While the smartphones market in Japan has only reached a 6% penetration rate compared to 31% in the United States and 30% in the United Kingdom the countries users are far more engaged with the devices they do own. The infographic shown below demonstrates the true impact smartphones have had on Japanese consumers. Among the .

If there is any more dynamic and competitive marketing niche online than travel and hospitality, even the casual observer would have a hard time noticing it. If only there was a way to discern just where the many online business are headed. Well, maybe by noting some significant ones, along with their latest news, we .

According to numerous sources, Yahoo is heavily considering the sale of its interests in Alibaba )the Chinese B2B Search Marketplace conglomerate( and Yahoo Japan )which is led autonomously but still part of Yahoo(. Sean Ludwig of VentureBeat says that the sale could result in $17 Billion in revenue for Yahoo as it scrambles to figure .

Over the next month, BlueGlass will be unveiling a new confirmed speaker for BlueGlass LA daily with a really cool calendar countdown. Traditionally, at BlueGlass we have waited until the last minute to plan our conferences, usually lining up the venue, speakers & sponsors over the course of a month or two " but this .

We have a couple of announcements to make here in the conferences department at SEJ that will make for some exciting times this fall and for next spring. First off, today BlueGlass announced that there will be a follow up to the BlueGlass TPA Conference this Spring in Los Angeles, CA " BlueGlass LA 2012 . That's right! BlueGlass is coming BACK to LA :( BlueGlass LA 2012 will be held on April 23rd & 24th,

For years on SEJ we've been a proponent of listing sites web directories as a form of traditional organic link building. And over these years many web directories have come and gone. As linking gets less oriented on brute force anchor text overload and moreso is taking a natural approach, sometimes it can be very easy to overlook the fundamentals.

Embed this on your site Google? [INFOGRAPHIC]" border="0" /> Source: Comparison of the Top Three Search Engines: Bing+Yahoo > Google? [INFOGRAPHIC] And now, for something completely obvious: Google owns the lion's share of US search traffic. But could the Goliath of Search be eclipsed by the currently David-sized combo of Bing and Yahoo' in as soon as the next 18 months? Experian's Hitwise reports that Bing continues month over month to chip away at Google.

After talking to ShoeMoney at BlueGlass TPA , I've decided to give Facebook Comments for WordPress a run on SEJ for a couple of weeks to see how it works. The Facebook Comments should eliminate a lot of comment spam issues )this is an 8 year old blog so we get A LOT( and I hear that the virality of the commenting can generate a lot of Facebook traffic. How will this work from an SEO standpoint? Let's see and find out! What do you think about Facebook Comments?

Recipe-finder.com announced on Friday that it publicly entered the recipe portal niche this month . The recipe portal niche has been fairly competitive over the past few months, with other sites such as Foodily and Supercook. Recipe Finder, however, has features that allow social sharing and menu planning simple and easy. There's over 1 million recipes and over 700,000 delicious images to look through.

Good morning SEJ Readers! Later on in the month, down in sunny Tampa, FL, we will be holding an intimate and stellar Online marketing event called BlueGlass TPA. Search Engine Journal is an official media partner of BlueGlass TPA, and assisted with the lineup and content for the conference.

Big news today from the BlueGlass camp! We've secured Jeremy "ShoeMoney" Schoemaker to the speaker lineup for BlueGlass TPA ! Jeremy will be sitting on the "Blog & News Optimization: How Publishers Can Dominate Google & Beyond" Panel with Brian Clark of Copyblogger and discussing killer techniques for bloggers & publishers to build traffic, links and BUSINESS via their content strategies.

Big news from the BlueGlass team with regards to the speaker lineup at BlueGlass TPA )our next conference on September 26th & 27th in Tampa, FL( as we've added two great speakers to our agenda; Rae 'Sugarrae' Hoffman-Dolan & aimClear 's Marty Weintraub! Sugarrae & Marty are well regarded experts in the fields of search & social media marketing, and are topping off a speaker lineup that includes experts from Bing, AOL, Copyblogger, Trada,

The Birth of Search Engine Journal It all started on a sleepless night 8 years ago. After taking a hiatus from the world of online marketing to do some traveling and teaching, I decided to start getting back into the swing of things and checking out what had changed in the world of search. On that sleepless night in 2003, I started logging back into my forum accounts, checking my archives of iSearch email newsletters and renewing my interest in SEO.

What better way to end the week than with an update on the agenda for BlueGlass TPA , the next BlueGlass conference )after LA & FL( which will be held in Tampa, FL on September 26th & 27th )SEJ is a media partner!(. BlueGlass TPA will host speakers from search & social companies like Bing, Raven Tools, AOL, CopyBlogger, Digitas, TopRank, ThinkGeek and many more and will be hosted by the BlueGlass team, which includes Greg Boser, Chris Winfield, Dave Snyder & myself.

BlueGlass TPA , the exclusive two day conference that will be held in Tampa, FL on September 26th & 27th, has added some well known expert speakers to its already impressive list of presenters and panelists. eBay's Dennis Goedegebuure will be presenting on advanced SEO tactics. AOL's Simon Heseltine will be adding with SEO & social signals.

Today at BlueGlass, we announced the opening of registration for BlueGlass TPA, our upcoming exclusive conference in Tampa, FL which will be held on September 26th & 27th. BlueGlass TPA is an extension of the conferences originally set up by Search Engine Journal and a number of the companies that became BlueGlass Interactive last year. There will only be 50 seats available for sale for this uber-exclusive and amazing conference,

Continuing a long tradition of interviews and insights here at Search Engine Journal, I reached out to Neil Patel last week to get an update on Neil & his KissMetrics project. I've known Neil for a long time and have always kept tabs on him after meeting at an SES San Jose in back in 2005. Over the past 6 years, a lot has changed, but his two projects in KissMetrics & CrazyEgg keep innovating. Neil, you have done a lot over the last 10 years of your entrepreneurial career.

We have big plans for SEJ this year! We are excited to announce today that we are searching for a new editor-in-chief. Our EIC will be in a highly visible role as the voice and face of SEJ. This U.S-based individual will be breaking exclusive news, procuring the best guest bloggers for unique and thought-provoking posts, and covering search conferences to interview the most-recognized personalities and experts in search marketing.

BlueGlass Interactive is expanding into its first full International venture, the launch of BlueGlass Australia , which is a sister agency project between BlueGlass Interactive and ireckon . Since the inception of BlueGlass, the goal has been smart expansion and scaling out our ability to provide services not only for companies, brands and sites not only located in the United States, but also abroad.

Norwegian travel startup Stay.com , was the proverbial "toast of travel town" at the end of last year. Moreover, judging from today's release of their version 2.3 Beta, it looks as if the Scandinavian startup is ramping up for some more accolades for 2011. While Version 2.3 is not a Noah's Ark of online travel exclusivity, users will find adding just about anything to their travel guides, and their community too, quite useful. For those who are not familiar with Stay.