I was literally in the middle of writing a post entitled "All Quiet on the Yahoo Front" when news broke about T. Boone Pickens selling off his entire stake in Yahoo . I was pondering whether or not the calm was more like a relaxing day at the spa or an eerie moment in a M. Night Shyamalan movie when the famed Texas oilman took the latter route. Pickens, known most recently for his alternative energy plan ,

Online video consumption has been on the rise for a while, and now Integrated Media Measurement Inc. )IMMI( is releasing demographic and behavioral data to show the details of the trend. 20% of primetime television programming is now viewed online. The audience is comprised of 55% female and 45% male. Households earning $80,000 a year or more are 56% more likely to watch a network show online. Those earning $40,

Issuing press releases without regard for SEO is a wasted opportunity. In today's organic search engine optimization column, " Press Releases and Search Engine Optimization ," Mark Jackson shows that combining press releases with SEO efforts can help gain presence in the editorial results of the search engines, even if it's not a direct presence for your actual domain.

In SEO for major sites, one of the most overlooked factors is uptime. In today's enterprise search marketing column, " When's an Outage More than Just an Outage? ," Aaron Shear looks at how a server outage can impact your SEO efforts.

With the rise of social networking , employers are left wondering if or how the trend affects their bottom line . Many have decided that Facebook and MySpace in the workplace are not appropriate )for content or productivity reasons( and have banned the sites from being accessed at their offices. To which I say: Good luck with that! With the onslaught of iPhones, resisting social media )and I don't mean for marketing purposes( will prove to be futile anyway. Go ahead.

Yahoo has released updates to the ad performance reports for sponsored search accounts. First up, three columns have been added to the report. They are: Ad ID column â€" This column displays your Ad's ID number. Ad: â€" This column provides a visual representation of your ad, including its title, short description and display URL. Destination URL The columns are available in report downloads as well. Additionally, Yahoo has consolidated ad statuses into a single column.

Chinese internet portal Sohu.com has announced $40.2 million in second quarter profit, up 600% over the same quarter in 2007. The news comes in the wake of results posted by Chinese search engine Baidu, which saw profits rise 87% in Q2 2008. The big boost in profits for both companies come as the 2008 Beijing Olympics approach. Check out this display ad from Lenovo on the Sohu.com . "The growing momentum reflects the overall expansion of the China Internet market,

Microsoft's recently acquired Navic Networks has announced a new partnership with Mediabrands, a new group of four companies: Initiative, Universal McCann, MAGNA and IPG's Emerging Media Lab. The media companies will have access to Navic's Admira, a national media planning tool that includes audience behavior data and real-time viewership reporting. "We are seeking new technologies to deliver unparalleled accountability to clients,

One of the people that you will want to hear speak at SES San Jose is Liana Evans of KeyRelevance. Li is the director of Internet marketing at KeyRelevance and a member of the "Successful Tactics for Social Media Optimization )SMO(" panel on Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2008, at 1 p.m. I'm bummed out because I'll be speaking at the "News Search SEO" session at the same time, so I won't be able to hear what she has to say in San Jose. So,

Cuil , pronounced "cool." has officially launched. All the kool kids are talking about it. The question is whether anyone will use it. As a new search engine, Cuil is a longshot. It's no Google Killer. Check out Cuil.com . Google needs the competition. But don't expect a revolutionary search experience. The results page looks very much like Guy Kawasaki's Alltop.com . Cuil was created by former Google engineers Anna Patterson, Russell Power and Louis Monier,

Billing itself as a "Super Search Engine,"IAC's RushmoreDrive.com has announced a 2009 Range Rover Sport Sweepstakes. RushmoreDrive.com, the new search engine for the Black community from Barry Diller's IAC )InterActiveCorp( announced its Range Rover Sport Drive Away Sweepstakes at the Michael Baisden LIVE event held at the Nokia Theatre in New York City. Surprisingly, there's no mention of the Sweepstakes on the search engine's home page or media pages. RushmoreDrive.

Randy Pausch delivered the "Last Lecture" after he learned that he'd developed terminal pancreatic cancer. His video became an Internet sensation, with over 3,000,000 views on YouTube. Pausch was a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Randy Pausch died today at the age of 47. We've written a great deal about the education of a search engine marketer. Ron Jones's column, SEM.edu ,

Monitor, monitor, on the wall, "Who's the most Internet Famous of them all?" Wired.com has launched a new, free service for everyone who wonders how Internet famous they currently are. It's called the " Celebrity Meter ." It won't tell you how whether you have celebrity friends, but it will let you know - in rough numbers - how much of an online celebrity you are. Wired's Celebrity Meter launched in beta this morning.

While Google is busy rolling out a PageRank update , Microsoft is researching what they hope will be the next big thing in search: BrowseRank. The technology takes user browsing habits into account when determining relevant search results. We propose computing page importance by using a 'user browsing graph' created from user behavior data. In this graph, vertices represent pages and directed edges represent transitions between pages in the users' web browsing history.

After the latest round of attempted negotiations with Yahoo and investor Carl Icahn, Microsoft is once again saying that it is moving on from trying to acquire the second-place search engine. Addressing the attendees at Microsoft's financial analyst meeting, Ballmer explained Microsoft's Plan B for building search and competing with Google. And like Joel McHale on E!'s The Soup, I've read the transcript so you don't have to. Here are the sound bites. First up,

Compete has enhanced its Web analytics product features to include a breakout between organic search traffic and paid search traffic. Compete just announced Paid vs. Natural Search Breakouts in Search Analytics. This new metric takes an even deeper dive into competitive search data by showing the percentage of search referrals that a Web site receives from paid search, trended over the last six months.

Google's head of web spam, Matt Cutts, has announced that updates to PageRank will be visible in the coming days. Cutts also said that some existing penalties will be expired with the update. If you're new to search engine marketing and want to learn about PageRank, here's a whole slew of posts to get you in the know: Google PageRank: Simplified Google PageRank isn't the Same as Ranking in Google Should You Join the PageRank Hysteria? Thankful for PageRank Updates,

Local advertising is a key component of any vertical search marketing strategy. In today's vertical search column, " The Local Advertiser of Today and Tomorrow ," Gregg Stewart discusses staying on top of the competition now and preparing for the future.

Bidding on trademarked kewyords may bring big conversions, but the strategy is often perceived to carry a grand amount of legal trouble with it. In today's link building column, " Trademarked Terms: Guaranteed Conversions, Guaranteed Controversy ," Frank Watson explores whether or not bidding on competitors trademarks is a worthy strategy.

When it comes to link building, a great source for links might be right under your nose! In today's link building column, " Link Building with Customers ," Justilien Gaspard talks about asking your customers for links as well as embarking on link recovery missions.