Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

Google CEO Larry Page met with U.S. Federal Trade Commission officials, while Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt was seen with head of the firm’s Washington, DC office and former Republican Congresswoman Susan Molinari

Digital Marketing Depot will host a webcast Thursday Dec 13, 2012 at 1:00 EST (10:00PST). The webcast Competitor Analysis: Realize your Visibility will feature speaker Shaun Siler of North America Searchmetrics This webcast will cover the key components of search marketing - competitor analysis,… Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article

The Google Local Business forum is filled with questions, bugs…

A baby girl has been born and given the name Hashtag.

A baby girl has been born and given the name Hashtag. Hashtag may prove to be a nice trendy name for a young lady as we slide deeper into the 21st century. Or it may not.

Some of you are likely already aware of these plugins, while others will be hearing about them for the first time.

Is that time of the year, when we look at our industries in retrospect. Today, however, instead of telling you what was, we bring you something that could be… All these SEO/SEM startups launched in 2012, and aim to become stronger, better and more popular in 2013

Talk about conservation and sustainability, how about harvesting the power of great content over and over again? Here’s some ideas on how to maximize not only future content, but the wealth that sits unseen beneath the surface of your publications.  For those of you unfamiliar with the term evergreen, one definition is to refresh and reuse The post Evergreen Your Content & Educate More In 2013 appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Status Update: Our Bob Jones reported yesterday on a furvor over Google Webmaster Tools having had serious security issues. Having contacted Google myself, the company’s official response to the situation was forthcoming today. Google insists the “access granted” problem was highly localized, and that the problem has since been resolved.