In addition to today’s Internet Marketing Monitor coverage, we felt these stories were worth pulling out of the multitude of news items for August 20, 2007:

How to: Buy Links Without Being Called a Spammer [SEO Book]

The reason folks won’t call you a spammer for doing any of this is because the title cleverly makes it seem like you’ll be literally “buying” links. But for the most part, these are all ways to gain links that cost money. For example, attending conferences, joining associations, running contests with prizes, and ad buys are all ways th get linked to that cost money - indirectly.

Who Doesn’t Love Samples? [Yahoo! Search Blog]

Yahoo! has added 30 second samples to it’s audio search SERPs. This is pretty cool! The new feature lets you hear a sample of the result without having to leave the page, load new a window, or launch a media player. Simply click the “Play Sample” link and presto - instant music. You can now also set your preferred audio service provider. If set, results will automatically link to your preferred provider (assuming they carry the content you’re looking for).

Announcing the U.S. release of Microsoft Content Ads Beta [adCenter Blog]

Microsoft has announced the addition of content ad options to adCenter - meaning that you can now purchase contextual advertising on some MSN properties directly through adCenter. Previously you had to go through a MSN sales representative. Three MSN properties - Tech & Gadgets, Money, and Real Estate - are included so far. The company plans to roll the rest of the MSN Network (and other Microsoft-owned properties) into the mix. This is big news for adCenter users! Microsoft’s network of properties are consistently ranked in the top 5 most visited online destinations.

comScore Introduces Significant Enhancements to Search Measurement with comScore qSearch 2.0 [comScore]

In a nutshell, comScore’s new qSearch 2.0 will be expanding beyond the “core” search engines to include a much broader set of search properties. In addition to “the big 5″, qSearch 2.0 will also include data from the top 50 properties where searches are carried out (MySpace, Baidu, etc), major vertical searches like eBay and Amazon, partner searches that send people from one website to another search engine, “Cross-Channel Search” (searching different verticals within one search engine), local search, and worldwide search reports by country. Now if that’s not a pretty drastic expansion, I dunno what is! It should be interesting to see what sorts of changes in data the inclusion of these additional sources of information will provide.

Search Engine Strategies Coverage [Search Engine Roundtable]

Lots of sites are covering the SES Conference in San Jose this week. But so far, SERoundtable seems to have the most complete coverage that I’ve seen. If you’re stuck somewhere else in the world (like me), head on over to SERoundtable and see what you’re missing!

Have a great night, all!