Many people have posed the question: why does Google seem to often fail to efficiently integrate or develop companies and properties it has acquired? Early mobile social network DodgeBall is the most obvious example of promising startup acquired by Google that has languished. But as TechCrunchIT points out there are others and, more specifically, often a long delay between the time of a company's acquisition and its "re-emergence" with a Google identity.

Blogs. They're the best thing since sliced bread. Everyone with a website needs one. Or do they?

Lately, I've seen numerous instances of blogs that exist because people have heard that they need to create a blog for SEO purposes.

The problem with this, of course, is that any time you do anything just for SEO purposes, you'll almost always do it wrong. It's true that creating a blog that you're passionate about which provides interesting, compelling, well-written information posted on a regular basis may help your overall profile in the search engines. However, it's also true that most blogs don't do that.

In fact, I have to say that most blogs totally suck! Here are a few types of blogs that illustrate what I mean:

According to the Google Mobile Blog, the company is now giving users the ability to rate and review local restaurants from their mobile handsets via a browser (screenshot below). On the details page for a local business, users can "sign in and write review." Though somewhat buried Google has made the process very simple; one can simply use a star-ratings pull-down menu to indicate approval or disapproval of the experience. No typing or narrative is required though permitted.

- Putting Customers Ahead of Investors, John Mackey, founder and CEO of Whole Foods

A couple of weeks ago, a shopping mall near my home announced that they would start checking the IDs of teenagers at entrances to the mall after 5:00 pm on Friday and Saturday nights, and not allow anyone under 18 to enter the mall unless they are accompanied by a parent or supervising adult over the age of 21.

Their explanation was that too many young people were using the mall as a social gathering place on weekend nights, behaving unruly, not shopping, and keeping away customers who wanted to make purchases at the mall. In many ways, the Mall is a victim of its own success, being a popular destination for the audience that the Mall shops target with what they offer.

A couple of local teens responded by starting a Facebook group as the "Official Boycotting Site for the Christiana Mall." That's probably not a response that the Mall wanted to see, nor a result that they wanted to experience.

The Google AdWords Blog announced that AdWords advertisers can now combine keyword-targeted and placement-targeted campaigns in the same ad group. This allows for the targeting of keywords on contextually relevant pages and at the same time the ability to use placements to set specific bids or restrict your targeting to specific sites. In the past, you were not able to manage your campaign this way.

This is a feature available within the content network and is optional. For more information, check out the Google help document.

The Google Video Blog announced the launch of personalized video recommendations, based on your search history. To see them, make sure you are logged into Google and visit video.google.com. In the middle of the page, you should see, "Recommended videos."

Google uses your past search history and your past video viewing history to compile your personalized video recommendation list. You can view up to six recommended videos at any time, and there is a next button to see more.

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

•Google Has Over 75% Of US Search Ad Market

New figures out on search advertising spend from Efficient Frontier show Google continues to dominate the market, stats that will no doubt complicate the company's goal to gain approval of its deal with Yahoo on search ads. However it is interesting how in Japan, it's a much more 50/50...

•Google Video Now Offering "Personalized" Video Recommendations

The Google Video Blog announced the launch of personalized video recommendations, based on your search history. To see them, make sure you are logged into Google and visit video.google.com. In the middle of the page, you should see, "Recommended videos." Google uses your past search history and your past video...

•Google AdWords Combines Contextual Targeting Features With Placement Targeting

The Google AdWords Blog announced that AdWords advertisers can now combine keyword-targeted and placement-targeted campaigns in the same ad group. This allows for the targeting of keywords on contextually relevant pages and at the same time the ability to use placements to set specific bids or restrict your targeting to...

•Social Responsibility and the Small Business

In the profit-centered business, customer happiness is merely a means to an end: maximizing profits. In the customer-centered business, customer happiness is an end in itself, and will be pursued with greater interest, passion, and empathy than the profit-centered business is capable of. - Putting Customers Ahead of Investors,...

•Google Enables Local Reviews From Mobile Phones

According to the Google Mobile Blog, the company is now giving users the ability to rate and review local restaurants from their mobile handsets via a browser (screenshot below). On the details page for a local business, users can "sign in and write review." Though somewhat buried Google has made...

