Microsoft acquired semantic search company Powerset earlier this year , and now the Live Search team is revealing the first integrations of Powerset with Live Search . Freebase Answers Live Search wanted to include more of Live Search Answers, so they made use of Freebase, an open, shared database and something Powerset incorporates in its search. Improved Wikipedia captions Live Search also used Powerset to improve its Wikipedia captions within the search results. Previously,

BuzzLogic is unveiling a new premium ad network specifically designed with bloggers in mind, and they're launching it at this week's BlogWorld & New Media Expo event in Las Vegas. The network was launched into beta in June. Bloggers can apply to the network or are invited to join. They're compensated with brand advertising based on their influence in conversations in the blogosphere.

Online advertising firm Turn, Inc. is introducing dynamic pricing models into its behavioral targeting offering. The model will take factors such as recency and relevancy of message and combine it with a retargeting method that allows advertisers to monitor real-time behavior and adjust their campaign within seconds. So, does this dynamic pricing work?

Google could be acquiring Valve which also owns Steam - one of the best content distributions, according to the Inquirer . Valve is also a game developer with titles like Half Life and has a game search engine, Source. Who knows maybe Google could use its business strategies to build a new game - World Dominance or perhaps Big Brother.

The oft rumored G phone is becoming a reality and given the popularity of the Google brand I wonder if the Apple crew are starting to worry. T-Mobile will soon be offer the Android-driven cell phone, according to reports . The phone is being manufactured by a small Taiwanese-based company, "that makes its own )relatively obscure( brand of handsets, plus house brands for carriers including Vodafone and Telecom New Zealand," the National Business Review reported.

Google settled with a UK-based anti-abortion group who had sued them for not allowing them access to advertising for abortion keywords, the Times Online reported . And will now allow anti-abortionist to advertise along with Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion advertisers. I checked the UK results and none have yet to start advertising as of yet. Is this the way to make Google change their edicts?

Michael Arrington over TechCrunch has screen shots of the new Yahoo redesign, including their third party mail access which offers AOL and Google but notably leaves hotmail and MSN out of the options. The new design has taken some of the Yahoo personalised elements at this stage, but has yet to be solidified and will be rolling out further changes in the days ahead, according to TechCrunch.

Google is none-too-thrilled about a SearchIgnite study suggesting that search advertising prices would increase by 22%. Now they're fighting back by saying the study was misleading. Here are their main points: Ad prices are not set by Yahoo! or Google, but by advertisers themselves Yahoo! won't be able to see the current auction prices for Google ads, just as Google won't be able to see Yahoo's prices The report mistakenly assumes that Yahoo!

Socialmedia.com is a social advertising network. Buddy Media is a social media consulting and analytics company )i.e. they have clients!(. Today, they have announced a partnership that allows people to buy advertising and access analytics to make the most of their social media campaigns. They're calling it social 'app-vertising' and brands like FedEx and New Balance have already been privy to the service.

How much power should Google have? How much is too much? Why should you care? In today's Searching for Meaning column, " Launch Google Freedom Now ," Kevin Ryan asks if we would really be better off in a Google-free world.

Deciding whether to outsource your landing page optimization and testing program is not an easy decision. There are advantages to each. In today's By the Numbers column, " Landing Page Optimization - Insource or Outsource? Part 2 ," Tim Ash shares three more important considerations before you choose to outsource your testing program or "insource" it by doing everything in-house.

Since launching a mobile text search service in January , ChaCha has answered 27 million queries, already gaining 7% of the U.S. mobile search market. They tied Yahoo in mobile search market share by the end of June 2008. ChaCha experienced an 800% growth rate in the second quarter of 2008. "Mobile search is growing at an incredible pace," says Chris Quick, mobile media analyst with Nielsen Mobile. "Within the mobile SMS search category,

In July, Google launched an iGoogle gadget that enables video speech search for select election videos. The technology searches transcribed speech snippets from the videos. Now, Google has released this technology into Google Labs. So far, you can still only search the few transcribed snippets from election-related videos. Now, you can "search within a video" and share videos with pals.

Whether it's organic page titles and meta descriptions or PPC ads, it's your job, as someone who's seeking a conversion, to deliver what you promised. In today's small business search engine marketing column, " Making the Most of Search Engine Copywriting ," Carrie Hill explains that small business owners must be aware of what their ad copy promises, and how they deliver on those promises.

Google had been doing a series of posts about search quality. Today, the latest post in the series discusses how evaluation enters into the the process. Scott Huffman, Engineering Director, gave four insights into the nuances of difficulty experienced in search evaluation: First, understanding what a user really wants when they type a query - the query's "intent" - can be very difficult. For highly navigational queries like [ebay] or [orbitz],

Juniper Research is projecting social networking is expected to overtake dating in 2009 to become the largest revenue generating segment. Social networks are projected to generate $7.3 billion in advertising revenues by 2013. That will amount to a steady rise in revenues over 2008's projected $1.1 billion. According to report author Dr. Windsor Holden, "It's clear that we have seen an industry wide shift regarding the implementation of business models in this area.

Google has made some adjustments to the blue "My Location" circle on the mobile version of its mapping product. If you're in a metropolitan area, the circle will be smaller. If you're in a rural area, the circle will become bigger. The reason behind the change and the sizes has to do with cell tower triangulation. Google gathers data from cell towers near your phone to determine your location. If you're in an urban or suburban setting, you're likely to be close to more towers,

According to new data from comScore Video Metrix , more than 27.4 million U.K. Internet users )78 percent of the total U.K. Internet audience( viewed 3.2 billion videos online in June 2008. Google Sites, driven by the popularity of YouTube.com, attracted nearly half of all videos viewed online in the U.K, followed by BBC Sites )1.4 percent share(, Microsoft Sites )0.8 percent share(, Fox Interactive Media )0.7 percent share( and ITV Sites )0.6 percent share(. U.K.

Google AdWords blog announced it will be launching the changes it told us about last month in the next few days. Still no mention on turning on old accounts when they stop the inactive status, but they have given more details on how the Quality Score is measured including all of the CTRs in your account. This may force people to be a lot tighter with the keywords they add to their accounts so they do not have to pay higher rates for their established terms.

Sourcetools.com, a former business directory, was making $115,000 a month in profit until the summer of 2006, when Google changed its algorithm and spiked some AdWords bid prices for sites with "poor landing pages." The business model was one employed by many an internet entrepreneur - bid on AdWords and slap some AdSense on the site. Of course, Google calls this ad arbitrage if all you have is a made-for-adsense site.