Yahoo recently reported inking a relationship with PriceGrabber, dropping the ability to take direct data feeds from retailers and serving them up on Yahoo Shopping. PriceGrabber will power Yahoo's shopping search query results on Yahoo Shopping. ChannelAdvisor has posted a video on YouTube to help retailers understand what the Yahoo and PriceGrabber agreement means, hosted by ChannelAdvisor chief executive officer Scot Wingo.

Stoney deGeyter isn't trying to coin a new phrase. He just sees his job as Web site optimization, or WSO, rather than search engine optimization (SEO). A lot has changed since he began optimizing Web sites, and he just wants the term to reflect his job. Back in the day, deGeyter and others optimized for search engines. Rankings became the goal. Today, SEO goes much further. Rather than optimizing for search engines, DeGeyter believes SEO professionals really optimize sites for people searching for information. DeGeyter also analyzes other reasons to change SEO to WSO.

Personalized search, real-time search, the impact of social media, keyword data, and Web analysts are the top five SEO trends for 2010, according to Chris Thoren. He steps through the basics on how to profit from each. Don't get stuck in the weeds when analyzing keyword data and trends, he writes. And, don't think you can set and forget the analytics tools. Keep an eye on changing events that will undoubtedly be reflected in the analysis.

Most people might use Wordpress to blog, but Michael Gray prefers to use the tool as a content management system. He explains it's easier to administer and get writers to upload and format their own content in Wordpress, compared with other blogging tools. Wordpress offers RSS and other social tools, too. Along with the basics, such as scheduling editorial content and posts, Gray runs through what to put into the "head and tail" of the site, how to drive links through social media, and ways to build site maps to provide clean and easy crawl paths for search engine spiders. …

Lauren Litwinka runs through insights on how brands can build tighter relationships with followers through tweets and searches. Litwinka reminds us that Twitter not only gave brands a way to manage their reputation, but a glimpse into the daily lives of consumers. But some brands don't take advantage of the opportunity. Here's one example: Assuming that his 800,000-plus followers are fans, Dave Matthews follows only two, which says he just doesn't care what's going on in their lives.

Microsoft's search engine Bing might have trouble keeping up with Google, but comScore rated Microsoft's ad network the fastest-growing in December 2009, compared with the same month in the prior year. Mel Carson tells us that in the U.S., unique users grew 31% to 165 million, up from 126 million in the prior year.

Is it a surprise to anyone that unscrupulous people have launched black-hat SEO campaigns to exploit the earthquake in Haiti? Dan Raywood provides several examples of malware being used to infect computers of people wanting to help those in the devastated country. Websense Security Labs, ESET, Symantec Hosted Services, among others (Panda Security, which isn't mentioned in this post,) discovered that searches on terms related to the earthquake returned query results leading to rogue anti-virus programs via maliciously engineered search results.

Google has filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission asking for the government "to keep the Internet awesome for everybody." Google's telecom policy group fears "the Internet will become another channel on someone's cable television system." In a video posted along with the blog, Rick Whitt and Megan Stull explain net neutrality, why Google got involved, and what happens if net neutrality fails.

Dennis Yu provides a detailed analysis of "how a few bad-apple affiliates buy traffic on Facebook" and scam users, leading to what could be a tidy profit of $45,000 daily. His final words of wisdom: "Consumers should be wary when clicking on Facebook Ads and read the fine print. Meanwhile some legitimate advertisers, who play by the rules, are growing concerned that the value of this massive and emerging channel might erode [due] to consumers' lack of trust."

A couple of days after revealing Google Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activist were broken into, the Mountain View, Calif., company has released new security features for Gmail accounts. The encryption now defaults to HTTPS for everyone. Google explains that it adds an extra level of security, but can slow access to mail. An option is to turn off the extra security feature yourself. Google provides steps to disable the feature if you choose.