There has been a flurry of news surrounding both Microsoft's Bing and the UK's Yell organisation in the last two weeks. Firstly, at the end of last week, Microsoft' Bing and the Yell organisation announced that they were doing a deal to form a "Broad, global strategic alliance, taking advantage of their complementary strengths.

According to DCCI, Data Center of Chinese Internet, China reached 500 million internet users in the first half of 2011. They also estimated that it will reach 551 million this year. The sixth national population census estimates China's population has reached 1.37 billion which make the internet penetration rate at only 36.4 percent. This compares to the US which is at 77.3 percent or 230 million internet users, according to Internet World Stats.

And finally there it was: Google Plus )or +(. Almost every blog, national and international, talked about it and it even made the news. And everyone had an opinion, despite of the fact that they had access or not. We already discussed the Google +1 button here on Multilingual Search, but now we have the complete social network. There are a lot of great introduction posts, so I won't delve into the mechanics.

Baidu )BIDU(, China's number one search engine has today announced an agreement for the distribution of digital music with One-Stop China )OSC(, which is a joint venture formed by three of the leading global record companies, namely Universal Music, Warner Music, and Sony Music. Baidu will be providing its users with the opportunity to download or stream both Chinese songs, in both Mandarin and Cantonese alongside international releases, directly from Baidu's servers.

Google has launched a new crossover search portal called ' What do you love ?' under the http://www.wdyl.com domain name.

For some years we have talked about BRIC countries as being amongst the most interesting for international search marketers to target. It was always inevitable that at some point we would need to come up with a new term and to look at new geographies " especially when one of the emerging markets )China( is already the world's second largest economy.

Baidu, China's largest and the world's second largest search engine, unveiled the beta version of it's new web browser. The Baidu browser contains more than 30,000 apps which connects users to online games, videos and other tools. The web browser is reported as focused on security as Baidu has built it with the intention of protecting the user's PC from malware. It was built using Baidu's "box computing" strategy introduced at Baidu Innovation Conference 2009.

Google received a warm reception to the announcement of its second quarter figures yesterday having been roundly criticised for losing control of its costs last quarter. The topline was a 32% revenue sales growth in the second quarter, compared with one year ago. But that belies what's really happening.

International SEO, Geo-Targeting, Indexing International Social Signals and Search Marketing in Russia and Korea are just some of the topics on the agenda at the upcoming International Search Summit @ SMX East . Taking place on September 12th in New York City, the Summit will immerse delegates in a day of insights, debates and discussions on a range of international search and social media topics. We'll be welcoming back speakers such as Bill Hunt ,

Yandex has translated its Webmaster service into English. The service, originally made for the Russian-speaking website owners, can now be used by any who owns a website and speaks English. Yandex.Webmaster informs website owners about which of their pages have been indexed by Yandex, what search words were used by their visitors and where the traffic to their websites comes from. The service also alerts the users about Malware detected on any of their web pages.

As part of Comscore's release of May data , the company provided details of the ten fastest growing verticals in France for the month of May compared with April. As the chart below shows, this showed a dramatic spike in demand for car rental, help with taxes and flowers, gifts or greetings. Of course, all markets have their own seasonality and May in France was no exception. Comscore's team explains, "There were )sic( a string of bank holidays in France in May,

Comscore has released its May data showing the popularity of various European websites for the month of May 2011 in Europe which provides some interesting findings, including the fact that Facebook now beats Google sites in Europe for number of page views per visitor per month. You have to bear in mind that "Google sites" includes the figures for YouTube.com. Perhaps more surprising is that fact that Vkontakte, the highly successful Russian social network,

Baidu has announced a deal with Microsoft's Bing to power its English language results within China. Baidu's Kaiser Kuo explained, "We have an increasing number of people entering English-language queries on Baidu, and that's never been our strong suit. We've been looking for a way to beef up our English search offering and partnering with Bing is by far the most effective way to do it.

According to a study done by BITKOM on the German online market around 55% of German Internet users don't think that their data is save and 16% feel that their data is not save and do not use the Internet to buy items online and 28% do not practice banking online. What is surprising is the how this splits between age groups at it seems that older users trust the Internet more than the young.

There were many great sessions and speakers at the International Search Summit Seattle earlier this month, but the standout speaker for many of the delegates was Bill Hunt, and he was nominated the Medallion Speaker on the day. And not for the first time, as he also received the accolade at International Search Summit in San Jose earlier in the year.

One hundred and fifty million European citizens shops over the internet. Thirty million of them shop cross border online in the EU. European cross border shoppers spend on average € 800 a year, i.e. a total of 24 billion €uro. What rights do European consumers have? Thursday June 23rd, European delegates have deeply changed online european consumer rights adopting by 615 votes to 16, with 21 abstentions a new European Consumer directive.

Russian search engine Yandex isn't resting on its laurels following its successful IPO last month but continuing to consolidate its leading position in the Russian market through a collaboration with fellow Russian engine Rambler. From 23rd June, Rambler will be using Yandex to power its search results, as well as joining the Yandex.Direct ad network, however it will also continue to show ads placed on Begun,

Finally, since last week people in The Netherlands )and the rest of Europe( can add the Google +1 button to their website. Also, Twitter has released their Follow-button, and Bing and Facebook are continuing their partnership. And with all this comes the battle for the clicks. With personalized search results, followers on Twitter, likes on Facebook the question arises: isn't it a bit too much?

While everybody knows about "Russian Google" Yandex, today I want to talk about another big player in Russian online advertisement market - Mail.ru . Mail.Ru Group Limited is one of the biggest Internet company )more than 1800 employees( in the Russian speaking part of the World Wide Web and seventh largest Internet business in the world. Company reports to have more than 11.6 million visitors per day and their sites reach approximately 80% of Russian Internet users.

Microsoft Advertising is a brand that takes customer engagement seriously and values building relationships with its audience. However, as a global brand this engagement needs to be tailored to each market and each audience - no mean feat! Jenny Leahy, who leads the Web Marketing and Evangelism team at Microsoft Advertising, will be speaking at the International Search Summit @ SMX Advanced on June 9th,