•3 Types Of Blogs That Totally Suck

Blogs. They're the best thing since sliced bread. Everyone with a website needs one. Or do they? Lately, I've seen numerous instances of blogs that exist because people have heard that they need to create a blog for SEO purposes. The problem with this, of course, is that any...

•What Happens After Google Buys A Company?

Many people have posed the question: why does Google seem to often fail to efficiently integrate or develop companies and properties it has acquired? Early mobile social network DodgeBall is the most obvious example of promising startup acquired by Google that has languished. But as TechCrunchIT points out there are...

Google had a strong quarter, given the challenging US and global economic climate. Revenues were basically flat vs. Q1 (+3 percent) but grew 39 percent as compared with the same quarter a year ago. AdSense and paid clicks were down slightly.

Google may not be "recession proof," but it's more so than most other online ad networks.

The Google Webmaster Central Blog posted a recording of the webinar they hosted, along with the Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer team. The webinar is available in a 60 minute YouTube video. In short, the webinar reviews the features of all three tools, Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer.

Here is the video:

TechCrunch reports that Microsoft is testing their self-service AdSense/YPN product named Content Ads. The truth is, as TechCrunch said in an update to his post, they have started this pilot earlier this year. I have a post at the Search Engine Roundtable linking to the pilot enrollment form.

Content Ads is still a very exclusive and limited beta test. Google AdSense is widely used by publishers, Yahoo's Publisher Network follows but is still also in beta, and only accepting US publishers (even after three years in beta), while Microsoft's Content Ads has been accepting on a very limited basis.

Google announced that it had acquired "Begun," a Russian contextual ad service, for $140 million. The service had been a unit of Russia's Rambler Media. Rambler also owns the Russian portal Rambler.ru. As part of the deal, Google-enhanced search results and ads will appear on the Rambler portal site.

According to Reuters, Rambler expects annual growth of online ad revenues to be 50 and to reach $1 billion by 2010.

In The Trenches is a weekly spotlight of tips, tricks, and news about the tools search engine marketing professionals use to give them a leg up on the competition. Today: News from the search engines and today's in-depth look, The Ultimate Guide to Search Marketing Optimization Part 1 and To Broad Match or To Not Broad Match: That is the Question.

The Google Webmaster Central Blog posted a video interview created by Juliane Stiller of Search Quality Team. Juliane interviewed Matt Cutts about search spam for the German Google Blog. My favorite question and answer set was when was the first time Matt found his first web spam.

The video is below:

In a previous article titled New Online Video News Search Study - Is the Business Case Made?, I discussed a DoubleClick Performics study that looked at how consumers interact with online video news, how they use search in the process, and their desire to see more video search results on the mainstream search engines. To get more in-depth information on this first-of-its-kind study, I recently interviewed Eric Papczun, Director of Natural Search Optimization for DoubleClick Performics. The following is our Q&A about the report findings and the potential opportunities for SEO with news video:

Tom Churm pinged me about a new tool that he's crafted, Very Recent, designed to pull back top results from "recency search engines," for lack of a better word. Blog search, news search, social news plus Twittering, all in one. It needs a lot of work, but I found it a pretty neat idea. And it reminded me of Addictomatic, which is also well worth a look.

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

•Very Recent & Addictomatic: Finding What People Are Buzzing About Right Now!

Tom Churm pinged me about a new tool that he's crafted, Very Recent, designed to pull back top results from "recency search engines," for lack of a better word. Blog search, news search, social news plus Twittering, all in one. It needs a lot of work, but I found...

•News Video Research Offers SEO Opportunities

In a previous article titled New Online Video News Search Study - Is the Business Case Made?, I discussed a DoubleClick Performics study that looked at how consumers interact with online video news, how they use search in the process, and their desire to see more video search results on...

•Google's Matt Cutts On Video About Spam & More

The Google Webmaster Central Blog posted a video interview created by Juliane Stiller of Search Quality Team. Juliane interviewed Matt Cutts about search spam for the German Google Blog. My favorite question and answer set was when was the first time Matt found his first web spam. The video is...

•Search In Pictures: Google's G-Fleet, Dave Barnes at Yahoo, Google Sidewalk Graffiti

In this week's Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more....

