverage by Andrew Ballard, (@allroundniceguy)
• photos by Marty Weintraub (@aimclear)
• photos by Lisa Davis (@seonounou)

If you can’t be bothered waiting for my conference recap, Matt Burgess (@therealburgo) has done a fine job with his already.

Team Motherwell is up first, consisting of @motherwell and @lucasng who are reviewing http://www.goodness.com.au

Issues found:

- graphical text – all keywords embedded in image

- no H1 tags

- links lead to another site entirely

- there’s no custom 404 error page

- canonicalization issue – need to fix in GG Webmaster Tools. This will consolidate your links.

- need more links – try getting links from Aussie directories

- the online store needs some work done – price should be next to the image of the product. No call to action.

- use breadcrumb navigation to help searchers find the categories / pages they are actually looking for. Also helps people to know where they are in your site.

- weird title tags that need tidying up

Next up is Team Google with @gregable and Jim Sterne. They’ll be reviewing Britax.com.au

- I want to buy a stroller, but can’t find them. Bye!

- On the product detail page, no price and no obvious way to purchase

- Maybe “Where to Buy” link will help. Ah…. no. HELP! (Jim hands over to @gregable)

- Greg will be viewing the site as googlebot.

- Greg is trying to find a specific type of child car seat but can’t.

- Very little information about the product. Really wants a detail page, not lots of the same data on similar pages.

- Home link is on the right hand side of the navigation. Why?

- Uses a grey-on-grey link nav at the bottom of the page which isn’t helping.

- Some non sequitir link titles e.g. *4 Reasons*

- Greg says the site has some nice GG friendly URLs

Team Boser is next, featuring @gregboser and @oilman. They’ll be reviewing http://www.donedirtcheapdvd.com.au.

- Sell box sets of DVDs and similar products

- Todd and Greg spend some time trying to get the display right and during the tense silence, the site owner takes the opportunity to promote his DVD box sets “Avatar, available now for $44.95″. Gets a big laugh from the audience.

- There are too many links on many of the pages.

- There’s no need to keyword stuff every single internal link on your site. Google already knows you sell DVDs, you don’t need to hit them over the head with it, says @gregboser

- Trim down your categories and stop loading up your footer with irrelevant links about DVDs, especially in nearly black font on black background, says @oilman.

- Use your movie reviews for content. If you have to, produce clever mashups of pages that are algorithmically unique, but still made up of content elsewhere on your site, says @gregboser.

- Rotate through your content and create mashups that will give you better links in Google.

Next up is Team SEOmoz with @seomom and @dannydover to review www.appliancesonline.com.au

- Gillian starts by asking who in the room are SEOmoz PRO members and proceeds to give some of us a beer! Cute.

- Danny says the site looks good – clean and sharp.  Nice to see categories and images on the home page. Also the brands are front and center on the HP.

- The text nav at the bottom is a bit dodgy, but the payment options/logos at bottom are fantastic.

- No custom 404 error page – Why not? Boring. Gillian says she wants to see some options and some fun on the custom 404 page.

- Enormous home page – 1.6MB in size but should be 150-200 kb. A faster loading site is a better performing site in both engines and sales. Flash file is the major problem.

- Looking at the page as googlebot shows LOTS of links, but no text content. Give people who don’t have Flash an option, preferably text.

- Used OpenSiteExplorer.com to look at the site (SEOmoz plug)

- 301 issues galore due to switching domains.

- ridiculous number of links from small number of domains = BIG spam signal to Google. Clean it up says @seomom

- keyword analysis shows very good keyword density, esp long tail.

- Danny points out that if you do a search in MS.com and you can’t find any results, the 404 page will eventually redirect to a search in Bing for same query.

- Gillian points out that the Call to Action buttons are too passive. Use “Email Me If…” option with drop downs like “if my product is in stock”, “if refrigerators go on sale” etc.

- Use Buy Now rather than Add to Cart

- Use A/B Split testing to confirm findings.