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Sponsored features are included with local biz listings.

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comScore has just announced its monthly qSearch analysis of the U.S. search marketplace. In January 2010, Americans conducted 15.2 billion core searches.

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Image by SESConferenceSeries via Flickr

Last year, I posted an item to the Search Engine Watch blog entitled, “It’s ‘Horses for Courses’ at SES London 2009.” I said business professionals may want to bring a team to Search Engine Strategies London – because there will be three concurrent conference tracks and no business professional will be able to attend all of the sessions.

But, upon reflection, I should have said it’s “courses for horses,” because each of the three tracks of the leading search marketing conference in Europe is designed for a different member of your team.

There are tracks for those going to Search Engine Strategies for the first time. And there are other tracks for those going to SES London for the Nth time. There are even tracks for those in the public relations industry who should go to Search Engine Strategies to learn about social media, real-time SEO, Twitter and YouTube.

In other words, there are different courses for different horses in your company’s stable.

And, yes, SES still offers special group discounts. In you want more information, check the rates and registation details.

You might also want to come early and stay late. There’s Online Marketing Summit Day at SES London on Monday, 15 February. And there’s SES Search Engine Marketing (SEM/SEO) Training of Friday, 19 February.

In between, there’s an number of special events, including an SES London Meet and Greet, theatre presentations, sponsored sessions, “Black Hat/White Hat Unconferenced,” and an SES London 2010 LondonSEO Party.

By the way, I’m not touting the event because the UK economy has just exited recession and you need to get ready for the recovery. No, you need to attend Search Engine Strategies in good times as well, because you need to keep up-to-date on trends and issues.

Oh, and I’m not touting the event because it needs more attendees. Christian Georgeou, Marketing Manager at Incisive Media, says, “I’m happy to report that currently registration is up over last year more than 10% for SES London now less than a month out form the show.”

No, I’m urging you to get your horses on those courses because Google had a strong fourth quarter, with 17% year over year revenue growth. Given that the global economy is still in the early days of recovery, this was an extraordinary end to the year. And according to Business Week, Apple reportedly is in talks with Microsoft to make Bing the default search engine on the iPhone’s Safari Web browser.

So, don’t expect the pace of change in the search industry to slow down anytime soon. If fact, it’s much more likely to speed up.

Ensuring that SES London 2010 reflects the latest changes is no small task. At SES Chicago 2009, I interviewed Mike Grehan, the VP and Global Content Director for Search Engine Watch, ClickZ, and Search Engine Strategies.

Grehan reflected on past SES shows, the evolution of SES, and the upcoming conferences in 2010, including SES London. He discussed the advent of real-time search and warned search marketers to be aware that the industry is constantly changing and evolving. He discussed the power panels and state of the industry panels that are being brought back for London.

SES London and New York 2010 preview with Mike Grehan, VP, Global Content Director, Incisive

I should disclose that Search Engine Strategies is a client of my agency. But trust me on the pace of change.

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Google has released its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2009 and the news is positive. Revenue for the Mountain View, CA -based company was up 17% compared to the fourth quarter of 2009, coming in at $6.67 billion.

“Given that the global economy is still in the early days of recovery, this was an extraordinary end to the year,” said Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. “Our performance in 2009 underscored the strength of our management team, the resilience of our business model and the pace of innovation within our product and engineering teams, which continued unabated throughout the downturn.”

Here’s what contributed to Google’s success in Q4 2009:

• Aggregate paid clicks were up 13% year-over-year and up 9% from the third quarter of 2009.
• Average Cost-Per-Click was up 5% year-over-year and 2% quarter-over-quarter.
• Traffic Acquisition Costs (TAC) increased to $1.72 billion in Q4 2009 compared with $1.48 billion last year. TAC as a percentage of revenues held steady at 27%.
• The majority of TAC is paid to AdSense partners. In the fourth quarter, $1.47 billion of the $1.48 billion of TAC was paid to AdSense partners.

Google’s net income profit was $1.97 billion compared to $382 million last year. Adjusted net income was $2.19 billion compared to $1.62 billion last year.

“As we enter 2010, we remain hugely optimistic about the internet and are continuing to invest heavily in technological innovation for the benefit not only of our users and customers, but also the wider web,” said Schmidt.

Let’s hope Google’s numbers reflect a larger trend towards a healthy economic recovery.

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If you go to Google.com/news and scroll all the way to the bottom, you’ll now see Fast Flip. This is a visual-based news platform that was launched into Labs last September. It’s designed to enable users to read the news similar to how they would a print edition – there are pages, that you flip through.

Google was keen to point out that Fast Flip remains in Labs. But it is a feature that is quickly growing. Last month, 55 resources were added to Fast Flip.