•SEM News, The Ultimate Guide to Search Marketing Optimization & Broad Match Or Not?

In The Trenches is a weekly spotlight of tips, tricks, and news about the tools search engine marketing professionals use to give them a leg up on the competition. Today: News from the search engines and today's in-depth look, The Ultimate Guide to Search Marketing Optimization Part 1 and...

•Google Buys Russian Contextual Ad Service For $140 Million

Google announced that it had acquired "Begun," a Russian contextual ad service, for $140 million. The service had been a unit of Russia's Rambler Media. Rambler also owns the Russian portal Rambler.ru. As part of the deal, Google-enhanced search results and ads will appear on the Rambler portal site. According...

•Microsoft adCenter Content Ads Self-Service Pilot

TechCrunch reports that Microsoft is testing their self-service AdSense/YPN product named Content Ads. The truth is, as TechCrunch said in an update to his post, they have started this pilot earlier this year. I have a post at the Search Engine Roundtable linking to the pilot enrollment form. Content Ads...

•Google's Webinar For Webmaster Tools, Analytics & Website Optimizer Now Live

The Google Webmaster Central Blog posted a recording of the webinar they hosted, along with the Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer team. The webinar is available in a 60 minute YouTube video. In short, the webinar reviews the features of all three tools, Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics and...

•Google Reports $5.37 billion In Q2 Revenues, Microsoft Reports Full Year Revenues of $60 Billion

Google had a strong quarter, given the challenging US and global economic climate. Revenues were basically flat vs. Q1 (+3 percent) but grew 39 percent as compared with the same quarter a year ago. AdSense and paid clicks were down slightly. Google may not be "recession proof," but it's more...

•Microsoft's Annual Revenue Reaches $60 Billion, Yahoo!Finance

•A chat with Yahoo's David Filo, Mercury News

•Google Anti-Gravity Ray is Fading, SmoothSpan Blog

•Google Deliberately Sells Fewer Ads and May Have Gone Too Far, New York Times

•Legg Mason: We're backing Yahoo, News.com

•Why Silicon Valley Should Be Worried, GigaOM

•Wikipedia Tries Approval System to Reduce Vandalism on Pages, New York Times

•Yahoo Updates Its Proxy Page, paidContent.org

•Amdocs Sharpens Focus on Mobile Search, altsearchengines.com

•Tying Topical Events into Your Site's Link Building Strategies, SEOmoz

•Help improve your adCenter campaign performance with adCenter reports - adCenter Advertiser, adcentercommunity.com

•AdWords Editor service release for Windows and Mac, Inside AdWords

•What Does A Paid Search Marketing Strategy Mean To You?, SEM Geek

•Yahoo To Give Publishers More Control Over Their Keywords, Justin Davy

•Hitting 40 languages, Official Google Blog

•If Google had Semantic Technology, Hakia Blog

•Using Search Engines Instead of the Address Bar to Navigate, Marketing Pilgrim

•Fight Fire With Fire - Track Official Google Responses, eVisibility.com

•The Happiest SEO in the Sea, SEO By The Sea

•An SEOmoz PRO Tip (For Everyone) , SEOmoz

•Are City/State Landing Pages Also Doorway Pages? Google Thinks So, Search Engine Roundtable

•Did Ask.com Stop or Slow Crawling the Web?, Search Engine Roundtable

•Google Study: Search Marketing Increases Brand Value, MediaPost

•One Product - Two Same-Language Countries?, Search Engine Journal

•Whiteboard Friday - Has Pagerank Changed?, SEOmoz

•The Ultimate Guide To Decoding Digg Speak, 10e20 Blog

•Wikipedia Tries Approval System to Reduce Vandalism on Pages, New York Times

•Twinkle: Location Aware Twitter Client, Read/Write Web

•Twitter Chokes Unauthenticated API Requests By IP, Sites Gasp for Air, louisgray.com

•Twitter's New Redesign, SheGeeks

•Does Google Know How To Count? Some YouTube Views Don't Seem To Register, TechCrunch

•WebTrends Launches Video Analytics Engagement Service, CenterNetworks

•Practitioner Post: Adwords Auto-Tagging and URL Redirects, Google Analytics Blog

•100 reasons why you should love Google, Bloggle

•Does Matt Cutts have a URL canonicalisation problem?

