Jeff Hecox tells marketers that Yahoo Search now returns Sponsored Search ads in the "more relevant search results" column. He explains how the search results appear and what it means for marketers and advertisers. Hecox explains the filter option, along with others added in the last month, should increase relevancy and allow people to gain more control of the search experience. He notes that more relevant search can translate into better returns for advertisers.

Hands On Search sat down with Ray "Catfish" Comstock, senior search engine optimization strategist with BusinessOnLine, to discuss topics ranging from how SEO fits in with paid search, to how marketers should budget for SEO. Comstock attempts to debunk the "misconception" that marketers should drop their paid search strategy if the SEO campaign becomes successful and the company gets good organic results. It's not always true, he says, because both paid and organic marketing can enhance brand perception in the market place.

Rand Fishkin and Scott Willoughby sat down with Eric, Rajesh, and Alessandro from Bing in Redmond, Wash., to talk about how Bing's market share growth will impact search. The video, which posted in September, provides insight into the potential Bing/Yahoo partnership. The group discusses what it could mean for the competitive landscape, and what webmasters and SEO professionals need to do to optimize for Bing.

Matt McGee previews five Twitter search tools that "may have flown under your radar." The first has the potential to have "serious local search implications," he writes. The other tools allow you to search Twitter user bios, search and discover information deep in Twitter's archives, and find jobs advertised through tweets. For example, Searchtastic is a Twitter search engine that, unlike Twitter's own search, can dig deep into the archives. McGee writes that the search tool can't index all the tweets. It's limited by the Twitter API. But McGee says that can help you gain better results.

Tim Sorweid digs deep to help clients get a handle on local search listings in Google. He analyzes items that business owners can control, such as location and products in the title of the listing, photos and videos. He also looks at information that falls outside the business owner's control: for example, reviews and user content. To understand PageRank in local listings, Sorweid selects two competitive markets to analyze: San Diego acupuncture and San Diego SEO. Findings are outlined in a very lengthy post.

Google prevents analysts from running reports detailing conversions and conversion rates by the hour, but the data is extremely valuable for day parting in campaigns, according to Brent Bowles. So, he provides a workaround that mixes reports from AdWords and Google Analytics to create a report that provides conversions by hour, regardless of the date. Bowles walks through six steps. He explains you will need to have "Conversion Goals" set up in analytics and ready to go. It will help you avoid spending extra money to purchase third-party software to get the job done.

Bill Slawski points to a YouTube video of a youth in San Francisco being arrested for skateboarding within the city limits. Evidently, it's against the law to skateboard within the city limits. Well, at least that's what the police officer told the skateboarder. But the city's SEO's strategy and Web site search engine are so poorly organized and optimized that even Slawski had a difficult time finding a searchable version of the municipal code relating to rules on skateboarding. From the information online that Slawski managed to find, it might not be illegal to ride a skateboard …

Chris Boggs set out to determine whether it's possible for Sidewiki comments to influence an organic Web-page ranking in search engine query results, and how that might affect how SEO professionals do their job. Answering both questions and analyzing the possible connection between Sidewiki and SEO, he explains that depending on the next steps Google takes, things could change. Providing additional insight, Boggs also links to an article written by Sean Carton and others that explains how Google's Sidewiki could influence marketing campaigns.

Matt Cutts explains in a video why Google identifies, but doesn't "fetch," a page when the Web page is blocked with a robots.txt tag. The tag, meant to prevent Google from indexing the page in search engine result queries, is considered an uncrawled URL. He also explains why Google shows uncrawled URLs, pointing to www.dmv.ca.gov as an example. The quantity of links connecting to the URL plays a part in the decision, he says. Cutts says Google can go into the Open Directory Project to find information about the page. Google can return information about a page …

Lisa Barone provides insight from a panel at Search Engine Marketing Expo East on pumping up Wordpress for SEO. She not only provides tons of links to get you started, but carries you through the entire project. The panel Barone highlights includes Jon Henshaw, Jordan Kasteler and Rae Hoffman. Barone writes that Kasteler talks a lot about code, which makes no sense to her, but manages to jot down the specifics to pass on to readers. Henshaw highlighted hosting and traffic, scraper protection and opportunities, and quality indicators. She writes that "his voice is unusually sexy," but he …