StatCounter is a service that allows you to view your web traffic statistics online by just adding a small hidden piece of code on each page you want to track.

The free version of the application provides enough of a log size limit to provide you with some quick and detailed information on your most recent site visitors as well as search engine referrals.

StatCounter is useful if you have several web sites so that you can get quick updates on each site without having to spend the time to log into each web site’s control panel individually.

AddThis.com offer a variety of tools that helps your web site visitors bookmark your web site or blog as well as subscribe to any rss feeds you may have.

The AddThis service is free and all you need to do is place a few lines of code on any web page you want the AddThis button to show up on.  An example button is shown below:

The Microsoft corporation announced earlier today that it is in the process of making an offer to buy Yahoo for about $45 billion dollars. The buy-out is an attempt for Microsoft to join forces with Yahoo to compete against Google in the Web search market.

Currently, Google controls about 79 percent of the worldwide Web search market while Yahoo is second with about 16 percent and Microsoft is a distant third with 4 percent.

If Microsoft is successful in buying Yahoo, it would be interesting to see how this affects Google’s current market dominance and if either Microsoft and/or Yahoo will drastically change their search algorithms. If so, this could result in changes in search engine optimization techniques used by webmasters.