Google has launched some new features for Google Friend Connect, aimed at letting site owners make their GFC experience more personalized and letting their visitors get to know each other.

A representative for Google tells WebProNews that 9 million sites are using Google Friend Connect, and pages with GFC get over half a billion unique visitors a month. Two people join every second, she says.

Google looks to be taking another step forward on the path towards personalized search.  Some users have been given access to a new option that allows them to identify sites they’d like to see more often on their results pages.

Some say ranking is dead. Google’s going though changes that may turn SEO on its ear. Google’s Matt Cutts talked about some of these changes with WebProNews not too long ago. "I’m not sure I would say ranking is dead but it’s not as important as it used to be," he said.

As I was writing a piece on RushmoreDrive, the search engine (and more) that was created as a way to provide relevant results from the black community, I started thinking about how the future of search could impact its use and the use of niche search engines in general. Unfortunately, I have more questions than answers on this topic, but it raises some interesting questions nonetheless.

Personalization can be nice; looked at one way, it’s what leads the bartender at a favorite pub to get your Guinness the moment you arrive.  It can be kind of a drag, too, though – do you want your friendly neighborhood pharmacist to remember your every problem? – and so personalization was weighed against privacy in an SES Chicago session called "Battle of the Browsers."

Display advertising is making a comeback. Ok, it never really left, but the targeting capabilities of newer services like MySpace’s MyAds, or even Google’s display ads for AdWords have made the advertising medium more appealing because they utilize the personalization and targeting strategies that made search engine advertising so attractive to advertisers since the dawn of the AdWords revolution.

Google has announced SearchWiki, which is a new set of functionality that users with Google accounts can use to customize their results on any given search. SearchWiki allows users to move specific results up or down in rankings so that they appear in the preferred order when the same search is done in the future.

The customer who says "I don’t like that" is loathed by companies everywhere.  Their ideal customer says "I don’t like that," explains why, and offers a reasonable suggestion, instead.  Microsoft is trying to bring users possessing this mindset to an experimental search engine called U Rank.

Last month, we reported that MySpace had launched a new self-serve advertising platform, but it was officially announced last night with a name – MyAds (beta). With this platform, users are able to create their own display banner ads with the following advantages working for them (as cited by the social network):

When Google speaks, people listen. So when Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products & User Experience at Google (who has been working on search at the company for over nine of its ten years) talks about where search is headed in the future, we should all take note.

Yesterday I posted an article on SmallBusinessNewz about targeted ads insulting customers, in which I referenced a Washington Post story from writer Rachel Beckman.