The intermixing of search and Facebook is minimal in terms of web search, as when I was browsing through the list of search oriented Facebook apps I couldn't help but noticed that those that are the most popular are the ones used for looking and finding friends. This is but understandable since Facebook is a social networking site. Facebook however is evolving into a whole web experience,

The Google Open Source blog is announcing about the new source code browser for Google code's project hosting feature. The browser features easier navigation through an open source project's subversion )SNV( repository. It also enables fast direct browsing tree, syntax highlighting, change history, and easy to read diffs.

Microsoft announced that it is planning to buy Rapt Inc., an advertising yield management solution for digital media publishers. Microsoft is planning to integrate Rapt and its technology and information and advisory services offerings, to Atlas Publisher Suite of its Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Group. This will allow Microsoft to provide its customers with integrated asset and inventory management, forecasting, yield and sales management and ad delivery operations.

Google is launching a new service that aims to help web publishers, specifically those with small-to-medium size sales force, manage their direct ads serving. Ad manager , which Google will offer as a free service will also help publishers in serving relevant ads on their web sites. Looking at the simple illustration of how Ad Manager works as posted in the Ad Manager site, it would seem that the Ad Manager will integrate all the online ad programs that web sites implement,

Guy Kawasaki has launched his new news aggregation site, Alltop. This service from Guy's very own words is an "online magazine rack" that displays news from selected top online publications and blogs. Aiming to satisfy the needs of the 99% of Internet users who never use an RSS feed reader or who would not bother creating their own mashups/startup pages, Alltop boast of itself as providing an aggregation without the aggravation. In a nutshell,

Citing a source with direct knowledge of Yahoo plans, NYT is reporting that Yahoo is seriously considering plans to join to Google-led OpenSocial Alliance. Launched sometime last year, the OpenSocial Alliance currently has MySpace, Bebo and several other social networking sites to its fold.

If the lack of hype over Yahoo's new advertising program is an indication of its impending failure, then the Yahoo Ads for Adobe may soon see the light eternal repose. The YPN blog announced this as early as last Friday, and I didn't see any search engine advertising blog or site covering it. Either Yahoo intended to under hype this announcement or people advertisers are not interested with it at all. Anyway, as we reported in November last year,

At first look Topicle may seem to be a new vertical search engine. But taking a closer look would reveal that it is just a repackaged search engine utilizing Google Custom Search. Developed by ex-Googler product manager Steffen Mueller, Topicle is a good improvement of the straight-forward Google Custom Search. Ironically, Topicle's About page never mentioned about using Google CSE although the logo appears on actually Topicle search engine results page.

This is could be yet again another blow on the effectiveness of SEO and PPC as a study conducted by Engine Ready, an Internet Marketing Ready that neither of the two brings more revenues on Internet marketing site. As cited by the New York Times , Engine Ready analyzed 18.7 million visits in a span of two years on web sites run by 27 of the company's 500 clients. The study compared how customers react to paid listings and organic search results.

AdWords account holders will have something to expect some time next week when AdWords starts measuring the loading time of an ad's landing page. Loading time is the amount of time it takes for users to see the landing after clicking on an advertiser's link. Loading time is a very important factor in determining whether ad links' convert into a successful campaign or not. There are many factors that determine loading time of landing pages,

This is the second part of the announcement made by Google Analytics a couple of days ago regarding benchmarking and opt-in settings . The latest enhancement to Google's Analytics is the integration of the Analytics to Audio ads . With this new feature, Analytics users who implement audio ads in their sites would now be able to see how their campaign metrics for impressions, ad plays, markets and CPM correlate with their website traffic data. These include conversion,

Looks like the European Union is set to allow Google's $3.1 billion acquisition of Double-Click as speculators have predicted. The EU ruling might even come earlier than the April 2 deadline to as early as next week. Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence said in a Bloomberg report that "the deal will ultimately go through." Adding even more sweetness to the deal is the fact that the EU regulators might approve it without any conditions at all.

Google just rolled out industry benchmarking and data-sharing features for its web analytics tools. Industry benchmarking lets analytics users compare their websites traffic data with other sites in the same industry that their site belongs to. This feature gives site owners insights on how traffic performances of their site compares to other sites' performance and whether traffic trends is peculiar to a site or is common industry-wide.

As Yahoo continues to struggle in trying to avoid a possible Microsoft takeover, its search for an ally continues as well. Despite pressures on the Yahoo Board to hold an annual meeting, Yahoo is planning to bid some more time to reach a good deal with a possible ally, AOL. The Wall Street Journal outlines Yahoo's current talks with AOL and laid out the possible plan if the talks pushed through. Citing people close to the matter,

Both Search Engine Land and TechCrunch are reporting that Google search results page are showing additional search boxes within search results. The search box usually appears if you search for big sites comprised of networks of microsites. If you enter a search term into the search box, Google crawls the sites microsites and display the search results. I don't know if it was just me or my Firefox browsers, but when I tried searching for Amazon,

Yahoo continues its drive towards making a strong present on the mobile web with the unexpected announcement of the Yahoo onePlace. Touted as a revolutionary mobile content management solution, Yahoo onePlace follows Yahoo's achievements in reinventing mobile search and mobile communication. Yahoo onePlace will bring together mobile web users' interests, passions and important information into a single location and accessible via the mobile web.

Still remember Project Gatineau ? Microsoft's analytics tools and its direct answer to Google Analytics. Yes, it's still alive and working despite the lack of announcements and buzz, until now. Microsoft is giving its adCenter Analytics a much needed boost starting with the waiving of the $5 adCenter sign up fee. Aside from these,

The battle for online business application software is about to heat up as Microsoft is set to expand the coverage of its Online Business Services . The service was previously available as a paid subscription to business with a population of 5,000 or more. But Microsoft is suiting for a head on battle with Google's Search Appliance as it expands the coverage to smaller companies.

In trying to help webmaster's life easier, at least the three top search engines could agree on something. As announced in their respective webmasters' blogs, Google , Yahoo and Microsoft are unison in adhering to the cross-submission of sitemaps to the three search engines. With the simultaneous announcement of the three search engines, webmasters who are managing several websites, each with its own sitemap hosted on the sites URL,

Remember that Wiki Collaboration Software Jotspot which Google acquired in 2006? Finally Google has resurrected and renamed the collaboration tool into Google sites, Google's own take on the team website building business. Google Sites , which will be part of Google Apps, uses Jotspot's technology for creating team websites. It allows users comprising a team to centralize all types of information, be it videos, presentation slides, photos,