ReadWriteWeb

According to Google, query volume has nothing to do with search rankings. But Martin MacDonald isn't buying that, and might have evidence that search volume can affect Google rankings after all.

MacDonald, head of SEO for global media agency OMD (that's this OMD, not the first OMD that comes to mind for Generation X), conducted a little experiment. By creating more search volume than usual for the term "Martin MacDonald SEO," he was able to nudge his personal site up into the first page of Google results. Google also started appending "seo" to searches for Martin MacDonald in its suggest results.

Tinker, a new service that aggregates Twitter conversations around topics, came out of private beta today. Unlike services that merely attempt to track Twitter hashtag trends or attempt to describe what context a hashtag brings to a tweet, Tinker lets its users select popular events that are already being tracked, or create their own event stream by choosing a keyword or hashtag and adding a few filters, such as 'no swear words' and selective blocking of individual Twitter or Tinker users.