In case you missed it on TechCrunch the other day, Google is now showing search boxes within SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) for some of the larger online retailers like Amazon, Zappos and Office Max.

The boxes only appear for certain keywords, for example “amazon” and “shop amazon” but not “amazon books.” Zappos shows up for “zappos shoes” but not “zappos shopping.” For other sites, adding “shop” or “shopping” to the site name won’t trigger a search box at all.

OfficeMax should be pleased that this works for them but not for Staples and Office Depot, at least it makes them seem a bit more important? I noticed that Target and Walmart get a search box, but not Sears. NewEgg, Radio Shack and BestBuy get one, but not Circuit City. Ebay and Overstock also are left out, which is a bit of a head-scratcher.

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Search Within A Search - Good Idea? »

Okay, maybe this is more of an opportunity than a hack, but links from Page Rank 8 pages are hard to come by, and from Google itself nonetheless. But for Google Checkout merchants, you can get a link from the Google Checkout Merchants page, and no - Google doesn’t use nofollow or robots.txt to blog Page Rank from passing.

Now a general rule of thumb amongst SEOs when scoping out link opportunities is to find pages with less than 100 links. Obviously this page far more links than that. But don’t worry, here’s an explanation from Google’s Matt Cutts himself:

Matt’s exact words - The “keep the number of links to under 100″ is in the technical guideline section, not the quality guidelines section. That means we’re not going to remove a page if you have 101 or 102 links on the page. Think of this more as a rule of thumb. Originally, Google only indexed the first 100 kilobytes or so of web documents, so keeping the number of links under 100 was a good way to ensure that all those links would be seen by Google. These days I believe we index deeper within documents, so that’s less of an issue. But it is true that if users see 250 or 300 links on a page, that page is probably not as useful for them, so it’s a good idea to break a large list of links down (e.g. by category, topic, alphabetically, or chronologically) into multiple pages so that your links don’t overwhelm regular users.

Source: SEOmoz

I would imagine Google is going to crawl its own pages as far as they go. Yes, if you understand the Page Rank concept that “link juice” is divided among all the links on the page - the more links the less nectar you get. But Page Rank is exponential. 100 links on a Page Rank 8 page could pass more value than 50 links on a PR4. If I’m wrong here, please drop a comment.

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Hack Week Part 3 - Scoring a PR8 Link From Google »

Google Analytics recently introduced an internal site search feature to its already kick-ass free stats program — aptly named “Site Search.”

This tool works with your existing site search and is invaluable to ecommerce marketers as it gives you so much insight into customer intent and your website’s success at delivering results. For example, you can use search log data to discover:

• What keywords people search for - what’s hot and what do they want that you don’t carry
• What search refinements are made, indicating possible “Results Not Found” messages or unsatisfactory results
• What pages the searches were made from, and where users clicked to

The next 30 days is when this information will be crucial. Customers can’t buy what they can’t find. Maybe you only use the term “notebook computer case” and your customers search for “laptop bags.” You can tweak your product pages and search engine for the various ways customers describe your product until the right pages show up when you test your site.

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Why You Should Turn On Google Analytics Site Search Today »

Expect a huge announcement from Facebook tomorrow about “Social Ads.” Recently partnered with Microsoft, Facebook’s been sitting on a very large pile of consumer information such as age, political views, favorite movies, college information, marital status and more that lends itself to behavior-targeted ads. Certainly this advertising model has been months in the making.

Depending on the details, there could be some low-cost opportunities for online retailers big and small to market effectively through Facebook. Until tomorrow’s big reveal, here is a recap of the Facebook rumors:

Project Pandemic / Mullets

Facebook may be removing “sponsored groups” and replacing them with sponsored pages that might include interactive games or other Facebook applications developed by Facebook itself, rather than third party developers.

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Juicy Facebook Rumors - Social Ads & More »

What do two billionaire Google guys get up to for Halloween? It’s only appropriate that Larry and Sergey dress up as ‘Ghoul’gle.

