Google still owned 64% of desktop U.S. search market share in May 2015, and Bing held strong on the 20% share it reached since March. The only reported changes were the 0.1% loss by Google, while both Bing and AOL gained 0.1%. Yahoo remains steady at 12.7%.

Since SEO work has either a direct or indirect impact on search engine crawling, indexation and ultimately ranking, Merkle RKG began rolling out a Web site to provide marketers technical information and working examples of SEO concepts. The agency defines "technical SEO" as any SEO practice where configurations are implemented to a Web site and server such as HTTP header responses, XML sitemaps, redirects, and meta data to support page rankings and optimization. 

Jamie Smith tells marketers how to double their campaign's click-through rate with a scientific AdWords A/B test on ad copy. He walks through updating ad copy optimization settings, writing ad copy variations to test, ways to document test run start times to measure the results for the same time for each ad, and more.

Using clickstream behavior could be the latest Google signal to influence rankings. Rand Fishkin tells marketers about a Google patent that recently surfaced. The patent came from Navneet Panda, the engineer for whom Panda, the Panda Update from Google, is named. Fishkin describes the process.

Google's major shareholder Sergey Brin sold 66,664 shares of the company's stock Wednesday at an average price of $549.18, for a total transaction of $36,610,535.52, the sale disclosed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Ratings from Morgan Stanley, Vetr, Canaccord Genuity, and JMP Securities are mixed with fluctuating stock price between $505 and $60.60.

Type "alternative search engines" in google.com's query box and you just might find them. That’s how Joshua Cohen found Mystery Google, a site that within a year of its introduction in 2009 rebranded itself as Mystery Seeker, the name under which it still operates. It’s not clear who founded it, or who runs it, or whether it changed its name because Google threatened legal action or just acquired the domain, he writes. By contrast, you type a query and it returns the results from the previous search, so “you get what the person before you searched …

Birds chirping, geese flapping their wings -- those are some of the sounds visitors to Bing's home page might hear today. An audio icon at the bottom right of the search screen brings the full experience to visitors. More information about the video and the geese calls captured by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology can be found by clicking through to Bing’s Backstage, where the engine provides more information about the daily image.

Jackson, Alabama, has about 2,000 residents, but after Google moves in and sets up a data center it could have around 2,075 or more. Google said Wednesday that the company plans to start construction in 2016. With a price tag of about $600 million, the data center will bring a boost to the local economy. It's not clear whether the data center will help support search or provide cloud and other services.

The federal government is asking Bing, Google, Yahoo and other search engines for help to stop online scammers who target Americans who are struggling to pay back student loans. These scammers often tell borrowers they can get them a special deal on a renegotiated loan if they will just pay a large upfront fee. Earlier this week the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) sent letters to Bing, Google and Yahoo asking them to watch for ads and search results when users type keywords like "student loan default," "student loan forgiveness" and "Obama student loan relief."

Marin Software Wednesday introduced Smart Sync, a feature that allows advertisers to run campaigns across a variety of publishers without creating and managing each separately. The feature enables advertisers to duplicate an account, campaign or group level, along with keywords and creative pieces, from Google to other publishers.