I’m a big fan of scattering great books around the office. It’s a cheap way to circulate fantastic ideas. Here are three outstanding books to toss into the IT bat-cave: Software Engineering For Internet Applications, Joel on Software, and Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age.

“Does your content Quality Score impact your search Quality Score?” Google says, “no”.

Once on a visit to Google, I heard a senior exec describe Google’s take on relationship between paid and natural search. This was some time ago, so I’m paraphrasing from memory, but he said something to the effect that the left side of the screen (organic, unpaid) was for the voice of the people — blogs, reviews, rants — whereas the right rail (paid) was for commerce. “If you’re a commerce site, you need to pay for your space on the page,” he said.

If you’ll be at SES Chicago and would like to meet up, give a call at 434.970.1010.

Earlier this month, the Word Of Mouth Marketing Association released draft ethics guidelines for marketers interating with the blogosphere.

If you’re seeking a reasonably good Outlook spam filter, try Spam Bayes.

Does personalizing theMicrosoft adCenter campaign via “Search Steve” make the creative stronger or weaker?

Threadwatch reports rumors that Google intends to charge for Google Base real estate listing clicks.

Bureaucracy: Stewart Butterfield on Yahoo, Moishe Lettvin on Microsoft

“Cyber Monday”: what Shop.org did was coin a label that brought attention to just how enormous online retail has become, and did so in a way that resonated with the popular press, at the just the right time in history.

What lessons does Brad Garlinghouse’s Yahoo “Peanut Butter Memo” have for the future of Google?

Recent web design books we really like.

Each week for the next four weeks, Amazon will offer four deals, allowing consumers to vote on which of the four is actually offered for that week. I have no doubts this aggressive promotion will turn out to be a shrewd marketing investment.

Google announced that they’ve released their sitemaps spec to the community under the Creative Commons share-alike license, and that Yahoo and Microsoft have adopted the standard.

Recognizing the heroic efforts used by search marketers across the nation to cram compelling marketing messages into a tiny handful of characters, President George W. Bush has named October 15 through October 21, 2006 as National Character Counts Week.

Google recently released Custom Search Engines, or “CSE”s. This new free product offers interesting possibilities for online retailers.

Stephan Spencer of NetConcepts graciously shared his thoughts on SEO in an online interview with us.

Hype destroys credibility. Honest marketing cuts through the clutter. Critique of a copy block on a SPSS direct mail piece.

Retailers like 1StopLighting and WineEnthusiast tag webpages with tracking codes, just as catalogers place tracking codes on mailed catalogs.

Here’s a grab-bag of interesting links from the last few weeks: Google Checkout, Google Goals, 2CH.net, Multichannel Buyers, Abandoned Carts, Godin, Spock, Eepybird II, Real Time Analytics

Riya relaunches under the like.com brand — check it out.

David set off a storm of righteous indignation from those who work hard in the SEO space, but part of the reason for his rant and mine is the great preponderance of hokum out there that has been spewed by the not so hard-working, not-so ethical members of the SEO community.

A study looking at Google queries on Senate candidate names in swing elections (Allen, Brown, Burns, Casey, Chafee, Corker, Dewine, Ford, Kyl, Pederson, Santorum, Talent, Tester, and Webb) over this last weekend.

Google and 50 newspapers nationwide to announce a test program running auction-based newpaper ads.

Following the trail blazed by the MillionDollarHomePage, some hardworking MIT Course 16 students are selling ad space on the outside of their low-earth satellite to subsidize their project. Launch date is scheduled for 2010. RKG is proud to support this effort.