•Google Continues To Test A Search Interface That Looks More Like Digg Every Day

•How to Hit the Frontpage of StumbleUpon

•Where in the World is the SEO Talent?

•A Rundown of Popular Directories Using the SEOMoz Trifecta Tool

•Free SEO Diagnostics Tool: Log File Parsing Script

•The Twelve People You Meet On Twitter

•The Ultimate Guide To Decoding Digg Speak

•Link Building for Big Brands

•Vanessa Fox: Search-Friendly Flash?

•How to Create Digg-Friendly Content: Cracked.com’s Template

•10 Most Basic SEO Copywriting Rules

•Social Responsibility and the Small Business

•21 Ways to Make Your Blog or Website Sticky

•Which Sections of Your Web Pages Might Search Engines Ignore?

•Keyword Analysis - Details Explained

•Social Media Cash Grab

It's search popularity statistics time again, and I'm starting off with the latest figures from comScore. Finally, a change -- Google slips while Yahoo and Microsoft gain. Trouble for the Big G? Not really -- because in terms of raw number of searches, June 2008 was another record breaker for Google.

The Google Like/Don't Like feature, where you can move up results, hide search results or remove search results, seems to have been expanded to a group of test searchers.

We have reports from TechCrunch, Google Operating System and Justin Hileman, with reports of users seeing this feature in the main search results. Justin does an excellent job taking us through each feature with screen shots.

Beet.TV interviewed R.J. Pittman, Google's Director of Product Management for Consumer Search Properties, about image search. The video is below, but here is my short summary of the interview.

Pittman said Image Search has huge growth opportunity for Google. Google explained that text doesn't always describe the image, so they use other techniques. They use image processing, computer vision, and visual search (understanding something about the pixels in the picture). Visual search is something they are really excited about, including facial recognition. For example, imagine uploading your friend's picture to Google and it will find matches of images across the web to that face. Google is also exploring "scene analysis", identifying objects outside of people in a picture, such as chairs or even landmarks. Finally, Pittman talks about GPS technologies built into many phones, which is used in Google's Panaramio. So you can also search by city or region.

Google is introducing an Elections Search Gadget that allows users to search transcripts of political speeches and videos that appear on YouTube candidate channels.

The speech recognition technology (also shared with Goog411) produces a transcript of the videos, which can then searched by users of the Gadget to find precise phrases or keywords in speeches or candidate statements on particular issues.

Google and Viacom have reached an agreement meant to ease privacy concerns about YouTube records being handed over to Viacom through a court order. However, there remain some questions about how exactly the "anonymizing" of these records will actually work. Until those are answered, I wouldn't breathe a complete privacy sigh of relief yet.

Google was ordered to hand over YouTube viewing records earlier this month, as part of Viacom's copyright infringement lawsuit against the company. Privacy concerns were immediately raised, causing Viacom to react by saying it didn't want all the information the court was granting it rights to and Google saying it was hopeful the data could be anonymized in some way.

The rumors that Twitter will be buying Summize have now been confirmed. Twitter, the popular micro-blogging platform has acquired Summize, a search engine that searches Twitter.

You can read all the news at Techmeme and also make sure to check out Danny's write up on Summize named Summize Gains "Local" Twitter Search Option.

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

•Twitter & Summize Tie The Knot

The rumors that Twitter will be buying Summize have now been confirmed. Twitter, the popular micro-blogging platform has acquired Summize, a search engine that searches Twitter. You can read all the news at Techmeme and also make sure to check out Danny's write up on Summize named Summize Gains "Local"...

•Hold On -- Issues Remain Over Google & Viacom's Deal On YouTube Viewing Privacy

Google and Viacom have reached an agreement meant to ease privacy concerns about YouTube records being handed over to Viacom through a court order. However, there remain some questions about how exactly the "anonymizing" of these records will actually work. Until those are answered, I wouldn't breathe a complete...

