The Google URL shortener was originally launched back in December as a tool primarily for use by Google itself. Well, today Google announced in their blog that the tool has been launched and made available to everyone!

You do not need a Google account to use goo.gl. That said, if you want to know the analytics and history of your shortened URL, you will need to log into Google account to hang onto that statistical data. ...More on Googles URL Shortner, Goo.gl

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.)

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

Google saw more searches in June than May, but also a decline in market share.

According to comScore, Google has seen a small decline in its search market share for June 2010 with Yahoo and Microsoft both increasing last month. Continue Reading About Search Market Share

Remember the good old days of Google Bombing? Back when George W Bush’s bio page at the White House was ranked #1 for “miserable failure”? Well, this is something we haven’t seen for a while, and it is largely thought that this practice would no longer work, but  as the Vatican reported to Google a few days ago, it still does. Continue Reading about Vatican Google Bombing

Today in court Google won out over Viacom’s $1 Billion lawsuit, essentially showing that the court has decided that YouTube is protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) against claims of copyright infringement.

Viacom had sued YouTube over copyright infringement relating to the many video clips of various Viacom owned programming posted to the video sharing site. While Google has won a “motion for summary judgment” Viacom can still appeal if they choose to do so.

You can read more about this win over at the Official Google Blog and also at Search Engine Land.

The following are the rough Bing vs Google search engine optimization notes from the SEO 101 Internet radio show that aired today which I co-host with John Carcutt; listen to the archived show in podcast format. These notes were compiled during my attendance at the SMX Advanced conference in Seattle the previous week.

Bing vs Google:

• Bing does not currently allow video or news xml sitemaps. Update from after show: I also can’t find evidence of support for image sitemaps at Bing; anyone know otherwise? Reference link.
• Bing’s results seem to have more immediate content with local connotations that can be acted upon without leaving the page. i.e. movie names may bring up full show times for all local theatres based on your location. Another example showed typing in the word “snow” would show snow reports for local mountains. The same goes for weather forecasts which Google has similar results for but only shows one source vs a scattering of weather sources for a local area.
• Sitelinks can be edited in Google but not Bing.

More about Google vs Bing »

Over at the Google Webmaster Central Blog, Kaspar Szymanski has published a post about quality links.  One of the most popular questions Google tends to receive is what are the best practices for organic link building. In this post Kaspar explains Googles viewpoint on the issue.

There are no breakthrough techniques listed in the Google post, but every little bit of insight can certainly add up.e sure to check out the full post, but here are some of the main points covered. Read More on Googles View on Quality Links