Best Caption in the comments wins a $100 gift certificate for Amazon.com
(and don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS feed for more ecommerce and online marketing goodness)

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Larry and Sergey Halloween Costume 2007 [Pic] »

In case you haven’t heard about Google’s Lunar Challenge, Google yesterday announced that it has teamed up with the X-Prize Foundation to offer $30 million in prizes to the first private company that can land a robotic rover on the moon and beam back one gigabyte of images: $20 million to the first-place team, $5 million to the second-place team (no explanation of how one comes in second!) and $5 million in bonuses to teams that go beyond the basics.

Now, we on the Elastic Path marketing team mean no disrespect to our friends at Google – after all, they’ve been pretty successful and their company is arguably even better known than our own – but we just aren’t that impressed with this competition.

You see, Elastic Path is all about innovation and this competition just doesn’t sound all that innovative. I mean, unless you’re one of those who still believe the U.S. faked everything in a Hollywood studio to irritate the Soviets, haven’t we already landed a spaceship on the moon? Moreover, didn’t that rocket transport actual people in addition to all the requisite wiring and electro-doodads? And didn’t those people come back safely with actual physical moon-stuff instead of just pictures; that’s how we figured out the moon isn’t really made of cheese. And to top it all off, didn’t all that happen about 40 years ago with technology and computing power inferior to today’s average dishwasher?!?!

Furthermore, even if you find this innovative, what good is going to come of it? Other than those delicious Moon Pies, there’s nothing useful up there! Elastic Path doesn’t pursue innovation for the sake of innovation – that just leads to undue complexity and “bloatware.” Our innovation is focused on delivering practical results.

So the best minds in our marketing department got to thinking, how can we do our part to spur genuine practical innovation? Well, Elastic Path is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, which, for all its celebrated beauty, is pretty cloudy and rainy for a significant part of the year. In addition to making the place kind of dreary, this really limits the value of solar energy. We figured, with a bit of thought, surely all that energy and activity in the 4-dimensional extra-terrestrial time-space continuum can help us out.

Tying all these threads together, we are pleased to announce the Elastic Path Solar Challenge. We are offering $30 million in prizes to the first team that successfully lands a manned spacecraft on the sun and brings the entire assembly back safely. Similar to Google’s, our prize consists of $20 million for meeting the basic requirements, plus $5 million for beaming back enough usable energy to run a margarita machine and an additional $5 million for bringing back and installing a chunk of thermonuclear matter to brighten up Kits Beach on a dreary February afternoon.

Finally, bear in mind that $30 million is a pretty significant sum for Elastic Path – unlike many companies, even our CEO doesn’t get that much. So, in the spirit of competition and fair play, all entries must endure the full force of the sun; spaceships sent up at night will be disqualified.

View full screen version at SlideShare

Webinar featuring useful tips, tools and best practices for optimizing your ecommerce site for search engine rankings presented by Elastic Path Ecommerce Software’s Jason Billingsley and Founder of SEO firm Netconcepts, Stephan Spencer.

See also: Secrets of SEO Webinar - Live Blog and Q&A Recap.

On the heels of last weeks discovery that Google released an ecommerce gadget (and my “speculation” that there may be an introduction of the gadget into Universal Search), there is evidence that they are pushing “Google Product Search” in the SERPs sub-navigation now too. This may have slipped by our radar or it may be new (we know Google has been doing this for its other products like Image, News, etc. for a while now), but we couldn’t find specific mention in the blogosphere of Google Product Search in the sub-navigation bar. See image below:

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Google Promoting Link to Product Search in SERP Navigation »

Widgets are becoming the norm on social networks, blogs, and start pages. Google has just released their version of an ecommerce widget (which they call a gadget) for the iGoogle start page and everywhere else that can take a snippet of code. It was announced on the Google Checkout blog.

Now, this is not what I would classify as an ecommerce gadget. You cannot conduct a transaction, but it is a good indication of what Google has in mind.

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Google to Shake Up SEO With Ecommerce Gadget »

In London, eTail UK kicks off with Search and Analytics day and Dave O having laughs with Elastic Path’s own expert Jason Billingsley. They discuss search marketing strategies and concerns plus Google’s role in ecommerce, global payments and adaption.

MP3 File