Google's acquisition of DoubleClick has turned the company into double the online advertising juggernaut that it once was, with a total advertising market share of 69% according to Attributor's study. Google enjoys a 35% share of advertising to unique users while DoubleClick enters the Googleplex with its own 34%. Combined, the two forces serve advertising to just about 2.

Google Israel went black on Thursday to celebrate Earth Hour and today in the United States, Google has gone black here in a global effort to remind cities and people to turn off their lights for one hour and spread the awareness of energy conservation. The Google Black concept was first started to try and convince Google that going black will save energy across the world )black vs. white Google homepage(.

I'd heard about this Twitter fad for a good year or so, but had never really gotten into it )or Twittered( until after the SMX West search marketing conference in early March. It seemed like almost everyone was using Twitter at the conference for various reasons; whether they were to alert others of the sessions that they were attending, or sharing their favorite blog posts. Sharing the favorite blog posts is what gathered my attention,

Google's Street View is growing substantially with 13 new cities, both large and small, from around the United States, and Yellowstone National Park! The new areas are : Albuquerque, NM Anchorage, AK Austin, TX Cleveland, OH Fairbanks, AK Little Rock, AR Madison, WI Nashville, TN Rockford, IL Richmond, VA Spokane, WA St. Petersburg, FL Tampa, FL Yosemite National Park, CA More on the addiitons plus some amazing views from the Google Lat Long Blog .

For the second month in a row, comScore says that Google AdWords spending is slowing down and its advertising growth is low, especially compared to a year ago. Clicks on Google's sponsored links " four-line ads that mostly run alongside search results " rose 3 percent to 515 million in February from a year earlier, researcher ComScore Inc. said today. In January, Google had no growth, after a 25 percent increase in the fourth quarter.

Google in Israel has issued a black out for the day; not shutting down but serving a black screen with white letters instead of an all white screen with black letters. The results pages however, are still in classic Google white. The Google Israel blackout is in honor of Earth Hour , a global movement to turn off the lights for one hour across the world at a specific date and time. In the US, Earth Hour will take place on March 29th at 8 pm, so look forward to perhaps Google.

In what may be the most upfront marketing message from Yahoo which positions its search engine as an alternative to Google, Yahoo Search sent out an advertisement today to its Yahoo Mail users asking them to stop Googling and try Yahoo Search. The email advertisement is pretty direct and to the point and links to a feature page educating users on Yahoo Search . Behold,

Niche location local search is not a new concept, various cities have their own local search guides and Backfence was a failed local community site which tried to connect the DC suburbs and never really got off the ground. Povo has launched for the Boston Area, and it seems to be a hybrid of local search and local networking, destination for finding and sharing information on anything and everything about the Boston area.

Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page each opted to take a $1 salary for 2007, folling a trend started by the founders and CEO Eric Schmidt. This comes after both founders lost about $8.5 billion each in wealth / value as Google stocks have taken a dip recently. Google stock taps in at about $450 a share now, after it had reached a height of $747.24 in November of 2007. It's nice to see CEO's and founders taking a $1 paycheck,

Usually, we do not cover forum threads, but from time to time, one does pop up which gathers my attention and is blog worthy. Today on DigitalPoint, a thread caught my eye which is titled : Different links with many language make site popular . The DigitalPoint member says that "If you have many sites with different language link to you, then your site is more popular than only one language link in.

MetaCarta has launched GeoSearch News , a Google Maps mashup which serves as a geographic news search engine that displays current news from over 1,400 global news sources on a map. GeoSearch News provides news searches one single destination where users can learn what is happening now anywhere around the world. GeoSearch News lets users specify their place-of-interest by entering a place name in a text box or panning/zooming a map to a desired place or region.

Google AdWords has opened up demographic targeting )or demographic bidding( to all AdWords advertisers according to the Inside AdWords blog. Demographic bidding lets Google AdWords advertisers target demographic )lifestyle( variables such as age and gender and the targeting can be done on the Google Contextual Network )Microsoft adCenter has offered this since its beginning and Yahoo has offered this for nearly 10 years(.

While domain names with the TLD .info are highly associated with spam because of their low costs, the domains are not worthless or always associated with spam )I heard this about 10 times at SES NY(. Although there are many spam sites using .info, there are many other exceptions. Before Aaron Wall launched SEObook, his main site was and still is Search-Marketing.info The site still ranks #2 on Google for Search Marketing ; above SEMPO and above Search Marketing Standard.

I'm not a big Internet Explorer user but today I'm using IE as my browser of choice. I noticed that when I launch Skype and IE, Skype highlights phone numbers on web sites in the browsers for calling via SkypeOut. I've noticed this in Google AdWords ads but today what really stuck out is the description used by NextStudent.com and the way it looks on my browser. The Meta Description reads : Looking for federal or private student loans for School?

This week was an interesting one at Search Engine Strategies New York as for the first time, I effectively used online networking tools to connect with attendees and peers in the industry before attending. The strategy paid off, as multiple people in the exhibit hall brought the point up that they had become my Facebook friend , were a fan of Search Engine Journal or even connected with me on LinkedIn .

Allan Dick of Vintage Tub and Bath is moderating the session on Link Building with Debra Mastaler, Dixon Jones and Degrelle. Debra Mastaler from Alliance Link: Understanding link popularity : What is link popularity, why links are valuable. Links are the core to the Internet, ARPA created in 1958, then WWW in 1989 Search engines were born : Archive, Gopher, in 1991 Excite, WebCrawl in 1994, Yahoo,

Gigablast , a personal favorite and privately owned and operated search engine, just released the findings of their search "taste test" where the majority of study participants, over 55%, found the Gigablast search results to be as good as, or better than, search results from Google. The study compared Gigablasts and Googles search results side-by-side, without brand names or logos, with over 220 participants. Forty-eight sample search queries were used,

We're starting a new ongoing series here on Search Engine Journal of SearchToons, farside style cartoons depicting events in search engines and the search industry. Today's, the controversial Calacanis and the Mahalo work ethic,

Search Around the World : Europe and the UK : Andrew Girdwood of the UK, Thomas Bindl from Germany, Sebastian Langlois of France, and Joost de Valk from the Netherlands. SEO in the UK Andrew Girdwood of Big Mouth Media says Big Mouth Media is the biggest search marketing firm in Europe, especially the UK. Andrew reckons most Americans are familiar with UK British love their mobile phones and text messaging Broadband penetration is very high Times, Independent,

YellowPages.com, a subsidiary of AT&T Inc., has entered a distribution agreement with Microsoft that will include YellowPages.com paid advertising listings on Microsoft's local search sites. The agreement is expected to launch in April, and YellowPages.com ads will be shown in the Live Search and Live Search Maps properties, including MSN Yellow Pages. "Our network approach to advertiser distribution provides value to businesses on YELLOWPAGES.COM properties and beyond,