Microsoft Bing has inched it way past Yahoo to become the No. 2 most searched on engine in the United States, according to Nielsen Co. data released Tuesday. Yahoo, Sunnyvale, Calif., fell from 14.6% to 13.1%, taking the No. 3 spot. Regardless of whether Bing powers Yahoo Search, Nielsen still credits the searches that happen on the Yahoo domain to Yahoo. That won't change, according to Shiven Ramji, vice president of Online Media Solutions at Nielsen. But, I'm most curious to find out if Google Instant, launched last week, will alter the number of searches on engines. I already know …

Telmetrics' VoiceTrends, which analyze the sentences in consumer calls to determine intent, allows the "art of science to improve the art of marketing," according to Bill Dinan, Telmetrics president. "We start going through the transcribed conversation to find the keywords," he says. "We're looking for the action words, the ones that indicate the person needs an appointment or oil change for their car."

Increasingly, video has become an educational and a motivational tool. Brainshark has developed a tool that turns PowerPoint decks into YouTube videos. The platform turns a presentation into a video slideshow formatted to upload onto YouTube with one click. The feature also adds voiceover and audio through a phone or a microphone.

Those who didn't listen to the Webcast or attend the press event might not know Google Instant integrates work from Google engineers that began years ago and got shelved. The work began on experimenting with partial queries, feedback as words get typed into the search box, and predictive text. The tool built in Ajax borrowed features from personalization, Google Squared, real-time search, Caffeine Index, Google Suggest, auto complete, and spelling correction.

Small-and-medium size local businesses sometimes get the short end of the stick. Advertising and search engine marketing (SEM) budgets typically remain too lean to get hand-holding marketing support. Still, many rely heavily on the Web to reconnect with existing clients and find new ones. Kenshoo Local, a Kenshoo business unit focused on SMBs, inked a deal with Mongoose Metrics providing data on how clicks lead to phone calls for local businesses.

The ongoing debate whether Twitter and Facebook can become credible sources for news similar to Google News took a blow last week after Washington Post sports columnist Mike Wise tweeted a phony scoop. He told fans Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, suspended over acquisitions of sexual misconducts, would sit out for five games.

Marketers know travelers rely heavily on the Internet and search engines to research destinations and fun stuff to do, but some might not know the trend to tap into mobile and video content continues to rise. In fact, in the past year, the use of mobile devices to access information for personal travel and business travel rose 8% and 25%, respectively, according to a recent study.

SEOmoz launched the platform Web App on Thursday, giving its 6,000 members access to a variety of SEO software, tools and reports. It the first major step, aside from announcing the deal with BrightEdge, to rebrand the company as a tools provider, rather than a SEO services provider. That's not always easy.

Back to school means more searches on Google related to higher education. At least that's the case at New York University (NYU). But when admissions dwindled for specific disciplines in the Master of Arts (MFA) program, NYU took action by focusing on paid click advertising through Google.

Dear Google, Please create a tool that allows me to send SMS text messages for free. You did a great job with the call feature on Gmail. Now it's time to move on to similar mobile features. The carriers will move in to take advantage if you don't create a method to lower SMS campaign costs for advertisers and make it less expensive for consumers to share.