Two health sites have merged in what many are saying will be a challenge to health search giant WebMD. The Revolution Health Network and Waterfront Media are joining forces to dominate the health space. Waterfront Media runs the Everyday Health Network. AOL co-founder Steve Case, now CEO of Revolution Health said, "When we entered the health care market we knew one of the areas we wanted to focus on was using the Internet to empower consumers and give them more choice,

Google Blog Search has redesigned and added meme trackers like Techmeme and Megite on the front pages of several categories and the homepage itself. I've shared a screenshot and you can see how the blog posts are separated by story along with how popular they are. This allows for easy scanning, which is useful if you're looking for blogs talking about a hot topic. What do you think of the update? Let us know in the comments.

Senator Herb Kohl )D-Wis.( is okay with the Google-Yahoo deal, but he wants the DOJ to keep a close eye on the implementation. In a letter to Assistant Attorney General Thomas Barnett , Kohl, Chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust urges: Recognizing the nascent and fast-changing nature of this marketplace, we encourage the Department to continue to monitor the state of competition in this industry, whatever the outcome of its current investigation. If, over time,

Have a Facebook app? Well, now you can deploy it on Friendster. They're now supporting the Facebook Developer Community. It comes almost two months after deploying the OpenSocial API . This could be a good opportunity if you're looking to go global. Friendster has 80 million members worldwide, many of which are in Asia. "Friendster's support of both the Facebook and OpenSocial platforms is a big win for business and individual developers, as well as for Friendster users,

Search Engine Watch Editor Brian E. Ussery noticed Google's Webmaster Guidelines suggestions for improving your sites has removed.getting links from directories. This is not to say Google is not using directories in the algorithm, just they are not pitching for them. Great catch Brian - good article !

In August, Americans went online at work to get sports info 26% more year-over-year, thanks largely in part to the Olympics and Fantasy Football. Yahoo! Sports enjoyed a whopping 112% growth, putting them in the top spot for the month, according to Nielsen Online Also of note, visits from women jumped 37% while traffic growth from men increased by 21%.

Real estate search engine Zillow.com has launched a free professional directory. This will allow real estate professionals to market their services to the millions of Zillow visitors for free. Pros can create a profile with photos, videos, and the like. "This is a free opportunity for local professionals to market their services to Zillow's millions of visitors - 90 percent of whom own a home, and two-thirds who are buying or selling now or in the near future.

Social networking site hi5 has updated with 10 new community-translated languages and dialects. hi5 enjoys 56 million unique visitors a month and is the third largest social network worldwide. It's #1 in over 30 countries. The ten languages are: Catalan Danish British English Finnish Hindi Macedonian Slovakian Spanish - Mexico Spanish - Colombia Swedish "The power of this program to deliver localized versions of our product has exceeded our own high expectations,

Yahoo has introduced "Search for a Cause," which was designed to support effort during October's Breast Cancer Awareness month. Search for a Cause is a SearchMonkey app that directs affiliate commissions for popular shopping sites to Susan G. Komen for the Cure. For every searcher who uses the app, Yahoo will donate $1, up to $25,000. via Yahoo!

Recently, Google and T-mobile teamed up to unveil the new G1 , the first Android -powered phone to be made commercially available. There was a lot of hype about the device and how it compared to the iPhone, but how does Google's baby, search, fit into the mix? Marc Vanlerberghe, Google's Product Marketing Director, took to the Official Google Mobile blog to address that very issue. It turns out search pops up in a bunch of places on Android, as you might expect.

Solving customer problems and publishing that information on your site can be a great way to build both brand awareness and links. In today's linkbuilding column, " Link Marketing - Solve a Customer Problem ," Justilien Gaspard explains how focusing on a niche or soliciting input from your customers are two great ways to develop your content ideas.

Using some past economic low times as historical guides, what can the online world expect in the coming months? In today's building brand equity column, " Economic Depression 2.0 ," Erik Qualman notes that one likely outcome is a permanent shift from traditional channels to online marketing. Yes, online marketing could reach the highest percentage of marketing spend sooner than any of us imagined.

Since Hurricanes Gustav and especially Ike, a slowdown in Gulf Coast refineries have created gas shortages in the southeast. The gas station near my house runs out every other day, it seems. But in tough times come rare opportunities. Web and audio conferencing companies are being looked to for increased communications when travel by car has literally been brought to a halt. Copper Conferencing is one such company.

YouTube has introduced a new feature to its Insight analytics . The feature is called Hot Spots )not to be confused with Live Search's "hotspots" ( and it shows which part of a YouTube video are the most engaging. YouTube says that the information can help users edit or annotate their videos in order to help audiences stay engaged.

The news about our world's economic conditions aren't just bad, they're insane. What will happen to advertising and marketing dollars as a result? Is search insulated from our economic meltdown? In today's Searching for Meaning column, " In Tough Economic Times, Whither Search? ," Kevin Ryan gives the short answer: not by a long shot. He then explains that the long answer is a bit more complicated.

Microsoft is today launching a new incentive program for Live Search. The program is called SearchPerks , and it works very much like a credit card reward program. Every time you search, you earn tickets. You can earn up to 25 tickets a day. Tickets can later be redeemed for all sorts of rewards including music downloads )5 for 525 points( and airline miles )1000 miles for 1800 tickets(. Here's how it works. Sign up for the program, and download a simple piece of code.

The New York Times has a great article about using the internet for information on medical conditions, including how search is involved in the process. As you know, results can change just by adding a keyword to the phrase you're already searching for. Search for a condition and add the word community, for example, and you suddenly have access to patients dealing with the same issues, according to Susannah Fox of the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Google has added 11 languages to its Translate product. They are: Catalan Filipino Hebrew Indonesian Latvian Lithuanian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Ukrainian Vietnamese The total number of languages is now 34 and the total number of language pair combinations nearly doubled from 506 to 1122. Recently, Google added human translators as well.

WebTrends is rolling out a new feature to help web markters and developers track specific analytics. The tool is called TagBuilder. It's online, it's free and it generates WebTrends data collection tags, which have been rewritten as standardized, object-oriented JavaScript code. Here's what you can do with TagBuilder: Access automated click-event tracking for download links, offsite links, form submissions,

Run, don't walk, to your favorite bookstore and pick up a copy of Search Engine Marketing, Inc.: Driving Search Traffic to Your Company's Web Site )2nd Edition(. Okay, okay, so most search engine marketers will simply order the paperback on Amazon.com. But, somehow 1-click ordering takes all the drama out of buying the latest book by Mike Moran and Bill Hunt. And if you don't believe me, check out what Lee Odden,