There have been reports about new changes in Yahoo! Search, soon after its last update in the month of February. People have been speculating about the changes, since they are seeing heavy fluctuations in the Yahoo Search results. According to the reports, Yahoo!’s new updates are about:

• Link counts dropped
• Reports on canonical issues
• One person reported “different titles and descriptions for singular vs. plural of my main keyword. It’s the same URL, so kind of odd.”

According to the Yahoo Search Japan blog, “Yahoo! In search, Yahoo! Inc. UEBUSACHIENJIN has developed the “Yahoo! Search Technology (YST)” has started a full update of the index.

Of late, Google AdWords came up with a new option for postpay advertisers, that helps them in multiple ways! Google launches a feature called “Make a Payment” that enables customers to make payment for any amount at varying times. Moreover, it allows customers to pay with different methods of payment.

With this new option, advertisers who tend to exceed their set billing threshold multiple times will also be benefited. Under such a condition, they are likely to be charged several times a day.

Matt Cutts put the effort to answer the question that was asked off late about the position of keywords in the URL and how does it impact ranking at Google through a video According to Matt, even though keywords in the URL help to a certain extent, but one should not get caught up in the exercise!

The video also shows Barry Schwartz seeking the answer from Matt Cutts as whether people should include keywords to the URLs of already existing sites! In reply, the latter said, instead of considering change in existing URLs, people should consider this aspect when creating a new site!

The Internet Explorer team came up with Internet Explorer 8, which is geared up with a very useful feature called Live Search Accelerators. The Accelerators are likely to make web surfing much faster and easier!

Google India Labs has launched a new tool called Google Noticeboard. This is a Firefox extension, which according to its homepage, “enables community members to exchange information over the Internet without an intermediary.”

“Google Noticeboard is an application that helps people access and share information over the Internet using public digital noticeboards. Using Google Noticeboard, communities can access a variety of relevant information. People can create text messages or record voice snippets and post them to one or more noticeboards.”

Below are the step as how to use the latest tool:

A few weeks ago, it was heard that Google was all set to test New Link Command feature for Google Blog Search Ranking Update. But, latest news is that Google has postponed the test!
“Unfortunately, we ran into some delays with these experiments and had to push back the schedule a couple of weeks,” said Googler, Jeremy Hylton

Off late, a lot has been talked about “Branded Search Results” in the world of SEO and SEM, which plays a vital role in Search Engine Rankings. Matt Cutts of Google finally came up and talked about “Branded Search Results” and what it has to do with the search engines.

Here is his video:

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Ever since the launch of Google Health last year, one could hardly see any major development in this concern. But, recently Google has made the official announcement of releasing some new features in Google Health. Let’s have a look at the three new features:

The first new feature “Share this profile” enables Google Health users invite and share their medical records and personal health information with others whom they trust, be it a family member, a doctor or even friends.

“Share this profile feature enables Google Health users to invite others they trust (whether it’s a family member, a trusted care network provider, friends, and/or a doctor) to view their medical records and personal health information.”

Google reported through a recent post that they will end the Google SOAP Search API on August 31, 2009.

“We’d like to bid a fond adieu to one of our first developer products, the venerable SOAP Search API. It has been deprecated since 2006, when we stopped accepting new developers for the API, and it’s finally hanging up the gloves and retiring on August 31st.”

For some time, Google has been indulging in making quite a few changes, including the Individual Qualification (IQ) Program, off late! The launch of the program has been confirmed by Google by a recent press release. The skills qualification program allows its users to demonstrate proficiency in Google Analytics.

The press release states:

“The Google Analytics IQ program is tailored for agencies who want to retain and develop employees who are knowledgeable about Web analytics,