Who says search has to be about text links? Not Like.com and Viewzi, two alternative engines have made images a core factor in core search. Like.com is a must for shop-a-holics, as "this visual search engine uses both text and images as queries to make shopping more convenient," says Alex. Searchers can scour the Web using a product photo or text query, and the engine will return results as indexed from a list of available retailers. Like.com also allows users to refine their query by product attributes like color, style or pattern. Viewzi expands that premise …

Google announced that it would start to include landing page load time as a Quality Score factor a few months ago, and the change is slated to take effect by mid-June. This is important, as Barry Schwartz notes: "If you have a slow page load time, your AdWords ads will cost your more." To prepare advertisers for the shift, Google is now providing landing page load time data in the keyword diagnostic section of AdWords accounts. This gives users that may have poorly loading pages about a month to make improvements before the load time starts to affect …

With the continued shift in advertiser interest (and budgets) toward search marketing, the lack of seasoned search vets (and a widespread, formal training system to develop them) is creating a talent vacuum. And in the quest to build out a proper search practice, Jennifer Osborne says that some companies will go the acquisition route. So if you're a search consultancy, or even a mid-sized firm and you're seeking to scale out, it could be your time to become part of a larger entity. Osborne has some tips to smooth the process. For one- or two-man shops, an acquisition is about …

The latest Google Maps improvement is in real estate search -- the Maps team recently made the tool much easier to find and use. Real estate search joins extras like personalized maps, videos and even geo-located Web pages in the "show search options" drop-down menu. The results are obtained from feeds indexed from real estate sites, and include property info such as price, and number of bedrooms and bathrooms.

Copy Corrected Kango, a travel aggregation engine, is relaunching as UpTake. UpTake pulls in content from sites like TripAdvisor, Expedia and Citysearch, all with the goal of becoming the go-to hub for consumers at the start of their travel planning. UpTake analyzes the review info from each site to come up with an overall impression of a resort's features like the pool, babysitting hours and room sizes. "It also presents ratings from third party sites side-by-side so that users can gain a consensus view of the hotel's quality and service," says Greg Sterling. "This is very …

Brainstorming for new keywords involves going beyond your own and your competitor's keyword combinations to find unique terms in your niche (and neighboring niches). And to make it easier, Ann Smarty recommends using some of the following tools. Google Sets serves up words that the search giant thinks are relevant to your initial query, while MSN's clustering tool groups results semantically. Smarty also suggests the Urban Dictionary as a source of both keyword and blog inspiration. "The dictionary is really helpful at giving you a full picture of your main term associations as well as jargon, …

Yahoo acquired Inquisitor, a Safari browser plug-in that auto-completes queries (and provides links to Web pages, video and other content within the drop down box), and has now bundled it into search. So Mac users have their own version of Search Assist, sans the affiliate ad links that supported Inquisitor in the past. Users can download the free plug-in with Yahoo as the default engine, but the Web giant has maintained Inquisitor's independence--so users can tie it to any compatible search engine of their choice. Meanwhile, David Watanabe, founder and developer of Inquisitor and members of his Mac-savvy …