One of my favorite Google tools, Google Analytics has been down since last Saturday night (7/28). While no one is sure when it will be back online, Google has placed a message on their Analytics Blog which can be seen here with an update and information.

It is good to know that they mention no data will be lost. Also, an update will be posted to the Blog as soon as everything is back online (if you don’t see it in your stats first).

It has also been speculated around the SEO community that this outage may be associated with a bigger update at Google that may include the next PR update. That would be great as many have been waiting impatiently for the last month or so for this update.

While no one really knows the exact date of the next Google PageRank (PR) update, except maybe Google what is know is that it usually happens about four (4) times a year resulting in around one (1) update every quarter or so.

As everyone seems to want to guess when the next one is coming you can find people’s guesses and other interesting info on threads about these updates at places on the Web like Digital Point Forums. One thread in particular has had over 1,680 posts since June 2nd.

There is also a great history resource available at SEO Company Canada that lists every update since July of 2000.

In the end, no one really knows exactly when the next one is coming, all we do know is that history tells us it should be on its way in the near future!

Have you ever wanted to check out a site or directory and see if they are applying any ‘no follow’ code to any outbound links? If so, you probably had to spend a little time looking through the site’s code and/or use some tool to check it. Well it just a got a whole lot easier as I found out when I downloaded and installed the latest versions of Quirk’s SearchStatus Firefox add-on (version 1.20). It has a great ‘no follow’ highlighter that is incredibly helpful when reviewing sites for possible link partners. It is very simple and all you have to do once you have installed the add-on is turn on the ‘no follow’ highlighter by right clicking the symbol next to the SearchStatus toolbar and check it.

Once the ‘no follow’ highlighter is checked when you visit a page you can easily and quickly see which links are ‘no follow’ links by looked at what is highlighted. SearchStatus is not just a ‘no follow’ link highlighter is also includes rankings in Alexa and Compete, Google PR ranking, a keyword highlighter, a listing of the number of indexed pages, Meta tags and more.

Check it out at – Search Status 1.20 (for Firefox)

Many people choose to host their Website on a shared server, usually as a cost saving measure. While shared servers offer considerable savings do you have any idea what sites are being hosted with yours, do you care? You should. A bad site on your server could create problems for everyone. There have been other services to help figure out what sites you are sharing server space with, but recently I found a new site with a nice and easy (Web 2.0ish) interface called, ‘myIPneighbors‘. It makes it easy to reveal who is being hosted along with your site(s).

You can check it out at – myIPneighbors.com

After seeing this you may consider moving your site(s) to a better neighborhood, for more information check out the discussions at the premiere Web hosting forum – WebHosting TALK – Good luck!

If you want to get some cool and detailed stats on a domain look no further than the new Web-based tool at dnSCoop. In addition to the forum, directory and hosting reviews, dnScoop offers a tool that allows you to enter a domain and it will extract (in a very pleasant Web 2.0 looking layout) all kinds of data for you. The data includes approximate domain age, current PR, inbound links, traffic rank (via Alexa), indexed pages (in Google, Yahoo, AlltheWeb, AltaVista and MSN), an interesting domain name IP report, text link values (via Text-Link-Ads) and a cool site value estimate.

Check it out now at – dnScoop

Have you been struggling to get some reasonably priced high PR links from quality Web sites? Why not make a donation to a good cause and get that quality link you have been look for? There are many high PR sites on the Web dying for contributions ranging from $5 to $100 that would just love to give you that link from their contributor’s page. Below is a small list to get you started:

Cacti – a complete network graphing solution.
PR6 – Donation page Contributor’s page -$5 minimum, appears to be permanent.

Moodle – a course management system designed to help educators who want to create quality online courses.
PR6 – Donations/Contributor’s page – $50 minimum (for a link, the more you pay the higher you appear on the page), appears to be permanent and also an added bonus of being a ‘.org’ backlink.

Open Wall – a resource for finding open source software to help bring security to open environments.
PR 7 – Donations/Contributor’s page – $100 minimum, appears to be permanent.

In the next few days eSyndiCat Web directory software pricing will be going up. Currently they offer an unlimited license (set-up as many directories as you want) for only $149. This is a steal for anyone creating their own directory empire. The new pricing will be $249, which is still a good deal, just not as good as $149….:-)

Also, I believe that the new version 2.2 (coming soon) offers some cool new features link a deep links mod!

Check out the deal at eSyndiCat.

Smart PageRank (beta) is a new Website that offers a interesting twist on monitoring the PageRank (PR) value of your Website. It allows you to submit your email address which they will use to communicate with you when there has been any updates to your Website PR. This is a nice service by itself, but the site also offers some additional information that you might find interesting including PR ranking in up to 67 datacenters, the age of domain (in detail, not rounded off), Alexa rankings, DMOZ and Yahoo directory listings, backlink checker, indexed pages checker and Website value estimate (which is probably not that accurate, but interesting).

Check it out now at – Smart PageRank.

How many search engines can you name? Probably 5-10 at most, but there are others out there and some of them offer some pretty cool features and have some interesting search results. Well the guys at Alt Search Engines have their top 100 list ready for July. Click here to visit the list of top 100 alternative search engines.

Also, check out the top 10 mobile search engines!

Watching this is a like watching a car accident. You don’t want to see it, but you just can’t help yourself. Watch at your own risk…:-)