SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, has elected a new slate of officers for 2009. Jeffrey Pruitt, formerly SEMPO president and executive vice president of corporate partnerships, iCrossing, was elected chairman, replacing outgoing chairman Dana Todd, CMO and co-founder at Newsforce. Sara Holoubek, corporate strategy consultant, replaces Pruitt as SEMPO's president. Ron Jones, president and CEO of Symetri Internet Marketing,

Consumer spending in February 2009 dropped significantly from January, according to a report by Coremetrics. Those who shopped online during February purchased 13% fewer items. Website sessions that resulted in purchases declined by 3%. Page views per session dropped 1%, product views per session dropped 2.5% and average time on site went down 4.5%.

Facebook launched its Marketplace in 2007, giving users the ability to sell household goods via the social network. Now, Marketplace has been given an overhaul , which has been developed by classifieds vendor Oodle . If you're currently using Marketplace, you'll have the option to transfer your item)s( to the updated version. If you want to access Marketplace, search for it in the Application Directory. With the update comes a charitable effort.

MapQuest has enhanced its Business Locator with an On-Map Search Tool. The tool helps users find businesses along routes they plan with MapQuest. This will help the coffee-obsessed such as myself find coffee stops along their travel routes. Below is a screenshot of a route from Raleigh, NC to Durham, NC. Notice the icon toolbar on the top right side. You can scroll for different search categories such as groceries and accommodations.

Real estate search site Trulia experienced record growth for its community-based feature, Trulia Voices, last month.

Google spam czar Matt Cutts is weighing in on "sponsored conversations" which is a fancy pants way of saying "paid posts." This is where bloggers are paid by companies to publish a favorable post about them. Matt Cutts says Google will punish bloggers who pass page rank to the links included in paid posts. However, it's ok to have the paid posts - just include the "nofollow" tag on the links.

Mark at MT-Hacks is quite the genius. He's created a Greasemonkey script that will return real-time Tweets in your Google searches , if you're using the Firefox browser. If things like "Greasemonkey script" throw you off, don't worry, it's very easy. Just three steps: 1. Install Greasemonkey plugin ) click here (. 2. Install "Twitter Search results on Google" script ) click here (. 3. Search.

Last year, Flickr began allowing its Pro members to upload 90 second videos . Now, Flickr is letting all members upload videos , but there's a caveat. Members using the free version of Flickr are limited to two 90 second videos a month )which is in addition to the 100 mb monthly photo upload allowance(. Additionally, Flickr is now enabling HD video, something YouTube recently has done as well. However, only Pro members can upload HD video.

Google Analytics is launching a skills qualification program. Think Google Adwords certification, but for Google Analytics. The program is called Google Analytics IQ - or Google Analytics Individual Qualification. Once you're certified, you can help use Google to brand yourself to clients or enhance your status to your boss if you're in-house. "Google is an important partner to both GroupM and its clients," said Rob Norman,

AOL is partnering with the Grocery Shopping Network for its Food portal. Users will be able to search UCook.com's 65,000 recipes; wine pairings; and cooking-related video content. 4.7 million visitors view AOL Food per month. "AOL Food is excited to partner with the Grocery Shopping Network to provide consumers a solid, reliable and searchable recipe database," said Tanya Mancini, editorial director, AOL Living. "AOL Food chose GSN's UCook.

Search Engine Watch has written much about the need for landing page testing , but how do you know what to test in the first place? A new tool from San Diego-based search marketing agency Engine Ready helps you design the very pages you need to test. The tool is dubbed Conversion Critic and the great news is that it's FREE. Engine Ready Vice President Brian Lewis )who I met at SES Chicago( walked me through a demo of the tool last week. After you sign in,

Major hat tip to LiveSide.net for gathering the bits and pieces coming out about Live Search's new brand and features. It seems a Microsoft exec leaked a Tweet )later taken down( about playing with a pre-beta version of the new Live Search. )Live Side got a screenshot of the Tweet before it was taken down.( Karen Young at MVP tweeted that Steve Ballmer will discuss the Live Search update this Wednesday at the MVP Summit.

CitySquares began as a local search site for cities in the Northeast. Last year, they announced their plans for a nationwide expansion as data showed they were the fastest growing search site . They followed through, expanding to a trickle of cities and states along the way . Now, CitySquares is announcing that they have reached all 50 states in their expansion . There are 16,000,000 businesses now listed on CitySquares. They still have some growing to do. For example,

Guy Kawasaki and Matt McGowan will be holding an SES Webcast on Friday, March 6, at 10 a.m. )PST(, 1 p.m. )EST(, 6pm )GMT(. They will talk about Kawasaki's new book, "Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition." They will also talk about Kawasaki's opening keynote at Search Engine Strategies New York , which is entitled, "Twitter As A Tool For Social Media.

Yahoo disclosed in a SEC filing Friday that they spent $79 million to stop the Microsoft take over, which I am sure will annoy some stockholders who now have stock priced around $13 when the Microsoft bid went as high as $33. Interestingly Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer still is interested in the acquisition, though you would need a dance card to keep track of who is for or against the merger/buyout.

Yahoo confirmed Friday that the changes noted by others had been in the works for a few days and would continue for a few more. "We've rolled out some changes to our index with fresh web data and updates to our crawling, indexing, and ranking algorithms over the last few days. We have had two updates since last November: one in December, 2008, and another in late January this year. We expect the update will be completed very soon.

Users of Google's blogging product, Blogger, can now add Friend Connect to their blogs. The feature enables them to incorporate social networking to their blog. Now, that might seem a bit redundant. Isn't a blog already social with comments? Yes, but blogging isn't a comprehensive social community. Granted, Friend Connect isn't comprehensive, but it's a simple way for those who don't have the time or resources to build out a full-on social networking site.

After enduring controversy over a new Terms of Service , Facebook has released another new version - this time with a whole new vision for its implementation. The new TOS is open for feedback, in the spirit of being transparent. There are two documents being released. One is "Facebook Principles," which defines the rights of members. The second is a "Statement of Rights and Responsibilities," which replaces the Terms of Service.

Google Translate has added 7 more languages . They are: Turkish Thai Hungarian Estonian Albanian Maltese Galician This brings the total number of languages on Google Translate to 41. The available languages reach the ones spoken by 98% of internet users. Last September, Google added 11 languages and last summer, Google "went live" with human translation as a service. Related Reading: Google Explains the Nuances of Language Translation Google Translate Adds Widget,

Back in May 2005, Linda Rutherford sent me an email with the subject line: "Demise of the fourth estate." Linda is now the Vice President of Communications and Strategic Outreach at Southwest Airlines, but she is a former a reporter for the Dallas Times Herald newspaper. In her email, Linda wrote, "If you have a few moments, please take a look at this short video. It's an interesting short movie from the Museum of Media History predicting the demise of the fourth estate.