In the spirit of Halloween, Google has temporarily re-worked their logo, as they do on most holidays. They’ve also made sure they’re safe from zombies. That’s right, they’ve blocked zombies from accessing their brains this Halloween.

See more on Matt Cutts’ latest post.

Also, there’s been some news about Google AdWords’ Quality Score calculation. They are making improvements to how they are scoring and placing ads to server better results to the user. Watch for a post next week by Mike with more details.

Happy Halloween!

• We tend to focus on the eCommerce side of SEO and SEM, and Ann Smarty hit one out of the park this week, breaking down pro’s and con’s of some eCommerce Link Building methods.
• Not so long ago, Google was simply unable to index flash content. Back in June of this year, the webmaster blog announced it had developed an algorithm to do so, and this week Brian Ussery revealed an extremely well thought out and thorough blog post taking a look at just how good Google is at indexing flash.
• AOL and Yahoo is a done deal…wait its not.
• WebTigerSeo explains why SEO in the economic downturn isn’t as bad as one might think.
• Adwords has begun DIY display ads.
• According to TechCrunch, Google’s personalized homepage dubbed “iGoogle” is debuting a new look that will keep users on the iGoogle page.

That’s it! I’m having my wisdom teeth removed today so I’ll be out of commission for a few days. Not Fun! Pray for Mojo.

• The online advertising field grew yet again, as reported by the Los Angeles Times. The article is actually a bit of a downer, stating that while growth is still in the double digits, its down from last year’s number.
• Frank Reed of Marketing Pilgrim reacts to the pessimistic nature of the LA Times article. He’s not buying the gloomy scenario.
• Amit Agarwal spotted something interesting in this Walt Mossberg Wall Street Journal article about online alert notifications: Google Alerts will soon be offering feeds to complement its email alerts.
• SEOmoz introduced their new tool called Linkscape. If you haven’t checked it out yet, it spits out some pretty cool metrics. I haven’t been able to get full use out of it yet, but I expect once I’ve gotten the hang of it, I won’t know how I lived without it.

Sometime next week we’ll be posting a more in depth look at Linkscape, so look out for that. Enjoy your weekends!

• Grokdotcom has a monster post including a bunch of great videos about the SEM field.  Highlights include Rand Fishkin’s “Blogging for Higher Rankings” video, and Common Craft’s Social Media in Plain English. 
• In fact, the whole Common Craft web page is really great.  Check them out!
• Search Engine Land posts about about a change in the Google Webmaster Guidelines.  Have directory links lost even more value?
• Since we launched a new site, we’ll be keeping a close eye on our Google Webmaster account for errors and warnings.  The official Google Webmaster Blog covers some advanced diagnostics using Google Webmaster tools.  Anyone launching a new site in the near future should probably bookmark this guide.
• SMX East begins on Monday.  Anyone want to hook me up with a free ticket??!  Didn’t think so.

Lastly, as part of their 10th anniversary, Google made a snapshot of the 2001 version of the Google homepage available.  It actually includes their search index as well, so a search for “Groove Commerce” isn’t going to turn up anything relevant.  And I can’t put my finger on it, but something about that 2001 version of the Google homepage is more exciting… .

Posts were sparse this week due to the launch, but things should get back to normalcy next week.  Happy Friday!

Most importantly this week is a blog post from the Google Webmaster blog. When Google speaks, everyone listens. This post describes a huge change in SEO philosophy for Google. Before October 2006, Google could not even spider dynamic URL’s. When they announced that they could back in 2006, they still recommended rewriting URLs. Now, Google states they prefer that webmasters not rewrite URLs…

Thus, the ensuing commentary:

• Search Engine Land provides a great recap.
• Rand Fishkin of SeoMOZ breaks down the pros and cons.
• Smackdown lays the smackdown on Google. He’s not a fan.
• George Murphy, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at the Baltimore SEO Meetup earlier this week, weighs in with his opinion on rewriting vs dynamic URLs.

Speaking of the Baltimore SEO Meetup, Jon Payne has a recap of the event, and some discussion about future events. If you’re from the Baltmore area, be sure to check it out!