Russian search engine Yandex has launched an open-source platform as a service (PaaS) it calls Cocaine. The company explains that it allows developers to build out their own app engines. The platform is similar to Google App Engine or Heroku. It supports C++, Python and JavaScript. No word as to why the engine named the platform after a narcotic -- other than that the company wants developers to get hooked on the product.

Microsoft posted a television advertisement on the Windows YouTube Channel showing how Windows 8.1 uses the Bing engine to simultaneously search for stored content in the cloud and across the Web. Microsoft calls it "Bing Smart Search." The engine searches through images, photos, videos and text on touchscreen PCs and tablets.

Larry Kim details the pros and cons of Google's latest release called Shared Endorsements in display ads. The feature brings reviews and ratings into Google results. Kim takes us through the different results that searchers might see and the platform Google may pull from. He also tells us how to turn off shared endorsements, why Google focuses on click-through improvements, and how they will impact conversion rates. Read the article here.

Lewis Sellers, director at U.K.-based Pinpoint Designs, tells us about his company's woes after being hit with a manual penalty from Google. While the hit created trouble, it also serves as a guide to get the site in much better order. The main reason the site took a hit was because SEO experts added anchor text into the bottom of clients' Web sites that read "Web Design Yorkshire by Pinpoint Designs." Along with several other mishaps, the tagline violated Google's guidelines. Sellers tells us what the team did to correct the problem. Read the article here.

Most marketers believe that by December organic keyword data from Google will become nonexistent. Crispin Sheridan tells us how to use paid-search ads to substitute the loss and how the ads will become critical to search engine optimization. He makes the point that the loss of keyword data forces search marketers to focus their attention away from the keyword performance and more onto the quality of their pages -- thus the increase in attention to content.

Microsoft added a pre-render feature on its Bing search engine that serves up the first search results virtually instantly. The feature appears when using the Internet Explorer 11 browser. This is done through the use of the browser tag. John Psaroudakis explains how this feature can eliminate a sequence of steps that can take between 30 and 60 seconds. 

Google has begun to roll out review extensions in ads that the company originally announced in June. The feature allows advertisers to append a quote or endorsement from a reputable publication in their AdWords ads. The post in the Google+ Google Ads page takes us through the process of managing reviews. 

At MIT’s EmTech conference last week, Mary Lou Jepsen confirmed the product road map for Google Glass. The Google X team is working on a Google Glass sequel, although it is months away from the official launch. Jepsen works with the development team. On this road, content marketing meets voice search.

Reports of Twitter opening its direct messaging feature to all have begun to surface. The opt-in feature is not available to everyone yet, but Doug Aamoth reports that some are seeing the change. Until now, the feature would only allow one to direct message another if both followed each other.

Jonathon Fletcher was invited in May 2013 to a panel in Dublin to celebrate 20 years of Web search, alongside people from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. It's there that Professor Mark Sanderson from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology told Fletcher that he is the "father of the search engine." In 1993, Fletcher developed the world's first Web crawler while working in the computer lab of Stirling University in the United Kingdom. This Web crawler, JumpStation, could automatically scan and index Web pages, making it possible to find information from across the Web.