In accordance with the terms of the settlement with Carl Icahn , Yahoo has added two more board members to complete the expansion to 11. Frank Biondi and John Chapple, who previously were members of Icahn's proxy board , have been appointed just two weeks after Icahn's appointment was made official. 8 of Yahoo's previous board stayed on for the deal. Here's the lowdown on the new dudes: Frank Biondi has served as senior managing director of WaterView Advisors LLC,

We've seen a natural progression from back rooms to boardrooms - from the basement to the mainstream. SEO has not simply shed its dubious roots; it has become a legitimate, reputable component of a proper client marketing mix. In today's SEM agency issues column, " The Evolution of SEO ," William Flaiz outlines the continuing growth of search marketing.

If you need some lift, start dropping pages into Google Knol and Google pages. They show up in the organic results faster than you can get them through Webmaster Central. In today's SEM Crossfire column, " Google SERP Bias? Google Knols Best ," Frank Watson and Chris Boggs discuss the limitations of Google's algorithms, and its hypocritical stances on some web spam topics.

In a battle for universal search engine foosball domination, Google and Yahoo are meeting in a clash of the titans at SES San Jose . Microsoft has also been invited, and is trying to put together a team. This could determine the future of the search industry )well foosball-wise at least(. So come to the Networking Cocktail Reception on Tuesday. Play will start as close to 5:15 PM as possible, so we can get the games done prior to the end of the reception. Bring your cameras,

As people returned to work on Monday after the first weekend of the Beijing Olympic games, many went online to keep track of events as they unfold, according to Nielsen Online. Traffic to NBC's Olympics video site jumped a whopping 85% on the first day of the work week, while other sites enjoyed a nice boost as well. Yahoo's unique audience nearly doubled to its Olympics site on Monday, helping it top the list of most trafficked Olympics sites for August 11.

Zillow, a vertical search engine aimed at the real estate market, has announced the launch of Showcase Ads, geo-targeted ads for realtors and other real estate advertisers. Within a given zip code, advertisers can buy 25, 50, 75, or 100 percent of the ads, giving them the ability to target just the local areas they are interested in selling to. Showcase Ads will have a different pricing structure than Zillow's other local ad offering - EZ Ads.

Google AdSense has expanded the availability of its Video Units to include support for 3 more languages and 4 more countries. The languages are: French German Spanish The countries are: Brazil Germany India Mexico Previously , video units were available in English and Japanese to users in Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Spain, United Kingdom, and the United States.

If you've been keeping up with the conflict in South Ossetia, perhaps you were curious about where the contentious events were occurring. I hope you ended up at Microsoft's Live Search Maps, because it is the only map of the top 5 search engines that could find both Tskhinvali, South Ossetia's self-declared capital, as well as Abkhazia, another separatist region where Russia has opened a second front.

Google has added a "Places" Layer to Google Earth. Content from Wikipedia, Panaramio, YouTube and the Google Earth community have been wrapped up into a "single, multifaceted layer." The Places layer is found in the Geographic Web layers section on Google Earth. Meanwhile, Google is also addressing the difficulty of mapping in tumultuous regions of the earth, such as the countries along the southern Russian border that were previously states in the former Soviet Union.

If you're looking for drama, go watch the Olympics or an episode of the Hills. Ex-Googler Ben Ling is leaving Facebook, but it's not for any rumored internal squabbles. Instead, he's got a new opportunity on deck that is apparently great enough to leave the hottest social network in the world right now. I don't know what opportunity is out there for a guy with Google and Facebook experience, but it had better be a doozy.

For a long time, I have been befuddled as to why I must log-in to Google Analytics when I'm already logged into Gmail in the same browser. Now, Google is claiming they have streamlined the process. If you're signed into your Google account, all you have to do when you arrive at the Analytics page is click on a bright blue button that says "Access Analytics." This is not truly an improved,

Just 3 months after acquiring the assets of the Safari search plug-in, Inquisitor , Yahoo is announcing updates to the add-on. Using the recently launched BOSS technology , Inquisitor is now faster in providing Yahoo results. Eight additional languages can use Inquisitor now, as well. They are Japanese, Korean, Traditional Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and German. The Inquisitor client got a fresh redesign and so did the home page for the plug-in.

Want a souped-up analytics package that allows you to track individual users, and potentially interact with them in real time? In today's Web analytics and ROI column, " Real-Time Analytics with Woopra ," Eric Enge explains why Woopra may be exactly what you're looking for.

Search advertising tools have been unhappily married to search providers since they first appeared on the scene. But there's new hope for search marketers. In today's Searching for Meaning column, " Search Ad Tools Help Manage Complexity ," Kevin Ryan notes that increasing consolidation and acquisition of search advertising tools by big holding companies is slowly opening a window of opportunity for independent providers.

The new book, "Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer," is hot off the press. Written by Bryan Eisenberg and John Quarto-vonTivadar, with contribution from Lisa T. Davis, the book will help you understand how to set up website optimization tests and improve your conversion rates. And, if you are going to SES San Jose next week, head over to the "Pay Per Conversation" session on Monday, Aug. 18 at 11:15 a.m. and get Bryan to sign a copy of the book,

With the onslaught of the iPhone and the increasing popularity of mobile search and social networking, platforms that aid the development of location-based applications are highly useful to the process. Yahoo is throwing its hat into the ring with the release of a new open source program, FireEagle. Yahoo sees FireEagle as making geo-location apps easier for developers by eliminating the need to build the location-aware infrastructure.

On Friday, Aug. 22, SES San Jose is offering half a dozen Search Engine Marketing )SEM( Training Workshops . Two of them are being offered by the SEMPO Institute: "Successful SEO: The Essential Elements - Part 1 and Part 2." )I should disclose that SEMPO is a client, but I'm also teaching a half-day SEO training class that is being held at the same time as Part 1 of the SEMPO Institute's full-day workshop.

comScore has released data showing explosive growth rates for social networking sites Facebook and Hi5 globally, with 153% and 100% respectively. With worldwide social networking growth rates at 25%, that certainly is a big piece of the pie. Facebook's biggest percentage growth came in Latin America, at a whopping 1055%. Meanwhile, Facebook added the most members in Europe, at 27 million newbies. This should come as welcome news to Microsoft,

Broadband subscriptions dropped 51% since last year, according to data released by Leichtman Research Group. Only 887,000 subscribers were added to a group of companies comprising 94% of the market. Cable companies accounted for 670,000 of those additional subscriptions. The numbers also seem to support research from the University of Minnesota suggesting that internet traffic growth claims by the cable companies and other internet service providers are largely overblown.

Google has released its cryptography toolkit, KeyCzar, into open source. They hope the move aids developers in conducting the difficult task of providing solid security on their web sites. "Cryptography is notoriously hard to get right and if improperly used, can create serious security holes. Common mistakes include using the wrong cipher modes or obsolete algorithms, composing primitives in an unsafe manner, hard-coding keys in source code,