DISQUS

I'd have to disagree with you on UTW. Coincidentally, I just replaced it with Simple Tags on "Bracing Your Brand" today and I might do it on my other sites soon as well. The beauty of this plugin is it allows you to transfer all your tags over to a new plugin called Simple Tags. Reason being, it's a lot faster than UTW and it has a nifty "related posts" function which I have added to my blog. The benefits to this are two fold - It helps stick my readers to my blog and SEOwise, it creates a nice linking structure within my blog.

Also, I've had a bit of trouble with Top Commentators. I've had a lot more spam on my blog over the past few weeks it's been enabled, so I've been forced to add the "nofollow" attribute to the links in it. I do use Dofollow as well because I believe in rewarding my users with backlinks, but lately I've been questioning that as well.

I like the idea of the Custom Contact form though - that sounds very useful for me. I receive so much spam from contact forms on two Bike sites I run but nowhere near as much as I would than if I used my email address in there. It makes a lot of sense as spammers don't get your email address at all that way! I think I'll add a "Contact Me" page to my blog! :P

The fact that google has so much data on its customers means that it has the resources to improve relevancy more than that of MSN or Yahoo.

They've also added value in other ways to compliment search, preventing people from switching engines so easily. You've got iGoogle, Gmail, Analytics, Google Docs... the list goes on. If Microsoft can knock google off it's perch in these areas, I MAY consider changing...

It's obvious that they're diversifying. With adequate resources allocated to their search, they're just using the cash they get from adwords to acquire new, complimentary technologies which they can use to support their core business.

I mean who here wouldn't like to target their adwords at people with certain genes? :P

It all makes sense to me!

I just noticed that as I was leaving... I've got the Firefox Search Status Plug in installed and when I originally posted a comment up I saw the trackback entry wasn't getting followed and that got me mixed up. I was going to add another comment saying that, but I figured it would look spammy.

Have you thought about enabling the "Subscribe to Comments" plugin? I love it when I stumble onto a site I like reading which lets me subscribe to comments. It really helps me partake in the discussion.

See you round mate.

Hey mate,

Thanks for the comments on my site. I thought I'd return the 'love'. I hope this plugin works out for you. I bet you'll notice a load of comments coming in from Google searching for top commentators ;).

If you're keen on rewarding your commentators further, you might like to check out the "Do-Follow" plugin. It makes search engines follow links from your audience's comments.

Rob

I can see this setting a precedent. Good on them for fighting back... If only I were on that jury :P!

Talk about timing Andy!

I'd love one of these - I even made a post about them. Better watch out Jason - this Wii is mine :P haha.

Whilst I love Google, I think it's best (for all of us) if M$ wins this battle. We need competition amongst these scalable advertising networks and M$ appears to be losing their grip in the search marketing war.