Spending on search engine marketing (SEM)  grew 23% year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2010, signaling optimism both from marketers and consumers, according to the latest report from Efficient Frontier, a search marketing agency that manages more than $1 billion in annual spend for its… Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web…

Posted by randfish There’s SEO challenges, and then there’s SEO mountains. In the world of search marketing, perhaps nothing seems more initially daunting than a site/brand/product/entity with little to no search volume. It’s not commonplace, but in several sectors, particularly some sites in niche hobbies, the arts, nonprofits and startups, there can be times when what you’re producing isn’t something people are asking the search engines about (yet).

Microsoft is pushing Bing hard on msn.com, but it’s not coming without a price. Some MSN partners — and even MSN’s sales staff — are angry that links to searches on Bing are hogging some valuable space on MSN’s home page

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: A Personal Preview Of SMX West – And Why You Should Go! Our annual Search Marketing Expo (SMX) West is less than two months away on March 8-10, and it’s… Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Back in August 2010, Google began allowing business owners to reply to reviews placed in their Google Place pages by customers and others. The issue is…

Our annual Search Marketing Expo (SMX) West is less than two months away on March 8-10, and it’s shaping up to be an exceptional show. As always, you can expect the great content, keynotes, networking activities and meals for which SMX events are famous. With all of the rapid changes that have been…

Today is a national holiday in the United States to honor Martin Luther King, Jr.

Czech search engine Seznam.cz disagrees with recent reports that Google has overtaken it as the number one search engine in the Czech Republic.

This morning I received a pleasant surprise email from the folks at Junta42 with congratulations to Brian Solis , Brian Clark , David Meerman Scott , Jay Baer and TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog on making the top of the first Junta42 Top Content Marketing Blog s list in 2011. It is more than a little humbling to be included amongst such talented and respected industry veterans. Joe Pulizzi runs Junta42 and is the first person (that I know of) to really popularize the notion of “content marketing”.