Google is increasing its mobile ad sales team in Europe and promoting opportunities with geo-targeting, as “European antitrust investigators are asking advertisers whether Google suggested they increase spending with the company in return for improved visibility in its Web search results,” the New York Times reported . “Google is bolstering its European mobile sales team in a bid to promote its mobile ad channels, such as geo-targeting, to brands and agencies,” New Media Age reported . They were told by Google that their European ad sales team would be increased five fold by March 2011

Report keep coming in that Google is testing a new format for its top three ads. The new format — in which the headline is combined with the first description line, or the two description lines are combined — has been spotted as far afield as the United Kingdom.

Recently, Google wrote one of those fact vs fiction posts, this time on the topic of “sites with auto-generated or otherwise unoriginal content.” In short…

Wendy Boswell, About.com’s Websearch Guide, has announced the opening of the 2011 Readers’ Choice Awards, which will showcase the best products, features and services in more than a dozen topic areas, from technology to hobbies to sports. Categories include: Best Search Engine Best…

Speculation that Google plans on creating an electronic book reader were given more fuel with the company’s acquisition of eBook Technologies – “a company that specializes in both hardware and content distribution for electronic readers,” IDG News Service reported . The site redirects to the notice “eBook Technologies, Inc

Ahead of their official release, financial analysts released comScore’s December search data. Total search query volume, minus “contextual search” (slideshows), was reportedly up 24 percent vs. a year ago for a total of 18.2 billion monthly queries.

The web advertising war is a vicious one, with a large number of competitors in the field. The dominant player is Google, with AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo all playing their part here

If you stepped out onto my balcony right now, you’d see your breath fogging up instantly. Your fingers and toes would probably go numb within a few seconds. If you spat, it might turn to an icicle before it hit the ground

If you pull everything in a computer far back enough, what you’ll wind up with is nothing more than a sequence of numbers — zeros and ones, specifically, that create everything we see online and offline. These numbers are certainly vital to the world of the web, but there are also plenty of other figures that arise which bear some recognition.

Last night I had the privilege of being the guest on #seochat – a fairly new but very active Twitter Chat that happens on Thursday nights at 8pm CT.  Twitter chats are familiar territory and can be very engaging, especially when they’re as well run as #seochat.  Thanks to  @Dan_Patterson for inviting me