I've just returned from the PRSA International Conference in Detroit, Michigan. The Public Relations Society of America is the world's largest organization for public relations professionals. But there were a number of sessions on the agenda about search engine optimization. On Saturday, Oct. 25, Lee Odden taught a half-day workshop on "Optimizing Content for Optimum Search Results: Search Engine Optimization of News." Lee, as most of us in the search industry know,

If you've used the Google Checkout Buy Now button, you know that it's a bit limiting - only allowing customers to purchase one item at a time. Google Checkout's new shopping cart allows your customers to purchase multiple items at once. To get started, go to the Tools tab in the Google Checkout Merchant Center. Enter your product info, price and image location. An HTML script will be generated for you. Copy and paste the code onto your product pages.

It turns out that the concern over the Google/Yahoo search advertising partnership is bipartisan. Earlier this month, Senator Herb Kohl )D-Wisc( urged caution in a letter to Assistant Attorney General Thomas Barnett. Now, Rep. Joe Barton )R-TX( has written a letter to Barnett expressing his concern. Barton's beef is with what he feels is Yahoo's inadequate response to questions regarding the deal.

Online advertising networks are struggling to make ends meet during a tough economy and a slowdown in industry growth. JellyCloud and Adzilla have shut down while AdBrite had to lay off 40% of its staff. It's a crowded field with over 300 ad networks, many of them designed to target niche markets. Bigger ad networks, such as AOL's Platform-A, are experiencing struggles in niches such as auto, financial, and telecommunications. What do you think of this slowdown?

If you want to learn how to use PR for effective SEO, the free WebmasterRadio webinar today should be a must view. Registration can be done here . Top Rank CEO Lee Odden and Jay Byrne, President of v-Fluence Interactive Public Relations, will do the presentation that starts at 2 pm EST today. I know I will be listening in, and recommend you join me.

Blip.tv CEO "Mike Hudack revealed that his company has found a way to dynamically insert ads from DoubleClick into video downloads on iTunes and elsewhere," the Washington Post reported . Given the huge use of the tube sites such as YouTube and the increasing popularity of downloading ITune videos this new technology should prove a good revenue source for Google - owner of DoubleClick. "For the past six months or so, blip.tv has been experimenting with placing pre-roll,

While many seem happy to see that Yahoo has started geo-targeting, the comments to their blog post about launch problems seem to show early adoption problems. Given Yahoo has already divided out their PPC by country, it would seem the rest should be easier. If you are using the new tools and have opinions please post them here .

Bloomberg News reports the monthly search numbers for September have Yahoo gaining while Google and Microsoft have dropped. "Yahoo! Inc. handled a larger chunk of U.S. Internet searches last month while Microsoft Corp. lost market share, according to researcher ComScore Inc. Yahoo had about 20.2 percent of queries in September, up from 19.6 percent in August, Reston, Virginia-based ComScore said today in an e-mail. Microsoft's share fell to 8.5 percent from 8.9 percent.

Despite cutting 10,000 jobs, Motorola is betting big on Google's telephone technology Android, dropping all but three of their phone operating systems, the Wall Street Journal reported . Though Android has had security problems, Motorola's chief of the handset division Dr. Sanjay Jha is a big proponent of the operating system and is using it "for mid-tier )very high volume( phones,

Microsoft adCenter has released a slew of updates for the fall to aid you in your paid search campaigns. The updates include: Campaign Management : ability to pause and resume ads and keywords, geo-targeting enhancements, and improved performance reporting on the Ads page Editorial Improvements : faster reviews, dynamic feedback about why ads and keywords were disapproved,

Google has reached an agreement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers )AAP(, which represented a broad class of authors and publishers to expand online access to in-copyright books and other written materials in the U.S. The publications will come from the library collections participating in Google Book Search. The agreement was reached after two years of negotiations.

Baidu is getting in the consumer-to-consumer )C2C( game )think eBay or indie sellers on Amazon.com( with a new site, Youa.com . In the beginning, 10,000 sellers were chosen from over 100,000 applicants. 50,000 customers were chosen from Baidu's online communities. "Baidu Youa continues Baidu's tradition of providing the best possible online experience for our users," said Mr. Jun Yu, Baidu's vice president of products.

AOL is shutting down its blogging product, AOL Journals. Google wants Journal users to head on over to Blogger to keep their journaling spirit alive. So, they've created a migration tool to help you port your AOL Journals postings over to a new Blogger blog. You'll want to hurry. AOL Journals says goodbye this Friday, October 31. For details, check out the Blogger blog .

Popular professional social networking site LinkedIn is rolling out its new search platform. Like most major releases, it will only be available to a small percentage at first.

Major hat tip to TechCrunch for sharing with the world a way to link to a certain time point within a video on YouTube. Take for example this video of a clip from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=p1d19wV1GZQ If you wanted to share the link but have the video start 56 seconds in where the film cuts away from Ginger Rogers in the Senate Gallery to Jimmy Stewart's character speaking and barely standing as part of a filibuster,

hakia is jumping on the personalized search page bandwagon with My hakia .

The first phone with Google's new mobile platform Android was released last week on Tmobile . Unlike the iPhone, Android will be seen on more devices and more carriers in months and years to come. But Sprint CEO Dan Hesse says Android isn't quite ready to carry the Sprint name on a device - not yet anyway. He says that Sprint will carry an Android phone in the future, but the platform needs work. It might be tempting to suggest that the struggling Sprint should hop on board.

There was much buzz over the weekend about a military report suggesting the popular mass Instant Messaging tool Twitter could be used by terrorists. They cited as an example the protestors at the Republican National Convention using Twitter to inform about police actions and movement. In that case, Twitter becomes a better counterterrorism tool than it does the next training exercise for Hamas and Al Quaida.

Microsoft announced its earnings for the fiscal quarter ending September 30, 2008. For them, it's the first quarter of their fiscal year, while other companies go with the traditional calendar and call it their third quarter. Their net income increased by 2%. This was due largely in part to XBox360, a gaming console which recently received a price slash. It has been widely noted that Microsoft has a bunch of cash on hand,

AzoogleAds , a division of Epic Advertising, today announced the beta launch of an iPhone publisher reporting platform, iMobilePublisher. The platform will be available as an iPhone and iPod Touch application. Users will be able to payment history, leads, stats, clicks and effective CPCs. Publishers will also be able to sort by offers and a variety of date ranges, with a user-interface that can display data in graphical format.