Marketing Pilgrim

There are only two SEO related tools that I’d take the time to promote.

Ontolo’s link building tools is one, and now I’m adding SEOmoz to that list.

Marketing Pilgrim is now an official affiliate of SEOmoz because, well quite honestly, Rand Fishkin is a righteous dude! Heck, you can’t help but like everyone at SEOmoz.

Oh, and their SEO tools are among the industry’s best of breed!

Features include:

Weekly Crawls & Rank Tracking

On-Page Recommendations

Competitive Analysis

Tools include:

Open Site Explorer

Search engines are fine if you want to know the capital of Alaska or how to make the perfect omelet, but what if you can’t decide on what movie to see or what book to read? Sure, you could check out the hundreds of reviews found all over the web, but why trust total strangers when you can get advice from your friends instantly on Bing! And by friends, I mean your Facebook pals, many of whom are probably as unknown to you as CullenLuver47 who left a movie review on Amazon.

Bing is the latest program to get bitten by the Facebook bug and you’ll see it in your results when you use the “decision engine” to search. They’ve cleverly tagged it: Bing Social Search: Now it’s personal. Here’s how it works.

It’s that time of the month again! (Please remove your mind from the gutter, thank you). It’s time to play the “Is Google Falling Off the Edge of the Earth and Is bing Going to Give it a Shove?” game. As is usually the case, Google is doing fine while the bing and Yahoo alliance is, well, a non-issue for now.

Danny Sullivan reports on the early release of comScore data over at Search Engine Land.

comScore has released its latest search share figures to analysts. UBS is first out of the gate to report them. In the wake of Google Instant, Google is once again gaining share, after several months of slight decline. Meanwhile after months of gains, Yahoo drops after becoming “powered” by Bing.

Marissa Mayer has been one of the most public of the Google executive team as the VP of search products. No small position considering Google’s unbalanced revenue picture (you know, that 90% of revenue coming from search thing). Now, she has moved to a new position within the search giant which gives the rest of the world an indication of where they think the money is for the future: location and local services.

Bloomberg reports

Marissa Mayer, Google Inc.’s vice president of search products, is taking a new role overseeing location and local services — markets the company is counting on to boost sales.

Newspaper publisher Media General has teamed up with Groupon in hopes of driving new traffic to their associated newspaper websites. They’ve started with the Richmond Times-Dispatch and have labeled the offering the “Richmond Daily Deal.” Groupon gets a “powered by” in the logo.

The deals work just as the do on the Groupon website with some slight graphical twists and obviously a much more local focus. When you click on the “buy now” link, you’re taken to the main Groupon website where you can sign in with your Groupon account or Facebook login. It’s assumed that the two companies are splitting the profits but there’s no word on who is making out on the higher end of the deal.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is reporting record breaking numbers on ad spending, but don’t put the down-payment on the Ferrari just yet. While it’s clear that the first half of 2010 saw a hefty increase in online ad dollars, the 11.3% increase is over the first half of 2009 which was an exceptionally bad moment in time.

Display advertising pulled in $4.4 billion in the first half of 2010 which is a 16% increase over the same period in 2009. Much of the growth came in the area of digital video advertising which is as high as it’s ever been, a full 31% over last year. This increase points to two things – consumers are responding to video advertising and ad buyers are more comfortable with the medium. Still, I’d say it’s the buyers not the consumers that are keeping video advertising from going through the roof.