Carl Icahn has increased his investment in Yahoo by purchasing nearly 7 million shares. This comes on the heels of the announcement that Jerry Yang will be stepping down as CEO , once a new one has been tapped. While some may see this as a sign of "Carl in Charge," I wonder if this move is just a bit risky on Icahn's part. If the stock drops lower and Yahoo goes to Microsoft in a fire sale, Icahn will lose even more money than the millions he's already lost this year.

Despite all the bad economic news going into Black Friday , online spending was up 1% over last year, according to comScore. Online shoppers spent $534 million, up from $531 million for Black Friday 2007. One of the advantages for online shopping is sleeping in )and not trampling Wal-mart employees to death(. Online spending peaked between 12-4pm with the 8am to 12pm slot following closely behind: However,

We will not be publishing on Thursday, November 27, or Friday, November 28, in observation of Thanksgiving Day. I hope those of you that are celebrating the holiday can stay off the Internet and spend some time with those you love. For those of you that aren't celebrating Thanksgiving, or have had enough quality time with your family, here are a few things you might find interesting: * If you haven't checked it out lately,

The year-over-year gains for Google that we saw in Nielsen Online's October 2008 search engine rankings were mirrored in comScore's rankings for the same month. Google enjoyed a nice 63.1% share, up from 58.5% during the same time last year. Yahoo was at 20.5% down from 22.9%> Microsoft was at 8.5%, down from 9.7%. There was one major difference between Nielsen and comScore. Nielsen said the number of searches declined,

It's the day before Thanksgiving, where you show up at the office, but you're really thinking about tomorrow's good meal. You've worked hard to set up those search marketing campaigns to run strong on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. So, I really hate to bring you the bad news, but keeping it from you would be a disservice. Let's just rip off the bandaid. First up, eMarketer has lowered its projections for online advertising spending for 2009. The new growth number is 8.9%,

Does your site maintain its usability across many browsers? If not, you could end up leaving money on the table this holiday season. Browsers such as Firefox , Chrome , and Safari )which comes standard on Macs( now make up about 30% of the browser market. Firefox alone enjoys 20% of the overall market share . Matt Poepsel, vice president of Gomez, Inc. ,

The success of your testing program relies heavily on the cooperation of many people in your organization. In today's By the Numbers column, " Assembling Your Landing Page Optimization Dream Team, Part 2 ," Tim Ash continues with a look at more key roles needed for a successful landing page optimization program.

It's no secret that social networks have had a difficult time integrating advertising that has a bang for its buck. IDC has released some data showing what social networks - and advertisers - are faced with. Only 57% of social network users have clicked on an ad in the last year versus 79% of all users in the rest of the web. When it comes to purchasing, only 11% of social network users will actually make one compared to 23% of the rest of the internet.

Okay, I understand that we're all trying to "give a jolt" to the economy. But I was still surprised today when Lycos provided a list of Christmas gift ideas two days before Thanksgiving Day. Aren't we all supposed to wait until Black Friday? Nevertheless, for shoppers who like planning ahead - or for online retailers and etailers looking for what will be hot this holiday season - Lycos just announced its ninth annual list of the most popular toys and video games ,

Microsoft and Yahoo took a tumble in their year-over-year search share in October 2008, according to Nielsen Online. All searches were down 2%, which is quite surprising considering the election and the economy. Yahoo was down 12% and Microsoft was down 19%. Ask.com took a hit as well with a decrease of 22.9% The news was much brighter for Google and AOL. Both saw sizeable increases at 8.1% and 14.5% respectively.

All your SEO efforts will be in vain if you haven't spent enough time focused on which keywords you want to target, don't understand their worth, and don't understand the competitive landscape associated with trying to rank/get traffic from these keywords. In today's organic search engine optimization column, " Keyword Research for Search Engine Optimization ," Mark Jackson shares some keyword research advice.

Whether you plan to hire a designer or figure it out for yourself, there are definitely some best practices you should follow when designing your Web site. In today's small business search engine marketing column, " 25 Design Best Practices for Your Small Business Web Site ," Carrie Hill offers a list to get a good start on finding the best Web site platform and design elements for your businesses audience.

Former Microsoft and Yahoo employee, Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, is heading to WebTrends to become their Vice President of Marketing. Kaykas-Wolff comes to WebTrends directly from a business consulting firm, but previously held senior management roles at Microsoft and a management role at Yahoo. WebTrends CEO Alex Yoder said, "Jascha is a veteran digital marketer,

On Sunday, Web Guild spread fear around the internet by 'exposing' Google's quiet layoffs, which were said to be upwards of 10,000 employees. And Google was supposedly getting away with it through secretive loopholes that only corporate lawyers know about. They were hiring workers and not paying them benefits. Actually, those people are called independent contractors and they knowingly enter into those agreements. Google is reducing its contractor workforce,

A month ago, LinkedIn unveiled its new search platform . Now they're rolling it out to their 31 million users. Here's what you can look forward to in the new search platform: Suggestive Search - When you type into the search box, a list of suggested names from your contacts pops up. You can select one of the names without having to type in the whole thing. I think this might come in handy when you're having a hard time remembering a name.

Seems Microsoft is moving to finalize the renaming of Live Search to Kumo, according to LiveSide.net . The possibility has been discussed at various times this year. Renaming and branding moves by search engines have not had much luck. Ask.coms removal of Jeeves seemed to hurt them, FindWhat and eSpotting merger and rename to Miva definitely impacted the companies, so there is data for not making the changes.

Microsoft's adCenter is launching a new offer for Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization )SEMPO( members: $1000 in free clicks. Campaigns created through the promotion will be placed on Live Search and the MSN portal. Those who wish to become SEMPO members to take advantage of the offer must join the organization by December 31, 2008. "SEMPO members, both agency and corporate search marketers,

SearchIgnite has released data showing that the search ad spend for retailers is up 33% so far in the fourth quarter of 2008. The reason appears to be that multi-channel marketers are funneling more money to search, which has strong data on ROI. "With the current economic climate leading up to the holidays, retailers are looking for ways to capture consumer spend and drive revenue in efficient ways," said Roger Barnette, President of SearchIgnite.

Advertising network AdBrite is now offering CPC )click per cost( for banner ads. Customers were already able to bid via CPC on search placements and text ads. Previously, graphical ads were restricted to CPM )cost per impression(. "AdBrite is committed to our advertisers' success," said AdBrite CEO, Ignacio Fanlo. "Allowing them to pay for performance makes sense. More than 90 million consumers visit AdBrite's sites every month,

Even after you've won the client's business and run a successful program, you still have to show the client what you did for their money. In today's SEM agency issues column, " Great Expectations: How to Communicate SEO Value ," William Flaiz points out that communicating the value your search program provided is not to be taken lightly. It could mean the difference between a renewal and a one-off client project.