There are some noteworthy findings on consumers' online behavior during Sunday night's broadcast of the Academy Awards. Research conducted by Claria Corp., formerly known as Gator, found that 31 percent of Internet users were online while they watched the Oscars broadcast on ABC, an 11 percent increase over last year.

Yahoo!'s segue back into search marketing took another step yesterday as it debuted a plan to include paid links in search results. While advertisers that pay to have their websites included in search results won't advance the sites' rankings, consumers won't know whether an advertiser has paid to have its links included.

Last week, Arbitron said it will stop offering weekly and monthly ratings for Internet radio. Arbitron had been providing MeasureCast ratings for the fledgling Internet radio segment for three years, practically an eternity, considering the category remains nascent.

The Knot, the online destination for people who are planning their nuptials, has scored a Best of the Internet award from PC Magazine. TheKnot.com is a great website-it has chat features, a gift registry, shopping areas, contest opportunities, and offers just about any kind of advice someone who is getting married might need from choosing invitations and rings, to reception etiquette and honeymoon ideas.

Just when you thought the online advertising sector was picking up (and it is), there's a radical proposal advanced. This, from Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel, who proposed that one day (perhaps soon), Yahoo!'s subscription-only services could be ad-free. Semel, speaking yesterday at a Commonwealth Club event in Santa Clara, Calif., said ad-free services on Yahoo! are being contemplated but offered few details.

Lycos today said it's overhauling itself to become a one-stop shop comprised of for-pay premium services including social networking, personals, gaming, shopping, and just abot everything else. The overhaul is much-needed--the portal has practically dropped off the map in the last year or more, eclipsed by Yahoo!, Google, and others.

Search marketing is such a burgeoning area of interactive marketing and media that there are entire conferences on the subject. I'm referring, of course, to Search Engine Strategies 2004, the Jupiter Media conference taking place March 1-4 in New York City.

A report about online dating from Hitwise fell into my in-box and it's got some juicy morsels. For starters, the average online session for a site in the dating category in January 2004 is 11 minutes 55 seconds, an eight percent increase over January 2003, and 33.3 percent of visitors to online dating sites come via search engines and directories, and 23.3 percent via e-mail services.

Yesterday's Online Minute reported that Jupiter projects the search market will swell to $14.8 billion by 2008. That is inaccurate.

Search is one of the fastest, if not the fastest growing area of online advertising. You've heard it before. You'll probably hear it again. In fact, I'm sure you'll hear it at Jupiter Media's Search Engine Strategy conference next month.