GoDaddy engineers have developed a Search Engine Visibility (SEV) tool designed to determine the needs of Web site owners before recommending appropriate actions, keywords and content, using easy-to-understand questions. The tool is designed to improve site optimization, and since domain names and SEO go hand in hand, I'm a little surprised the company doesn't tout its offering and the importance of optimization a little louder.

Yahoo continues its efforts to make search results more appealing to advertising and consumers to increase market share. On Wednesday the company made changes to its results exclusively available to those searching on desktops from the Mozilla Firefox browser on Windows, Mac and Linux in the U.S.

Reports speculate that Google will "build" its own smartphone, which -- unless the company acquires or builds a contract manufacturing facility -- is completely unrealistic. It would require several hundreds of millions of dollars, because founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page would need a completely automated state-of-the-art robotics facility supported by a cloud infrastructure.

Google engineers have built an entirely new machine learning system dubbed TensorFlow, which replaces the old system. It allows Google to build and train neural networks up to five times faster than its first-generation system, so engineers can use it to improve Google products such as search and Gmail. TensorFlow will improve software as well as hardware, allowing devices with little processing power to return data and complete tasks more quickly.

For the sake of this opinion piece, I'll call Microsoft's agreement with Google a "relationship" -- but far removed from best friends forever.

Google's forthcoming play in China could have something to do with Sergey Brin and Larry Page choosing the last three letters in the English language as the top-level domain extension ".xyz" for Google's holding company Alphabet if XYZ CEO Daniel Negari's clarifying story is on track. Here's another hypothesis.

It's a wacky world when some retail stores will open Thanksgiving Day and others will close the day after. Sports retailer REI recently announced that it would close for Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving -- the day that most retailers hope will become their biggest sales day of the year. It will likely create more loyal customers that will find their way to the Web to search and buy.

Where do images and image search fit into the next generation of search? Search experts will discuss the options at the next Search Insider Summit in Deer Valley, Utah. Sometimes things don't always seem as they first appear. For instance, some view Pinterest as more of a search engine than a social media tool. Although a discovery tool for content, Pinterest has built algorithms driven from image recognition, per one retail marketer, who views the platform more for search engine marketing.

BIA/Kelsey projects that local search advertising revenue in the United States will rise from $7.8 billion in 2015 to $8.2 billion in 2016, $8.5 billion in 2017, and $9.5 billion in 2020.

Country music artist Charlie Worsham and Trace Adkins gained at least one more fan last week -- me -- and they owe it to a cross-media advertising campaign designed by Flying Dutchman Travel Co-owners Ann Macker and Tracy Michaels.