Google last week made a significant change to its ranking algorithm, a move required before continuing to layer social signals of traditional search engine results. The company will need to rid results of less relevant content to serve up the important stuff based on personal preferences.

What does it take to budget a successful paid-search campaign? Allocating budgets can become daunting for search engine marketers, but Lori Weiman, CEO at The Search Monitor, offered up ways to maximize returns by determining what competitors spend on paid-search campaigns. During a joint webinar Thursday with comScore's Search Evangelist Eli Goodman, Weiman stepped through sizing up the market to help marketers focus on budgeting resources and recognizing important channels.

Searchmetrics launched a new program this week based on capabilities in its Searchmetrics Suite of applications that aggregates global search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns. Dubbed Searchmetrics Connect, the program fosters interoperability with other platforms. The feature integrates with a variety of tools to likely become the most important feature in the tool. The package connects with Web analytics tools such as Omniture, Webtrends, and Google Analytics.

Small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) have latched onto social networks as the advertising tool of choice to promote products and services. In fact, 48% said they use Facebook, 25% rely on other social networks, 22% use blogs, and 19% tap Twitter, according to the latest BIA/Kelsey's Local Commerce Monitor (LCM), an ongoing study of SMB advertising spending habits conducted in partnership with ConStat.

What if Google Search became the social network rather than a portal on the Web like Facebook or Twitter? I wrote and published that sentence in the August 2010 edition of Search Marketing Daily -- the post titled "Could Google Turn Its Search Engine Into 'Google Me'?" To find the answer, I took a look backward to see the future. Google accounted for more than three out of every five U.S. searches in 2010, according to comScore, which released The comScore 2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review report earlier this month.

I'm not a big fan of toolbars for browsers, but if you have a chance to try out the Bing Bar you'll see the difference in the uncluttered design and the way it ties into real-time information and social signals. The buttons on the bar are intuitive, and I particularly like the Maps button that shows local traffic conditions, as well as road and aerial views.

Social search at Google took many twists and turns since the official introduction in Google Labs back in 2009, but it appears the engine may have just recently learned how to tie signals from Facebook, Twitter and other social sites into search engine results. On Thursday in a blog post, Google explained updates to Google Social Search. The big question remains as to how much influence social signals will have in Google's organic search engine results and paid-search ads served up in campaigns.

Lyris has developed an iPhone application that allows marketers to change email campaigns through a mobile dashboard. The company's "mobile email marketing" platform enables features that historically have been exclusive to the desktop.

Sometimes a technology can spend years searching for an application. That's what happened to mobile couponing. It took nearly seven years, but the advertising industry finally began catching up with the technology this week. Soon, these coupon deals could end up in organic search results or specific sections on Google, Bing and Yahoo geared specifically to deals. The smart merchants already tie deals to paid search campaigns.

Texas Roadhouse has experienced a 40% increase in Web site traffic directly from online listings found on local search, mobile and social platforms such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, YP.com and Facebook. The 45 locations make a conscious effort to collectively drive traffic from online to each of the casual dining restaurants in 46 states with help from Localeze, a company supporting business listings for local search.