If you haven’t heard yet, some major, major sites are taking action to protest two major acts that are being run through congress. SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) in the House and PIPA (Protect IP Act) in the Senate are both set up to change the internet in a huge way if they pass. Essentially – the freedom we enjoy to express ourselves and communicate freely online may be in jeopardy.

SOPA has also been titled “The Great Firewall of America” and would allow the DoJ or related copyright holders to have sites blocked by search engines, advertisers, and even internet service providers to effectively shut down any sites that are deemed a threat to national copyright in any way.

The biggest issue with this posed by most opponents is that it will essentially cripple the Net as we know it. And some of these opponents are rather… well known.

As a response, several of these opponents will be taking action tomorrow, January 18th, 2012, in an online “blackout” to help educate many of what a real threat this could pose. Some of these organizations are as follows (all links below go to relevant pages regarding each site):

• Reddit.com – Will be completely shut down from 8 AM to 8 PM EST, instead displaying links to educational resources.
• Wikipedia.com – Will be blacked out for 24 hours starting at 5:00 UTC.
• Google.com – Will not black out, but will post a link on the front page to help educate users.
• Imgur.com – Will black out their gallery from 8 AM to 8 PM EST with a message about the acts.

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I had noticed recently that I was sending emails to certain people and not receiving replies (when it could be expected I’d get some).  Well, it appears that some hostings services are starting to tightly conform to RFC 2181 by the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force), which was updated in July of 2009.

What’s happening is basically that mails sent by the mail servers that are set up with aliases for the domain are getting bounced by these hosts that are conforming to RFC 2181.  The servers should be set to a proper A record or directly to an IP address to prevent this issue.  If you’re having similar issues, talk to your hosting company (if your mails are bouncing) or talk to the people who sent the emails whose emails bounced when they sent them to you.

For me personally, I know I need to keep my emails in check since it’s a primary form of communication and business, so this is rather important.  It’s good to be aware of such updates that can have an impact on potential business and even on personal communication.

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This is a question posed by various people – SEOs, internet marketers, online business owners, and even just people browsing the web: which search engine is best?

Well, this really comes down to depending on what your approach is.  If you are just browsing, it’s really a personal preference.  But if you’re in internet marketing, then it comes down to understanding the varieties of users who are using each.

To start, Google is still controlling the search engine market, with 64.2% of all searches in April (according to ComScore).  Yahoo is second with 20.4%, and Microsoft is third with 8.2%.

As most people know, the bulk of traffic can be gained through Google.  Doing SEO or AdWords can take advantage of this traffic.  It’s been seen through PPC marketing that Yahoo does not get quite the same traffic but does tend to get a higher percentage of conversions.  This varies based on market, but it’s worth noting.

So what this means for internet marketers is this – definitely use Google if you’re interested in traffic.  For SEO or PPC, it’d be good to start with a focus on Google, and follow up with adjustments for Yahoo (and with PPC, start advertising with Yahoo) after a set plan is set for Google.  Microsoft is really an extra option to take advantage of, but in some cases may not be worth too much extra time/effort unless the amount of traffic gained through them is notable.

Make sure to realize that it’s worth it to go beyond just looking at Google.  One fifth of all internet search engine users use Yahoo, so the numbers there speak for themselves.  Be sure to keep that in mind when focusing on your internet marketing endeavors.

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Welcome to the blog!  My name’s Eric.  In this blog I’ll be posting various bits of information about marketing, both online and offline.  Plus various tips and tricks about online marketing, SEO, PPC, and other relevant information.  If you have any questions, feel free to comment here or send me an email.

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