This week, Bruce Clay, a respected search engine marketing agency (whose founder WebProNews has interviewed many times) launched something called Local Paid Inclusion. The official description said: Local Paid Inclusion is a Google, Yahoo and Bing contracted service and is …

Earlier this month, Google announced several updates for AdWords, including group level impression share metrics for the search and display networks. As Google explained, advertisers will start seeing three new columns that can be added to the ad groups tab. …

Some Google AdWords advertisers are not pleased with what they are finding in Google’s Search Query Performance reports for their campaigns. These reports show advertisers what keyword queries are surfacing their ads, and some are finding some of these keywords questionable. 

The deadline for Yahoo Search Marketing advertisers to transition their campaigns to Microsoft’s adCenter is approaching. You’ve had ample time to do, but there are no doubt some procrastinators out there. 

In another article we looked at large scale SEO with Bill Hunt. We also sat down with Eric Enge of Stone Temple Consulting at PubCon, who talked about enterprise PPC. 

At PubCon Las Vegas, WebProNews spoke with David Roth, Yahoo’s Director of Search Marketing, who has an interesting perspective on the recent Microsoft/Yahoo search advertising transition (or “Search Alliance“), because not only does he work for Yahoo, he does Yahoo’s …

Google introduced a new feature to its AdWords Search Funnels today: the Top Paths (Query Paths) report. Search Funnels are a set of reports that describe ad click and impression behavior on Google.com that leads up do a conversion.  

Google has announced that it is rolling out AdWords Campaign Experiments to all U.S. advertisers. This is a free tool that the company says makes it easier to test and measure the impact of changes to keywords, bids, ad groups, and placements.

Google has announced a new advertising format for Google Merchant Center users. The format is based on the product extensions AdWords format that lets advertisers add specific product listings.

Google has announced a new location extensions ad format with map features. Businesses can feature their locations and phone numbers on an expandable map ad that can appear on mobile sites and apps in the Google Display Network.

This format shows up as a banner text ad with a business icon that expands to show the business location on a Google map, including ad creative, a click-to-call phone number and an option to get directions.

Yahoo has begun testing organic and paid search listings from Microsoft. Up to 25% of its search traffic in the U.S. may see organic listings from Microsoft, and up to 3.5% may see paid listings from Microsoft adCenter. I guess you could say that the early stages of the Search Alliance’s transition have begun.

Will you place more emphasis on Bing optimization as it integrates with Yahoo Search? Let us know.

Google Ventures has invested in a paid search marketing firm called Trada. Google Ventues has invested $5.75 million in Trada, along with Foundry Group, which previously invested $2.2 million in the company.

Microsoft and Yahoo have released a new video illustrating how the two companies intend to create a "powerful new choice in search" with their Search Alliance, due to begin making its way to customers before the end of the year.

There is not much in the way of news about the alliance to come from the video, but it does put its goal into a simple, easy-to-understand 2 minutes without going into all of the specifics.

There is a new Keyword Diagnosis option in the Keywords tab in AdWords. This can give advertisers detailed diagnostic info for multiple keywords at a time.

"Whether you have ten keywords or ten thousand, making sure your ads are showing is a top priority," says Miles Johnson of Google’s Inside AdWords crew.

American Express has launched a new search marketing tool for small businesses via its OPEN forum. The tool, powered by Clickable, is called SearchManager, and lets business owners manage paid search campaigns across Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, Microsoft adCenter, and Facebook ads from one dashboard.

A few months ago, Google introduced AdWords Search Funnels reports. These describe click and impression behavior on Google.com that leads up to a conversion, with reports like Assisted Conversions, First and Last Click Analysis, Time Lag, and Path Length.

Facebook and Twitter get a lot of the credit for all of the conversation that is going on around the web these days, and they certainly account for a great deal of it. Still there is public conversation happening in many other channels – blogs, Q&A sites, news sites, YouTube, other social networks, and forums.

Since Bing launched last year, it has placed a great deal of emphasis on giving answers beyond just the "ten blue links." In reality, the major search engines each offer much more than these ten blue links  (the standard of the old days of search). Google, Yahoo, and Bing each offer a variety of ways for users to obtain the information they’re looking for through various search options, blended search results, and other products altogether.

It’s no secret that marketing tactics must change over time – just imagine how far a modern newspaper would get paying boys to shout "extra" on city streets – and the search marketing industry may be changing right now.  Experts discussed how, along with how marketers should react, in an SES New York session titled Search Marketing: Analyze This.

In search, a lot of what Yahoo has done has been overshadowed by what Google and Bing have done, simply because Google controls such a huge piece of the search pie, and Bing is still a relatively fresh entity. All eyes are still on Bing as it grows. That leaves Yahoo somewhere in the middle, where it technically sits in terms of market share.

How important is Yahoo to your search strategy? Let us know.

All of the search engines are rushing to incorporate more social media elements into their interfaces. Examples of this are evident in things like Google and Bing’s deals with Twitter and Facebook. You can see it in Yahoo’s new Twitter tab for news results.

This week Google released some findings from a test Google Netherlands conducted with Metrixlab, Heineken, and Heineken’s agency Twist. They set out to find what effects paid search ads had on branding, and were quite pleased with the results.