It's a fact of business life: big companies often face bigger challenges. Large-scale search programs, especially those involving multiple brands or multiple countries, are inherently more complex to create and manage. If you're finding yourself in this situation, look no further than our latest Search Engine Watch webcast, " Effectively Managing a Large Scale Search Program ." The presenter is Bill Hunt .

Dr. Kai-Fu Lee has resigned as Google Vice President and President of Google Greater China to work with Chinese start-ups at a new company he founded, Innovation Works . Innovation Works will concentrate on Internet, mobile Internet, and cloud computing technology advancements targeted at the Greater China market, and build "dream teams" to collect, analyze, prioritize and execute on the most promising ideas, according to a statement.

Yahoo is rolling out some changes to its search results pages , with a new three-column design that highlights Yahoo apps, related searches, and more filtering options. The changes are being tested with a random set of Yahoo users, and are expected to roll out to all users later this year. In the left-hand column of Yahoo's search results, users will be presented with results filtering options. These include links to searches on related concepts,

Microsoft unloaded a potential conflict of interest today when it agreed to sell Razorfish to Publicis for $530 million. Microsoft had picked up Razorfish )then known as Avenue A | Razorfish( as part of its 2007 acquisition of aQuantive . That put Microsoft in a position where it was selling ads to itself, and buying ads from its search engine competitors. Publicis helped Google out of a similar situation last year when it bought Performics from Google.

The editorial team here at Search Engine Watch is proud to announce the finalists for the 2009 Search Engine Watch Awards . We had a great turnout this year, with nearly 100 entries for the 14 categories. We've winnowed down the entries to three finalists in each category. Once our judging panel completes their deliberations, we'll announce the winners in each category at Search Engine Strategies San Jose . Look for my smiling face, along with several of our SEW Experts,

So by now, you've probably heard about the Microsoft - Yahoo search deal . You may even have read my take that this will be good for advertisers . If not, go back and start there, so we're all caught up. I got responses from several other search marketers saying the deal looked good from their side too. We'll be putting up a collection of industry responses later today. In the meantime, I wanted to look at the deal from a searcher perspective. Is it good for them too?

My phone has been ringing off the hook today with last-minute submitters to the Search Engine Watch Awards asking for an extension to today's deadline. In an effort to get all these great submissions included in our awards, we've decided to extend our deadline through Tuesday, July 21. Besides that, it will allow me to get something done today without answering my phone or e-mail about this every few minutes. :( To make your submission, or for more information,

Yahoo today launched the pilot launch of Yahoo My Display Ads, a self-serve display ad marketplace for ads on Yahoo sites and partner sites. The program is being powered by Seattle-based technology provider AdReady . Advertisers can create and customize campaigns using more than 800 display templates, choosing either CPM-based )cost-per-thousand impressions( or CPC-based )cost-per-click( pricing. Ads will be targetable by geography, channel or audience demographics.

Microsoft today announced that NBC Universal will be the first media partner for its digital TV advertising marketplace, Admira . The technology, which Microsoft gained with its acquisition of Navic a year ago, uses real-time audience measurement data to optimize the delivery and placement of television advertising. This "addressable advertising" platform brings many of the advantages of online advertising to offline media, including better targeting and tracking capabilities.

Earlier this month, Matt Cutts shared with search marketers that Google had begun treating nofollow differently , especially in regards to "PageRank sculpting," the advanced SEO tactic that aims to control where PageRank flows around a site. Today, he goes into detail on how Google views PageRank sculpting , and how it treats the nofollow attribute in regards to PageRank flow. Cutts offers a simplified description of the PageRank process,

Microsoft's Bing isn't the only "decision engine" in town anymore, with today's launch of Hunch. Hunch is a new site that aims to connect people based on their answers to several questions, from "Where is your house located?" to "Do you like bumper cars?" As users answer questions, hunch learns more about them. The service then helps the user make decisions, such as where to go on vacation, or what kind of car to buy,

It's #followfriday on Twitter, that day when you spam your followers with lists of names you drop to impress them...or something like that. In theory, the idea is good: share some of your favorite Twitterers with your followers, assuming they'll like what they have to say too. In practice, it can be overused and worthless. I'm guilty of doing it myself today on the official SEW Twitter account ) @sewatch (,

This week at SES Toronto , Tara Hunt shared some insights from her new book, The Whuffie Factor . In Hunt's definition, "whuffie" is social capital, composed of reputation, trust, connections, influence, and other factors. It becomes a kind of currency. As it turns out, her message was echoed elsewhere at Search Engine Strategies Toronto, and throughout the search industry today. Basically, you need to treat people with respect, deliver what they need in a way they enjoy,

In the "Social Media: Do Big Companies Get It?" panel at SES Toronto , it turned out that the three presenters each offered a checklist of sorts. Though they shared more insight than just this, it's a handy way to sum up some of the knowledge they shared. First, we have 5 Myths of Social Media, from Mark Evans : Social media is free - not when you count your time, money, and resources. Social media is easy - it's not.

We've already seen comScore and StatCounter report an auspicious start for Microsoft's newly launched Bing search engine. Now, Hitwise shares Initial Bing Stats for US and Canada . According to Heather Dougherty, Hitwise's director of research: In the US, Bing ranked 17th among all websites out of over 450,000 websites, up from 5120 the week before the official launch when the website was merely a placeholder. Within the Search Engines category,

Since 1997, Search Engine Watch )SEW( has been keeping marketers and site owners informed about the world of search engine marketing through daily news and expert advice. Combined with Search Engine Strategies )SES(, the leading international conference series, SEW and SES have guided search marketers of all skill levels through the fast changing and complex world of search for more than 10 years. We're adding to that guidance with the 2009 Search Engine Watch Awards .

Three new members are joining the Search Engine Strategies )SES( advisory board , joining 11 current members to guide the future direction of the search marketing conference series. The new advisory board members are: Brett Crosby, group PPM at Google; Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Online Marketing; and Stewart Quealy, VP of content development at Incisive Media. Quealy, the senior person responsible for creating conference program content for the SES events,

Local advertising spending by small-to-medium U.S. businesses will grow by almost 34 percent from 2008 to 2013, and nearly 70 percent of their interactive ad budgets will go toward paid search and video, according to a new report from Borrell Associates, " Main Street Goes Interactive ." The report says there will be a nearly 275 percent increase in SMB spending on streaming audio and video, almost 140 percent increase on e-mail and direct ad formats,

In the not-so-distant past, sites built using Adobe's Flash technology were invisible to search engines. Both search engines and SEOs have continued to work on ways to make those pages show up better in search results. Last summer, Adobe lent a hand, by providing its Flash technology to Google and Yahoo to help them figure out how to better index sites and pages created with Flash. This week, Adobe went a step further,

Yahoo has added some new features to its Sponsored Search and Content Match ads, including demographic targeting, ZIP-level geotargeting, and dayparting/ad scheduling. As Carrie Hill wrote in her Small Business Marketing column today, demographic targeting is already available from Google and Microsoft, but it is a welcome addition to Yahoo's search ad platform and content network. Audiences can be targeted by age and gender, with a separate bid set for those desired groups.