•Google Enables Political Video Search With Speech Recognition, Showcases 3D Technology

Google is introducing an Elections Search Gadget that allows users to search transcripts of political speeches and videos that appear on YouTube candidate channels. The speech recognition technology (also shared with Goog411) produces a transcript of the videos, which can then searched by users of the Gadget to find precise...

•Google's Pittman Talks About Visual Search & Facial Recognition Capabilities

Beet.TV interviewed R.J. Pittman, Google's Director of Product Management for Consumer Search Properties, about image search. The video is below, but here is my short summary of the interview. Pittman said Image Search has huge growth opportunity for Google. Google explained that text doesn't always describe the image, so they...

•Google Expands Edit My Search Results Feature?

The Google Like/Don't Like feature, where you can move up results, hide search results or remove search results, seems to have been expanded to a group of test searchers. We have reports from TechCrunch, Google Operating System and Justin Hileman, with reports of users seeing this feature in the main...

•Search Illustrated: PDF Optimization

Don't make the mistake of thinking that just because content isn't HTML-based doesn't mean it can't be optimized. An Adobe Acrobat reader (aka PDF) document gives SEOs one more chance at ranking for targeted keywords. This week's infographic illustrates some simple tips for optimizing PDFs:...

•AOL launches personal finance site, Yahoo! News

•This Week's Outgoing Yahoo Exec: GM Entertainment Karin Gilford, TechCrunch

•Brad Smith: Written Testimony on the Google/Yahoo! Agreement and the Future of Internet Advertising, Microsoft

•Congressional hearings on online competition and our ad agreement with Yahoo, Google Public Policy Blog

•Finding A Perfect Match, Twitter Blog

•From the Inside, Jerry Yang Looks Out for Yahoo, New York Times

•Google's invented what will be the most scorned technology on Capitol Hill, News.com

•Google's Retention Problem?, Paul Kedrosky

•How Carl Icahn Screwed Up a Perfectly Good Search Deal, Alley Insider

•Google plays Hide and Seek with Android SDK, The Register

•MapPoint 2009 / Streets & Trips 2009, Virtual Earth, An Evangelist's Blog

•Mobile Search: One Platform To Search Them All?, altsearchengines.com

•Cities in 3D program in action, Google LatLong

•Sports Link Building - DoFollow Tuesdays, Link Building Best Practices

•Yahoo Site Explorer' Dying?, seoroi.com

•How to contact adCenter support - adCenter Advertiser, adcentercommunity.com

•Yahoo Can Still Alter Your PPC Account And This Time You Can't Opt Out, PPC Hero

•As Sold by Google, Ads on Yahoo Could Cost 22 Percent More, New York Times

•Bernstein Research Predicts the Future of Paid Search, Search Engine Watch

•Google AdWords Sandbox Tool Fussy With Diacritics or Cyrillics, Search Engine Roundtable

•Sign up to test the adCenter Desktop Beta - adCenter Advertiser, www.adcentercommunity.com

•Delver Launches Social Search, Read/Write Web

•Twing Buzz Graph: When Googling Oneself isn't Enough, mashable.com

•Recruiting SEO Talent for Big Sites, Search Engine Watch

•Generic Malware Debunking Post, Matt Cutts

•A common standard for the Robots.txt protocol, Pandia

•A Web Site Has the Top Eleven Spots in Google - Smart SEO or Marketing Trick?, Cre8tive Flow

•Destination Search Engine Marketing, Part II: What Would Sudden Exposure Get You, Search Engine Guide

•Domain Age: How Important Is It for SEO?, Search Engine Journal

•Duplicate Content -- A True Story, Search Engine Watch

•Five Sneaky Ways to Build Website Traffic, ViperChill

•Flash and SEO - Compelling Reasons Why Search Engines , SEOmoz

•Huge Drop in Google Traffic? Can't Find The Problem? Check Your Links, Search Engine Roundtable

•Search-Friendly Flash?, Vanessa Fox

•When Search Engine Optimization Really Matters, BruceClay.com

•Yahoo Site Command Works Without Applying [site:]?, Search Engine Roundtable

•New Features for the New Profile Design, Facebook Developers News

•Digg Traffic to Print Media, Hitwise

•Social News - Is It Really Social?, Search Marketing Gurus

•Americans Viewed 12 Billion Videos Online in May 2008, comScore