If you follow Google’s series of blogs on the wide variety of areas that the company plays in there has always been one conspicuous absence. Among the LatLong, Mobile, AdWords blogs there has never been an actual Search blog. That is until this week with its new blog called Inside Search.

The first post from the blog reminds readers that it’s not like there has never been any posts about search. It’s just that there has never been a blog about search.

In the past we’ve published information about search on the Official Google Blog (more than 400 posts about search and more than 50 weekly wrap-ups), and webmaster-oriented posts on theWebmaster Central Blog (more than 300 posts). We also operate a help center for search and another for webmasters. That’s not to mention the search help forums which have more than 50,000 discussions, and the webmaster central help forums with more than 90,000. Combine this with YouTube channels and search conferences, and it’s safe to say we talk a lot about search.

In what some may see as a matter of semantics, Google has made a shift in how they name positions internally with the word search being replaced by the term knowledge. When I first read this I wanted to dismiss it but on second thought that would be pretty hard to do since Google makes almost all its money from search.

So why this shift in terminology from the search engine giant? It could be that the Larry Page era is truly about taking Google beyond the current confines of being just a search company. They have been trying this for a while with various product introductions and little if any true success especially in the area of social. Maybe the shift in titles is about a sea change in the organization to not think search first?

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"Why would I want to see what my Facebook friends "liked" or "shared" in my Google results?"

"Who cares whether my website has fewer +1s than the next guy if I have better content?"

"Tweets shouldn’t pass PageRank – what the heck does a Tweet tell me about whether a result answers my query?" 

If you ever read any corporately generated content from content farm poster child, Demand Media, it won’t take long before you see the word disruptive. Here is the first sentence from content.demandmedia.com

Demand Media is a disruptive online media company. We’re doing things differently. And while we respect media’s heritage deeply, we respect its evolutionary potential even more.

Well, it looks like Demand’s world is being disrupted as well from the recent Google Panda update. In a post from this past weekend, Larry Fitzgibbon, Demand’s EVP of Media and Operations, was more or less forced to respond to some third party ‘data’ (from the company Sistrix who is making a name for its relatively unknown self by producing these Demand Media ‘insights’) that claimed that the recent Panda update in its many iterations really hurt the content farm machine and was rather disruptive to Demand’s bread and butter which is Google traffic.

The recent 2011 annual report from SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization) and Econsultancy gives some data that can make one wonder a bit. The survey is of mostly North American companies and agencies in the search game.

The question I have is about the use (or dare I say popularity) of the in-house SEO model. In-house SEO’s are just that: staffers on a company payroll that have the job of search engine optimization for an organization’s particular needs. SEO agencies ran the show for the start of the SEO era but as more and more people became skilled in the SEO arts more companies decided to bring that function in house. The chart below, however, shows the cycle might be possibly changing again.

I wrote a while back to wake me up when Bing powered search (combined market share of Yahoo and Bing search) reached 40%. Well, in March a new plateau was reached as the two search entities combined to hit 30% so I may now have one eye open. Experian’s Hitwise reports these numbers.

This is a good sign for Bing powered search as Google’s slip in share looks to be directly contributable to the increase in searches using the Bing search engine. The next step that Bing needs to see is a true second place position over Yahoo. Bing has poured untold millions into building its brand while Yahoo is just coasting on what it gained long ago. In fact, what advertising do you see about Yahoo search? I don’t see any but then again I also don’t see it all by a long shot.

(The following post was written by Jen Lopez of SEOmoz, the Marketing Pilgrim SEO Channel sponsor. If there was ever a discipline that was community oriented it’s SEO. Here’s how one of the top players in the industry handles it.)

As the Community Manager for SEOmoz, I see our community as a number of areas: Any interactions that take place with members on our own site, on Social Media sites (mainly Facebook and Twitter) and in-person. So when it comes to how to “manage” the community it’s not totally cut and dry. As most Community Managers do, I find myself putting on my Customer Service hat one second and my Marketing hat the next. It’s a role that changes almost constantly and I rarely finish tasks I set for myself the first day I set them, as the community always comes first.