For many years now AOL search results, both organic and paid, were powered by Google. Now with a deal announced by AOL – none of that is going to change.

This morning AOL announced the renewal and expansion of their global partnership. The five-year renewal will include a broad range of features to both improve and expand the products and services. ...more on the AOL / Google Search Deal

I wish I had found this myself, but a friend of mine sent me an instant message today with a link to a “fail” over at FailBlog. I tried the Google search myself and sure enough the error is in fact real. I thought I would share it with all our readers who need a quick laugh.

I only wish I had discovered this myself but I seldom have a reason to Google “hotmail” – it’s up there with Googling Google. (and no, Googling Google does not present any fails – oh well.)

Chris Boudreaux and Adam Edwards over at Blog.Converseon.com stumbled across Google search results for a highly local term that spells trouble for anyone who has not spent time focusing on Local SEO.

What do I mean? After all, what could Google possibly do to make local such a big deal? How about removing ALL organic search results in favor of local results! In this case the local search utilized was highly localized which is the only way this sort of result should ever be triggered. The search was for “car rental nyc” and the results were jaw-dropping… nothing but local listings were in the results where the organic rankings used to be.  Here is a link to the full-size screenshot that Chris and Adam used to document this event (I copied it to my server in case theirs got overburdened).

What does this mean for you?

First of all it is important to understand that ... more on Google Local Results

Tune in to Monday the 16th of August’s episode of SEO 101 on WebmasterRadio.FM where I (Ross Dunn) and my co-host John Carcutt interview Jon Henshaw and Taylor Pratt of Raven Internet Marketing Tools (affiliate link – this article is, however, a legit preliminary review).

In short, Raven Tools can help you with the following:

Website analytics, managing link building campaigns and tracking their success, search engine optimization, social media reputation and campaign tracking, keyword research, and… see more farther on as I outlined the list of features.

The August 16th show will delve into some of the unique (and very cool) reporting options and tracking functionality that Raven has integrated over the years. From discussing how Raven IM Tools has uniquely layered link building reports and ranking reports over top of your overall site analytics (powerful combination!) to learning more about their integration of bit.ly, social mention and other popular metrics providers, this show is well worth a listen. That said, here is a little more about the show and my experience with Raven Tools since we recorded the program. ... more on Raven Internet Marketing Tools

It’s taken a little while but Twitter has jumped on the bandwagon and launched an official “tweet” button for your social icon set. Twitter made the announcement yesterday on their official blog. While this is not the first “tweet” button made available, it is the first official button put out by Twitter directly. Find out More About the "Tweet Button"

If you are looking for a fun Friday Afternoon read, check out the latest article by Danny Sullivan over at Search Engine Land. Danny pokes into the many attempts Google has made in products that didn’t quite make the cut.

Google has had some massive success with a number of their initatives, but with that success there are always those that don’t quite make it. Learn about some failed Google Products

Today Google announced it is finally embracing the two way conversation for business place reviews on its Google Places platform. As a result, business owners can reply to both negative and positive reviews for their businesses which were left on their Google Places profile.

This is Very Good News
Having dealt with some reputation management issues in the past for clients it used to drive me to distraction that the client could not respond to negative reviews on many of the review websites online. As a result, unfortunate situations where a miscommunication or simple mistake had occurred would quickly bloom out of control because the business owner had less options to respond as publicly as their unhappy patron. Fortunately, over the years IYP platforms that allow reviews such as Yelp and TripAdvisor finally opened the doors to allow business owners to give their side of the story and today Google took the same leap. ... learn why this should be important to you

Since the launch of bing a little over a year ago, Microsoft has tried all kinds of things to try and boost their search market share. Well they are out with their latest marketing attempt – switch to bing and Microsoft will donate $3 to schools in need!

As of the time of this writing, bing has donated nearly $45,000, $3 at a time. Continue Reading bing and their donations