Alan Rimm-Kaufman digs into some topics discussed on NPR during his morning commute, including Google's launch of Chrome, the Feds' Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac bailout and the United Airlines bankruptcy debacle; managing to tease out the search marketing insights gleaned from each one. The pros, cons and advertising angles of Chrome have been hashed and rehashed, so we'll get right to the Fannie/Freddie bailout. Though the mortgage giants' bank accounts have been secured, 30-year mortgage rates plummeted. "What's the paid search angle?" he says. "For PPC advertisers, the conversion value of traffic on terms like 30 year mortgage likely …

Lookup Page is the latest online reputation management tool, and it's free and simple to use. Once you sign up for the service, enter some personal and professional info (complete with followed links) and hit save, the platform publishes your personal Web page and--in the best-case scenario--gets it to the top of the SERPs. Udi Drezner reviews Lookup Page, noting that the company isn't trying to be a social network like LinkedIn. Instead, the service aims strictly to get users prime placement for their names on Google. Drezner says that a person's Lookup Page can dominate the SERPs …

AOL's MapQuest has launched a local search "dashboard" of sorts, which Greg Sterling thinks can be a game-changer--as it could eventually become a one-stop shop of links, videos and ads for local businesses. Users can plug various widgets onto their own personal MapQuest start page, including local news, weather and videos. The content comes from both AOL and third-party services like Topix, and the Web giant is encouraging anyone who's interested to create a module or widget. "This quickly becomes a distribution platform or way to drive traffic to local publisher sites," Sterling says. "There's no reason why, …

Microsoft may be late to the game with its Ad Intelligence keyword research tool, but according to Joe Kerschbaum, it may have been worth the wait. "I know there [are] a number of keyword tools out there but MSN adCenter Ad Intelligence is quickly becoming my favorite because of the quality of the results; the breadth of data for each keyword; and it's [sic] relatively easy-to-use interface within Excel (2003 & 2007)," he says. His review focuses on the keyword generation portion of the tool (called Keyword Wizard), which lets you build an extensive list from a seed …

Todd Mintz live-blogged David Mihm's local search presentation at this month's SEMpdx Hot Seat. Mihm rattled off some stats illustrating the importance of local search, including the fact that 500 million unique visitors use Google for local search queries per month, while about 100 million use Yahoo. Mihm said that 40% of all queries have a local intent. Searchers use city and state names or zip codes about 5% of the time, and informal terms like neighborhoods 2% of the time. He also highlighted tactics like hyper-local blogging (which can generate a ton of relevant, high-quality links) and …

Email marketers and Twitter users may be the most versed in the virtues of URL shorteners like TinyURL, Bit.ly and LinkBee, but Jane Copeland uncovers a slew of alternatives in this post, and explains why they're useful to the SEO community at large. As the "granddaddy" of URL shorteners, TinyURL has a bit of an advantage. But while it may be one of the easiest tools to use, Copeland notes that there's no tracking (i.e. you can't tell who, where or when someone clicked on your link) and that some people may have acquired TinyURL blindness. On …

Richard Fergie shares the top 10 resources he used to help study for the AdWords exam in one week (which he passed). First up is the AdWords Learning Center, which provides details straight from the horse's (er ... engine's) mouth. The center offers text-based and multimedia lessons, and breaks down the content into short chunks that can be digested in about 15 minutes. He also cites Aaron Wall's SEO Book--especially the Pay Per Click 101 video--as a source, as well as Hanapin Marketing's PPC Hero blog. Fergie suggests listening to Webmaster Radio's PPC-Rockstars podcast and checking out bigtheory.com's …

Peter J. Meyers (aka Dr. Pete) uses examples of the many kinds of "non-SERP" style results that searchers can see now, depending on the type of query or device they're using; and questions whether the SERP as we know it will become extinct. First up is the OneBox, which Google pioneered way back in 2006. The units encompass a map and a ton of local business listings, and they also take up quite a bit of space in the results. Continuing on the local search path leads us to the mobile search interface. Mobile maps on the iPhone, …