Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Testing Instant Previews On Ads (Here’s What It Looks Like) Google is testing a new feature that marries its Instant Previews with AdWords. The test..

Today is the second day of Passover and I thought it would be fun to share a video by Aish named the Google Exodus.

Google UK’s Panda update shook a lot of website categories in it’s search for ‘high quality’ content. We were interested to know what kind of sites saw the biggest ‘visibility’ drops so we categorized the data of the top 100 sites that lost search positions according to data released by SearchMetrics

Walmart announced the purchase of Kosmix – “a social media filter aggregating information by topic from Web sites, Twitter messages and other sources in real time — a potentially important new way to give shoppers information, and get it from them,” the New York Times reported. Kosmix, a start up based in Mountain View, California, was founded in 2005 by Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman whose work in the ecommerce space is well known.

No one likes a cry baby and that is the way Google was perceived by many when Google told on Bing for ‘cheating’ in early February. If you missed the story you can read it here but in short…

Google is testing a new feature that marries its Instant Previews with AdWords. The test gives searchers a chance to see the ad’s landing page without clicking on the ad.

The debate about the legitimacy of news bloggers has been settled. ProPublica, a web-based independent investigative news organization, has received the Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on Wall Street leading to the financial crisis. The judges praised the way journalists Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein used online tools “to help explain the complex subject to lay readers,” the UK Guardian reported

At the Where 2.0 conference today Google announced “Google Earth Builder,” which is a cloud-based solution for enterprises that want to render their data on maps. The idea is that enterprises of all stripes can upload and store all types of geospatial data on Google’s servers…. Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article

B2B search engine marketers understand the value of inbound links but may struggle with execution. With an ever increasing plate of responsibility, emerging search industry trends, and the balance between short-term and long-term goals, it is easy to let a link building program fall to the wayside…. Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article

Next month, I’ll be returning to my alma mater, Columbia University, to give a speech to this year’s Phi Beta Kappa inductees.