Blekko sought out from the start to become the “third search engine” behind Google and Bing (Yahoo, for all intents and purposes counted as Bing, since Bing powers Yahoo Search). Google and Bing serve search ads to monetize their efforts. …

Privacy in relation to Google is a big ticket item right now, as consolidation practices and other matters concerning personal identity and online advertising practices have become popular topics. It adds to the noticeable undercurrent of fear that, fueled largely …

It looks like the copyright police are at it again. This time they are in a secret meeting with search engine companies making demand of them. In a document obtained by TorrentFreak, it has come to light that copyright holders …

We thought it would be fun to take a walk down search engine memory lane and look at what some of the search engines from the times before Google’s domination are up to these days. Remember the days when the …

Although you probably know MC Hammer as that guy with that song with those pants, the 49-year-old pop-rap pioneer has become quite the tech nerd in the last few years. He’s dipped his toes in startups and is a fixture …

Experian Hitwise released its search market share numbers for the four weeks ending August 27. Key findings are as follows: Google accounted for 65.09% of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending August 27, 2011. Bing-powered search comprised …

At the heart of this question sits the internet and its vast, seemingly infinite trove of information and more specifically the portal to that information: search engines. Are our brains half-assing it because we know that information is only a …

Bing has introduced flight prices in auto-suggestions. You can simply enter your query, and it will bring up a prediction for what Bing Travel deems the best flight price deal within the next 90 days. 

Google used their Official Google Blog to announce a change to their search algorithm that impacts 11.8% of their queries. Google explains:

I wrote an article a couple months ago, asking: What if Facebook goes search while Google struggles to go social? I looked at some of the things Facebook has done related to search, and made the case that the social networking giant has a lot of potential for becoming a bigger player in search in general. 

Google’s search quality has been a heated topic of discussion in recent weeks – mainly with regard to content farms permeating search results. It’s not only an issue with Google, but Google is by far the largest search engine, dominating the market by a landslide, so it gets the most scrutiny. 

"OK, don’t laugh," an email we received from a Bing representative began. "I’m really e-mailing you about a toolbar, but it’s actually pretty cool."

Yes, Bing has a new toolbar, or "Bing Bar" if you will. It includes things like Bing Search, Facebook, email, Bing Rewards, Maps, Games, etc. 

Interestingly enough, just after I wrote about how Greplin had some social search benefits that Google is lacking, Google announced that it has updated its own social search. Google social search results will now appear mixed throughout the organic results, as opposed to just at the bottom, as they have done in the past. 

Matt Cutts posted a new Webmaster Help video in which he answers his own question rather than a user-submitted one (like usual). Specifically, he asks if there’s any advice that he’d like to change from what he’s said in the past. 

"I did a video back in May of 2010, that said we don’t use, for example, Twitter at all in our rankings other than as a normal web page, and the links are treated completely like normal web pages," he says.

I thought this was already made fairly clear, but Google has said again that it does not use Bing data to influence its search results, the way Bing apparently uses Google data to influence it’s search results. 

Blekko just announced it is now using the Stack Overflow community to help improve and maintain programming-related slashtags for its search engine. Stack Overflow, if you’re unfamiliar with it, is a programming Q&A site built by programmers for other programmers. 

Gabriel Weinberg, founder of alterative search engine DuckDuckGo sat down to talk with WebProNews about what people can get out of DuckDuckGo that they can’t get from the Google experience. 

"I’m not anti-Google," he says. "I know that they take privacy very seriously, and I respect what they’re doing, but they’re doing a few things that – one they can avoid, and one they can’t avoid – and both of which, we don’t do."

I’ve been writing about how Social Media links are impacting Search Engine results lately.  It’s really an area we have consciously tried to stay ahead on because we think that Social Media link sharing is going to have an even greater impact on search in the future.

Bing has started testing new personalized search features, aimed at making individual search results more effective. "Personalized search is not new, but Bing is taking a different approach, focused on the type of search a person is doing and understanding more about what that person is likely searching for," a spokesperson for Bing tells WebProNews. "As no two people have the exact same search behavior, Bing has taken the extra step to automatically tailor search results."

Recently there was a big kerfuffle over Bing copying Google results, Bing denying it, the Google FUD machine in full force, and some nice conspiracy theory about who is pulling the strings and why.

Blekko says its search queries climbed to a million a day in January. CEO Rich Skrenta tells WebProNews that Blekko has seen growth since its announcement that it has banned some content farms from its index.