The acquisitive arm of Google reached out again today, and this time, grabbed DocVerse, a company that specializes in the real-time sharing and editing of documents.  The unusual thing is that DocVerse doesn't deal with just any documents; instead, it focuses on Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, and Word documents. A post on the Official Google...

Last year, Google's Matt Cutts dropped the bomb (to put it in the exaggerated tone that many took the news in), that Google was considering taking site speed into consideration as one of many potential ranking factors for search results. Is your site's performance up to snuff? Comment here. This of course freaked a lot of people out, but as...

The Associated Press said today it is partnering with Livestream to launch AP Live "Oscars Red Carpet," coverage. AP Live coverage of the 82nd Annual Academy Awards will feature social media elements, on-demand clips, photos and news. AP Live is available on a Facebook fan page and syndicated to AP publishers and other distribution...

A year ago, we first covered the extortion rumblings against local review site Yelp. Business owners claimed that Yelp offered to remove negative reviews—for a price. Yelp disputed the allegations, but did add a feature for business owners to respond to negative reviews last April. But apparently the other practices...

Microsoft is rolling out the largest imagery update to Bing Maps to date, adding 6.7 million square kilometers of new imagery, a representative for Bing tells WebProNews. The update includes new aerial imagery for the Russian Federation, Australia, Mexico and most places in the US where there is existing black and white imagery. "There is...

A couple weeks ago, Google acquired reMail, a popular iPhone app, and pulled it from Apple's App Store. Now, Google has made it open source. "After looking at a number of options to make reMail available in some form, we decided to open source the code, which is now available on Google Code as remail-iphone under the Apache 2.0...

Cybercrime syndicates are expanding the base of brands they exploit for online fraud beyond major financial institutions and online merchants, according to a new report from the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG). The number of hijacked brands reached a record 356 in October, up nearly 4.4 percent from the previous record of 341 in August...

An important, if not surprising, item: Another Google/YouTube exec has voiced his opinion that YouTube will be profitable this year.  More interestingly, an outside analyst has done the same, and also forecast a gross revenue figure of almost $1 billion. Let's start by talking about Citigroup's Mark Mahaney, who generated that...

I don't know how Lisa Barone does it without absolutely collapsing on the last day, but here we have another roundup of her excellent liveblogging coverage from SMX West 2010. If you couldn't attend, you'll feel like you did with the coverage at Outspoken Media of 15 sessions.

As you know, Microsoft and Yahoo were recently granted regulatory approval on their search and advertising deal, and we've discussed what this might mean for search engine optimization. WebProNews stopped by the Yahoo Headquarters in Sunnyvale before heading to SMX West in Santa Clara this week, and talked with Shashi Seth, Sr. VP of Yahoo Search...

How would you like to indulge in two days of hands-on, advanced social media marketing training? Training from experts such as Jason Falls,  John Jantsch,  Giovanni Gallucci, yours truly, and a bunch of other top-notch marketers? What if I said you could get that training for just $429? When was the last time you went to a 2-day...

What will come first, Christmas or Twitter’s 20 billionth tweet? Well, according to the GigaTweet counter, you can celebrate Twitter hitting the 20 billion mark, a few months before you can put up your Christmas tree. Twitter has already passed the 10 billion tweet count and is rapidly chasing towards the big two-oh. Of...

According to a study by EmailStatCenter.com (sponsored by ExactTarget and BrightWave), the promise of social media marketing riches is too much of a temptation for email marketers–they want in on the action. According to the study, 43% of email marketing firms are already offering social media marketing as part of their...

Volusion, a provider of online shopping cart software for businesses recently introduced its newest credit card fraud protection service, Fraud Score. Volusion spoke with WebProNews about Fraud Score and how it works to protect online merchants of any size from fraudulent transactions. When an order is placed customer information is...

Let me start off by saying that I have no problem with my search results being personalized, because I understand that search engines want to deliver the best user experience so that users will keep using them. If I get results that are personalized well, that means I don't have to look too far for what I'm trying to find. However, not all users...

I think that based on the legal angle of much of the news around Google lately, we could see a service called Google Legal. I have no idea what that might look like but since the Internet behemoth spends so much time in court battles they should be able to find a way to monetize that right? They make money on everything else they...

Apple said today its much anticipated iPad device will be available in the U.S. on Saturday, April 3, for Wi-Fi models and in late April for Wi-Fi + 3G models. All models of iPad will be available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the U.K. in late April. Beginning March 12, U.S. customers can pre-order...

