Zach Bulygo explains why understanding expectations is important to improve customer service, including knowing pricing and nuances about the specific job. It may seem easy, but serving up great customer service requires communication between the client and the company. Bulygo provides a short checklist to keep marketers on track, and provides examples of how to tap into social sites to improve satisfaction.

Zenya on Wednesday released The Zenya Agenda, a search tool to identify emerging trends. The tool offers marketers a free option to try the company's data and keyword analysis before signing up for the company's services. It identifies trends across categories like Arts & Entertainment, Holidays & Special Occasions, Gadgets, News & Sports, Science & Health, and Travel & Lifestyle.

Larry Kim analyzes Google's possible motives for making changes to the search engine results page layout, replacing a format that has been in place for many years. Linking to a Google post from Tuesday where Search Lead Designer Jon Wiley explains how the company has been working on a consistent format to span across multiple size screens, Kim explains how the change impacts organic search results.

Arnoldo Muller-Molina, 32, is working for a former NASA astronaut building the next-generation search engine. The engine, simMachines, specializes in searching for similar things -- not identical ones. It has been about eight years in the making. He began working on it while getting his doctorate in computer science from Kyushu Institute of Technology in Japan.

Dan Goodwin cites a Pew research study on how teens primarily use Google and Bing or another search engine to research information, but teachers need to encourage students to go beyond the first citation or results on a page when using search as a research tool. It's part of a teacher's job to instruct students on their research skills. While he points to the study, he highlights several findings, such as the amount of class time that teachers say they spend in class improving search term and query skills.

Semantic search is not a new concept, but Doc Sheldon gives us some background on the technology, along with some projections and possibilities for the future. He describes it as software driving machines that must understand the intended human meaning, taking many factors into consideration. He points to an abundance of unstructured data as one of the biggest issues in making it work.

At a loss for words? Harry Gold gives marketers a list of questions to ask clients when planning media buys. Some questions seem obvious, but the list should provide a reminder to those who are so entrenched in their job they forget the most typical and simplistic questions. The list of 60 questions span topics ranging from service and relationships, to goals and metrics, to social and audience, to tracking and reporting.

The writing is on the wall. Well, the wall of the Internet. A search online reveals that several news agencies, including Time, CNet and Wired, are reporting that the activist group Anonymous threatened to take down Facebook on Nov. 5 unless the gaming company Zynga agrees to discontinue its plans to lay off 1,000 employees. The group said it stole passwords and defaced the NBC video page on Sunday. Gangs have tagged physical brick walls and buildings. Online hackers now believe it's okay to deface online properties. Another publication, examiner.com, reports that the move on NBC was in honor of …

The Wall Street Journal reports its analysis on Google's universal search technology found a discrepancy in personalized search query results Google serves up on Obama vs. Romney. It appears that Google "often customizes" results of people who recently searched for information on "Obama," but not "Romney," similar to the way search engine users might search on words like "iPhone," "sports," or "health." In the test "Obama" served up in future search results, "Romney" did not. The WSJ said it tested search topics from Iran to Medicare.

Google released a new colorful ad for the Nexus 7 where people use the device to play music, view pictures, watch videos, and ask questions on Google Now. It shows the many uses of Nexus 7 for pleasure and to search for educational information. The ad follows the adaptation of the movie "The Life Aquatic" with Steve Zissou.