McAfee's annual report on the most dangerous celebrities to search for is out. In other words, searching for a celebrity can be extremely hazardous to your computer these days.

Forrester recently reported that Search Marketing will far out-pace other forms of interactive marketing in 2009, and is expected to grow by a 15% compound annual rate through 2014.

"We have never been a search company." Carol Bartz, Yahoo CEO If the above statement wasn't true over the last fifteen years, it certainly is now. Yahoo is now committed to the content and ad game, forgoing search to Microsoft. This probably shouldn't be as big of news as it was. After all, Yahoo used Inktomi search results to help supplement their directory listings way back in the day. And it was only a few years ago that Yahoo search was powered by Google.

Yahoo! and Microsoft announced an agreement that will improve the Web search experience for users and advertisers, and deliver sustained innovation to the industry. In simple terms, Microsoft will now power Yahoo! search while Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies' premium search advertisers.

Recent findings from eMarketer and X+1 show that companies are committed to search marketing despite the economic downturn and, allegedly, lack-luster results.

Companies cannot assume they do not need to optimize for brand terms simply because they have a short/memorable domain. Whether it is laziness or habit, users are still going to search engines to access well-known brands as opposed to typing a URL into their browsers.