This does appear to be an attempt by Google to coddle traditional news publishers. Many of them are losing ad revenues and subscriptions due to the dang internet. Perhaps displaying the news online in a format that mimics print will allay fears. It will only do so if adopted by web users, however. And for that, we shall see.

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The 2009 most searched lists just keep coming, this time from voice mobile search provider, Vlingo:

1. YouTube
2. Facebook
3. MySpace
4. Weather
5. Movie Times
6. Twitter
7. Yellow Pages
8. MapQuest
9. craigslist
10. White Pages

So where are the Michael Jackson searches? Vlingo president and CEO Dave Grannan explains:

Unlike traditional Web searches that focus on specific search terms such as ‘Michael Jackson’ or ‘Twilight,’ our data shows that on mobile phones, people tend to search for specific destinations sites and resources. Mobile Web search is very popular on Vlingo, accounting for over 20% of all usage. Based on our users’ top searches, we are seeing mobile extending far beyond SMS and voice communications to encompass multimedia and social networking.

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eBay has tapped Click Forensics to help them fight fraudulent clicks and low quality traffic on their site.

“It is crucial that we deliver the highest quality traffic to our advertising partners, and working with Click Forensics will help ensure that we are doing just that,” said Alexis Van De Wyer, director of advertising at eBay Inc.

The relationship will affect the eBay Partner Network and the eBay AdCommerce Unit. AdCommerce allows merchants to buy cost-per-click (CPC) ads that are triggered by keyword searches.

“eBay is committed to delivering the highest quality traffic to its advertiser merchants,” said Paul Pellman, CEO of Click Forensics, Inc. “We look forward to collaborating closely with eBay to continually improve and enhance both our platforms for the benefit of online advertisers.”

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These are not the best of times for print media and they are the worst of times for Editor & Publisher, the journalism trade journal. The Nielsen Co. announced today that it is shutting down Editor & Publisher, which has chronicled the newspaper business for 108 years.

Nielsen is selling eight other trade publications — including The Hollywood Reporter and Billboard — to e5 Global Media LLC, a new company formed by private equity firm Pluribus Capital Management, and Guggenheim Partners, a financial services company.

Two years ago, I observed that, “In many industries, the trade press has imploded.”

Since then, things have gotten worse for newspapers as well as the trade press.

According to the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, “nearly one out of every five journalists working for newspapers in 2001 is now gone, and 2009 may be the worst year yet.”

U.S. News & World Report has effectively abandoned the print news magazine format in favor of producing monthly guides, leaving news coverage to its website.

And according to Jeff Jarvis, who gave the opening keynote at SES Chicago 2009 on Monday of this week, the newspaper industry and trade press have no one to blame but themselves. Web browsers and websites have been around for 15 years, so print media companies had a long time to get ready for the revolution.

According to Jarvis, it’s pretty cynical to blame Google and Google News for giving publishers “100,000 opportunities a minute to win loyal readers and generate revenue — for free.”

But it appears that Rupert Murdoch is trying to shift the blame for News Corp’s inability to adapt fast enough to the new “link economy” by stirring up what Jarvis calls “Google bigotry.”

Sites that aggregate news are NOT “parasites,” content kleptomaniacs, vampires, tech tapeworms in the intestines of the Internet, or “thieves who steal our copyright” no matter what Murdoch says.

So, it may be worth listening to my interview with Jarvis again. I know I included it in the Top Stories at SES Chicago 2009 on Day 1, but it probably deserves a second look.

What would Google do, Jeff Jarvis, slams Rupert Murdoch over Google’s role at SES Chicago

Or, listen to the entire Jeff Jarvis SES Chicago 2009 Keynote.

This issue won’t go away on New Year’s Day. This is going to be a big battle in 2010 and beyond.

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Affiliate Convention starts next week in Los Angeles and if you act fast there is still the chance to get full access for free until Friday.

WebmasterRadio.FM and AffEuro.com are bringing the second Affiliate Convention to the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles California on Thursday December 3rd and Friday 4th. Free registration for affiliates closes on Friday November 27th though paid tickets are available online or at the event for those who miss the cut-off date.

The sign up is available here.

The conference has some of the best speakers in the search and affiliate space including Dush Ramachandran, Vice President of ClickBank, Rosalind Gardner, Author of the Super Affiliate Handbook, Mike Mackin, CEO of Web-Traffic-Management, Rebecca Madigan, Executive Director of Performance Marketing Alliance, Heather Paulson, CEO of Paulson Management Group, Shai Pritz, CEO of Unique Leads, Matt Mickiewicz, Founder of 99Designs, David Duckwitz, CEO of Citizen Hawk, Tim Ash of SiteTuners, Scott Polk of Search and Social, President of SEOMoz Gillian Muessig and many more.

Add this to the party schedule that only the founders of WebmasterRadio can throw and this becomes an event you don’t want to miss.

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