Search Engine News Round Up

Here’s a roundup of the goings on in the search engine world:

• Mobile phone companies and providers are beginning to make search agreements. Yahoo! and Nokia have signed an agreement to bring the oneSearch Yahoo! application to Nokia devices. This provides one touch access to Yahoo! Search from Nokia devices in Europe, Asia, and North and South America.

Verizon and Google are close to an agreement that makes Google the default search engine for mobile customers. Although AT&T’s iPhone runs Google applications, they’re working on bringing Yahoo! to it and other devices as well. Verizon’s deal would be the first to bring search exclusivity to a variety of devices across an entire network.

• Google’s AdWords have made some changes to Quality Score and minimum bid calculations. Quality Score will now be calculated dynamically (i.e. when the keyword is searched) to determine an ad’s rank. This means that inactive keywords in accounts will be switched back “on” and make those ads eligible to appear. Also, minimum bid will be replaced with a first page bid, which will be the minimum amount you’ll pay for your ad to appear on the first page of search results. Google hopes that these changes will help improve ad quality for consumers and give advertisers increased control over their accounts.
• The latest SEO conference, Search Engine Strategies (SES) San Jose, has wrapped up after four days. Read up on some of the session recaps!
• Mapquest is now partnering with CitySearch to bring more “comprehensive” results to users. Now you’ll be able to learn more about places on the maps if there’s an icon with a gold star. It’s just further proof that web 2.0 and local search are here to stay.
• In the US, Google topped the search engine rankings for July again. Google captured almost 62% of the search market, with Yahoo! and MSN coming in at 21% and 8% respectively. I’ll be looking forward to see the report for August search engine traffic, as it’s widely known that Google did not handle searches for the Olympics as well as Yahoo! and MSN did. Maybe Y! and MSN will see small gains related to the widespread Olympic fever. After all, Yahoo!’s Olympics site was the top one, surpassing even NBC’s website.

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