As most of you already know, Microsoft and Yahoo have been in talks over the past year of a possible buyout which has left a sour taste in the mouth of many executives and investors in regards to not being able to come to an agreement. While Google stood in the sidelines watching, they have reached an agreement with Yahoo in regards to Yahoo's paid search. Within two days of Google launching Chrome )Google's new web browser,

As you may already know or heard, the interest in mobile is one of the hottest topics for online marketers. Technology from the iPhone, Blackberry and other phones are making it a lot easier for users to browse the web through their phones. According to Opera, State of the Mobile Web , mobile use increased by 16% in June over past months and that number will continue to increase.

As Google launches Knol, its weapon to battle Wikipedia, many ask themselves if Google will dominate its own search results, which in search, already dominates the market.   Forbes.com posted a very interesting article )I believe it came from PaidContent.org â€" want to cite the right source,( " Iteration #419: Is Google A Content Company ?" which poses a great question, maybe a great threat to many.

According to eWeek.com , former Google engineers have launched a new search engine that could index even more sites than that of Google. The name of the search engine is Cuil )pronounced "cool"( and has already gone live. Cuil is said to index sites online faster and cheaper than that of Google, but that is yet to be seen. Can a new engine in the market really compete against Google? Yahoo which is the 2 nd largest search engine in the U.S.

Following great privacy concerns for online users for many years now, Yahoo is taken another step forward to protect users' web activity. CNNMoney reports , "Last week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent letters to 33 companies asking detailed questions about how they serve up Web ads to customers and whether they collect or store data on people's Internet searches. In addition toYahoo, the letters went to large companies like Comcast Corp. )CMSCA, CMCSK(,

AOL has re-launched their video platform with a new redesign and model that has proven to work'it's called Social Media. With the success of YouTube and many other video sharing sites, and video in general, AOL is debuting their new video platform with a whole new look and feel to it. "The redesigned AOL Video portal builds upon what we've learned is the critical importance of combining industry-leading technology with a unique, easy-to-navigate user experience,

Though the iPhone may be considered the best phone for internet mobile use, Google has improved its search results for the Blackberry. As Googles goal is to help users search more efficiently, these improvements to the Blackberry will do just that. As reported in the Google Mobile Blog,

The battle still remains between the two largest online social communities, Myspace and Facebook. While many people think Myspace is "dead", the site was up a 7% in May compared to May 07'. Facebooks' numbers were quite impressive increasing 83% from May 07' according to Nielsen Online reported by Marketing Charts . The network I'm most impressed with that had a very significant increase in the social space is LinkedIn, a social community for professionals,

Today I was surprised to check my email and actually find something interesting )I get spammed a lot( that caught my attention with the subject title, "Questioning the Integrity of Google's Ad Auction Process." It was an email sent to me by Scott Cleland which found me by reading a post I wrote in SEJ titled, " Google Adwords Quality Score: Affiliates Worst Nightmare?

The Wall Street Journal had a great piece on mobile marketing, " Advertisers to Consumer: We'll Text You ." Do you have any text messaging advertising plans for your business in the near future? Text messaging is a growing trend between users becoming more popular than actually calling a person, but more so interesting and great for marketers; people seem to be very receptive to text messaging. I think it is something psychologically gratifying, exciting,

Talking to many companies who are doing their search engine marketing in-house, I've noticed they are solely focused on paid search in the search engines. Sure, billions of people worldwide search the engines daily, but those people are being led to websites which many of them use content networks to monetize their sites which display relevant ads to their websites content. Let's take the Google content network for example. Thousands of sites, if not millions,

As search marketers, quality score has played a huge role in our campaigns determining our bids and positions in the search engines. I just attended the session, "Ads in A Quality Score World" by panelist David Miller from Yahoo Search Marketing, Joel Lapp from Reprise Media, Jon Kelly from Sure Hits and Frederick Valleys from Google. Quality score is ever changing in the ways the search engines will evaluate the way they rank ads in search queries.

Most talk about or plan to do it, while the reality is that very few companies do. A viral campaign is probably the best way to spread buzz and word-of-mouth marketing for branding purposes, drive traffic, or even monetize a site. I will post my notes from this session to help you understand what a viral campaign is and hopefully spark ideas as to what you can do for your campaign to go viral. What's more important in a viral campaign? Money or Content? CONTENT.

If you are using paid search as one of your online marketing strategies )who isn't, if you're not, get with the program,( this was one of the most important sessions I have ever attended and paid very close attention to. In order to try and give you the information up-to-date,

I was answering some questions on the Digital Point forum when I came across a thread about getting paid to click on ads, instantly, a red flag was raised. Getting paid to click on ads? The thread was started by a company called AdBuck.net. How do they work? You register to their website and they pay you .1 cent for every ad you click. On the advertiser side of things, you pay $2 for 100 members to visit your site and click on an ad. Who would this model work for? Well,

CNNs Rick Sanchez reported today on the new Rolling Stone article on the success of Barack Obamas campaign. I havent read the article myself yet but it reveals the secret to Obamas successful grass roots campaign is due to social networking online. Sure, Howard Dean did reach the people online in his last presidential candidacy but whats the difference with Obama? Its 2008,

OK, I dont know exactly where Im going with the title )tried to come up with a good one for Valueclick but really couldnt.( For those of you whove been following SEJ )Search Engine Journal(, Im sure you've seen my post on ValueClick and my experience with them as an advertiser. The story still gets me because every time I talk to a potential client about generating leads, 90% of the time,

Bloomberg.com reports AOL will be launching a dozen sites within the next six months to try and increase its market share in terms of traffic to Google and Yahoo. Declining subscriptions and change of views in the company is leading AOL to become an ad network as we seen in 2007 with the acquisition of Quigo and other networks. The AOL business model is simple, if they can't attract subscribers anymore,

Digg.com is officially in the market for sale with a price tag of $300 million dollars. One of the most popular social media sites on the net with millions of visitors per month and one of the largest user-generated content sites around, Digg has one of the lmost loyal user followings on the net. Venture Beat reports: A reliable source just confirmed the companys plans, noting the company has hired Allen & Company, a tiny but influential private investment firm,