It has been an interesting week in the world of SEO. Without further ado…

Microsoft’s Webmaster Tools

Microsoft today released a Beta version of their Webmaster Tools. At first glance, it looks like it’s going to be a standard website analyzer tool with all of the standard fare. First you’ll be asked to validate your site using an xml file or a META tag. The tools are basically separated out into several different areas; summary, keywords, links and robots.txt file. If you use Google’s webmaster tools, this should be very familiar to you. While it’s pleasing to see Microsoft moving forward with this, I can’t help but think that it’s not going to make much headway in the SEO community.

Microsoft Aims to be Amongst ‘Top Two’ in Web Advertising

Another Microsoft related story to break this week. Reuters are reporting that Microsoft aims to be one of ‘top two’ in Web advertising. One element of Microsoft’s plan is to raise its share in online search to 30 percent. With Microsoft trailing behind both Google and Yahoo! it’s time they stepped up to the plate.

Webmasters Favor Google

Search Engine Land reported yesterday that a robots.txt study shows that webmasters favor Google. The study, which looked at robots or crawlers listed in a web site’s robots.txt file, found that Google’s robot, GoogleBot is called more often than any other search engine. An interesting but nonetheless predictable study considering Googles lofty search engine status.

Raven Blog Recap

On the Raven SEO blog this week, we’ve covered the following:

• Twelve Link Building Tactics for 2008
• Google Attempts to Reduce Accidental Clicks on Adsense
• 10 Ways to Build Links Without Buying Them
• What Makes Google’s Search Engine Tick?