Believe it or not, Yahoo has a market cap of about $22 billion, and the company intends to put some of that money to good use in the near future.  Carol Bartz stated at the Transformation 2010 conference that she intends to acquire more stuff this year. In response to what could have been a "yes" or "no" question...

YouTube has changed the default size for embedded videos. By default they're getting bigger at either 480x385 for a 4:3 video, or 640x385 for a 16:9 video. YouTube says it went with these sizes, because they will give most viewers the best viewing experience because they better match current video encoding sizes. "A video's life on YouTube...

Leave it to Yahoo’s CEO Carol Bartz to stir up a little controversy from time to time. It seems like that’s the best way for Yahoo to get in the news these days. In recent months most stories are more about what Yahoo used to be and people trying to figure out what it will be. For any business, especially in the Internet...

Every now and then, there is a discussion about where email stands as social network use becomes the "it" thing. We've all heard mutterings like, "email is dead" and "social media is killing email," but it's just not the case, and there are plenty of reasons why (even if Google thinks it's time to start over). Do...

In a single day, Bing has increased the number of fans of their Facebook page by 500 percent. How? By using clever social media advertising embedded within the popular Facebook application Farmville. The advert appeared yesterday inside the game Farmville, encouraging players to become a fan of Bing in exchange for free farm cash (the virtual...

With all the talk this week about Facebook valuations and the money that they are making (OK so it’s a guesstimate but what the heck……it’s the Internet!) it makes one think about just how Facebook plans to continue to grow top line revenue. One way was revealed as the ability to target Facebook ads locally increased...

Since SEO is all about optimizing for keywords that people are actually searching for, misspellings present a pretty big opportunity to gain visibility in search. You could potentially get more traffic and make more money from organic search by targeting a few strategic misspellings. Just don’t tell your 5th grade English teacher about it.

We'll let you decide whether, given the recent loss of life in Haiti and Chile, Google's timing is a little off here.  But for better or for worse, the search giant picked today to promote Google Apps in a blog post titled "Disaster Recovery by Google." A few points in Google's defense: it created a Person Finder tool in response...

In case you missed it, WebProNews streamed a live interview with Google's Matt Cutts today from SMX West in Santa Clara. It's hard to narrow down the discussion to a singular topic, but here are some of the things touched upon in the video: - The status of Google's Caffeine update (nothing's wrong, they're just being careful.) - Site Speed as a...

Yahoo Mail users should find it considerably more convenient to get in touch with their friends and acquaintances from now on.  Today, Yahoo and Facebook made it possible for those users to add their Facebook friends' email addresses to their Yahoo Contacts lists. The benefits should be obvious.  A post on the Yahoo Mail Blog pointed...

Update: Matt Cutts says they probably won't rename PageRank. However, he agrees with Peter Norvig that people obsess about it too much. Original article: Last year, Google quietly got rid of PageRank in Webmaster Tools. Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Susan Moskwa had said, "We've been telling people for a long time that they shouldn't...

Google Buzz has captured a lot of the buzz around services with "Buzz" in the title (of which there are a few), but before Google Buzz was even announced, AT&T Interactive had already launched a beta version of its latest take on local business search at Buzz.com. Buzz.com has only been available on an invitation basis so far, and...

As more wireless users switch to smartphones, many retailers are readjusting their mobile strategies to address the needs of these users, according to a new study by J.D. Power and Associates. The semiannual report analyzed evaluations from customers who recently had an in-store wireless retail sales experience. Overall customer satisfaction...

Whether they're used for the benefit of the hard of hearing, people who speak a different language, or just folks who want to watch videos while at work or in a library, captions can be helpful in all sorts of circumstances.  And now, captions should become much more common, as all YouTube users will be able to take advantage of an...

It’s getting closer to the moment of truth for me and this kind of “news� gets me a little closer to making the move on going with an Android device. I know the days are numbered for my BlackBerry. That’s a foregone conclusion. I guess I am the customer that is being most fought over between Apple and any Android device...

For once, an advance in Google personalized search I actually like. They’re adding the same stars we’re so used to in Google Reader and Gmail to personalized search results. The starred results let you mark favorite sites to show up at the top of future posts—and it doesn’t appear to affect the rankings of...

Watch the Keynote live at live.webpronews.com. At SMX West in Santa Clara, the State of the Search Union keynote is taking place today. It's moderated by Chris Sherman, Executive Editor of Search Engine Land, and features SEL Contributing Editor Vanessa Fox, Google Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik, Yahoo Director of Search Marketing David...