Google has announced "New markup for multilingual content" which has sigificant consequences for anyone running websites in more than one language or in more than one country. This includes those with different versions for English for the US and UK and also anyone running ONE version of English but using it in multiple countries. The blog post announcing the changes is here googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-markup-for-multilingual-content.html .

The Financial Times is reporting today that Dealreporter.com )a subscription service( has details of a 400 page document spelling out accusations from complainants to the EU related to abuse of the search engine's commercial dominance in Europe. The total list of complainants is now growing in length and includes, Foundem, eJustice, Ciao!, 1plusV, VfT, Microsoft, Elfvoetbal, Hotmaps, Interactive Labs, nnpt.it, dealdujour.pro, and Twenga.

Strategically a very significant step was announced in eastern Europe today " Yandex's video search system is to power Seznam as part of a wider partnership agreement! The video search service is at videa.seznam.cz and has been re-developed specifically for Seznam, the Czech language and its users. Seznam has a leading 56% share of the Czech search market according to Toplist's November 2011 figures. The new video search engine is based on the Czech language,

The leading Russian search engine Yandex, announced yesterday that its revenues had grown by 65% in quarter 3 compared with the previous year. With a turnover of 5.2 billion Rubles )$161.9 million Rubles( and a profit of 1.8 billion Rubles, Yandex exceeded stock market expectations. CEO Arkady Volozh said, "Yandex delivered strong financial results and made significant progress across all areas of our business during the third quarter.

Since their highly successful IPO in May this year when Yandex's shares increased in value 55% on day one and raised $1.3 billion, the speculation )especially from me( has not been when the company would launch into new markets " but which and when. This week Yandex finally put us out of our misery by launching into Turkey. Alexander Laryanovsky is the Head Of Regional Development at Yandex and he explained to Multilingual-Search.

Yandex has launched a new approach to its search engine results pages. Following experiments which have been carried out during the summer, Yandex now has "Infinite Scrolling" search results pages. The way this works is that there is an additional button under the search results called "10 More Results". On the graphic below this is the button which shows top left beginning with what looks like a capital "E".

There has been a flurry of news surrounding both Microsoft's Bing and the UK's Yell organisation in the last two weeks. Firstly, at the end of last week, Microsoft' Bing and the Yell organisation announced that they were doing a deal to form a "Broad, global strategic alliance, taking advantage of their complementary strengths.

Baidu )BIDU(, China's number one search engine has today announced an agreement for the distribution of digital music with One-Stop China )OSC(, which is a joint venture formed by three of the leading global record companies, namely Universal Music, Warner Music, and Sony Music. Baidu will be providing its users with the opportunity to download or stream both Chinese songs, in both Mandarin and Cantonese alongside international releases, directly from Baidu's servers.

For some years we have talked about BRIC countries as being amongst the most interesting for international search marketers to target. It was always inevitable that at some point we would need to come up with a new term and to look at new geographies " especially when one of the emerging markets )China( is already the world's second largest economy.

Google received a warm reception to the announcement of its second quarter figures yesterday having been roundly criticised for losing control of its costs last quarter. The topline was a 32% revenue sales growth in the second quarter, compared with one year ago. But that belies what's really happening.

As part of Comscore's release of May data , the company provided details of the ten fastest growing verticals in France for the month of May compared with April. As the chart below shows, this showed a dramatic spike in demand for car rental, help with taxes and flowers, gifts or greetings. Of course, all markets have their own seasonality and May in France was no exception. Comscore's team explains, "There were )sic( a string of bank holidays in France in May,

Comscore has released its May data showing the popularity of various European websites for the month of May 2011 in Europe which provides some interesting findings, including the fact that Facebook now beats Google sites in Europe for number of page views per visitor per month. You have to bear in mind that "Google sites" includes the figures for YouTube.com. Perhaps more surprising is that fact that Vkontakte, the highly successful Russian social network,

Baidu has announced a deal with Microsoft's Bing to power its English language results within China. Baidu's Kaiser Kuo explained, "We have an increasing number of people entering English-language queries on Baidu, and that's never been our strong suit. We've been looking for a way to beef up our English search offering and partnering with Bing is by far the most effective way to do it.

Nielsen reports that 41% of Malaysians accessed the Internet in 2010, a 15% increase over the previous year. People in the younder ranges of 20-24 were the highest users with 57% of them using the internet for just over 22 hours per week. Malaysians primarily use social networking sites with 71% keeping in touch with friends and family via these sites, a 24% increase from 2009. As is often the case in countries arriving later to the internet,

You may never have heard of Neelie Kroes but now is the time to change that " she has the most profound influence over the future development of the global web of any human on the planet. How come? Neelie Kroes is the "European Digital Agenda Commissioner" and a Vice-President of the European Commission. She is in charge of the Digital Agenda for Europe which means creating "Improved standard-setting procedures and increased interoperability as the keys to success".

Yandex's launch of Yandex.Maps in July of 2010 following its acquisition of GIS Technologies is now to be fully exploited through the addition of Geo-targeted ads which will appear in the maps, in Yandex's business directory and more significantly within the search results themselves giving local businesses the opportunity to obtain greater "Stand Out".

Yandex has just released its financial figures for 2010 and the number one Russian search engine managed to achieve a whopping 43% growth in revenue taking them to $410 million " 88% of this increased revenue related to pure search ads as opposed to the other advertising products offered by the company. And search ads actually grew faster at 45% growth than the other advertising types.

Alibaba has leapt ahead of Google in terms of the share of online advertising revenue it earns in China " it's home market. According to Analysys International, Alibaba's Taoboa keyword advertising and the further development of its interactive advertising offer in China are the root cause of this development " rather than Google's failure. Baidu continues with the lion's share at over 30% but after Alibaba and Google,

Leading Russian search engine Yandex, has introduced a new method of predicting user intent in order to improve the quality of its results and thereby improve relevancy. The system, known as "Spectrum" is based on analysing user queries statistically, categorising them " and then making sure that a range or "Spectrum" of possible answers to the query is delivered in the search results pages based on popularity.

Combining the capabilities of Google Translate with Google Search has long been a feature of international search experiences " but somewhat in the background. Not anymore. Google this week rolled out a feature across the non-English speaking world, which gives users the option to extend their search to other languages with the results presented in their own language and based on the keyword search conducted in their own language.