Covario, an analytics technology software firm, has launched new agency services based on technology, data and automation. The services will use Covario's analytics automation technology, organic search insight technology and a new SEO delivery team to create and deploy SEO strategies for clients.

Google is always up to new tricks and this week's goes well with coffee. The online giant has released a test version of a new search indexing engine, called Caffeine.

iCrossing, a digital marketing agency, announced August 6 that it has named Paul Doleman as CEO of its UK operation. He was previously chief technology officer. Doleman replaces Arjo Ghosh, who becomes chairman. As chairman, Ghosh will remain actively involved in the business with a focus on strategic direction and, in particular, European growth, the company said in a press release. Doleman will be based in iCrossing's Brighton office.

By now, most marketers know the drill for 2009: Trim budgets and focus on effectiveness. For search marketers, there are several ways to meet this challenge. In fact, you can often wring more ROI out of your paid search campaigns without sacrificing much traffic. Wister Walcott, co-founder and VP-products for Marin Software details three clear steps you can take.

Google announced it is kicking off a series of outdoor billboard ads to promote its Google Apps to businesses. The search company announced the campaign on its official blog. The ads are significant, because Google has traditionally been reluctant to use advertising to promote its products and has done very little advertising to date.

Last month, TechCrunch published an anonymous post, "The time has come to regulate search engine marketing and SEO." The author made an appeal to the government to regulate both Google and the search engine marketing industry. Statements and accusations flew back and forth in the comments section of the post, as well as across the Web. Now that the dust has settled a bit, contributing editor Sara Holoubek reached out to a few industry leaders to separate fact from fiction, with the end goal of informing direct marketers how best to interpret the key points.

Google announced it has formed a partnership with Visible World, an addressable TV ad technology company. The new relationship will give Google TV advertisers the ability to dynamically create several versions of a TV ad, targeted to specific segments, using Visible World's automated platform.

Hitwise reports that medical searches made up 45% of total online traffic from all categories last year, and eMarketer says online ad spend by the pharmaceutical industry is expected to reach $2.2 billion in 2011 — up from $1.2 billion in 2008. Search engine marketing (SEM) is growing within the pharma arena.

The launch of Bing in June was Microsoft's latest volley in the battle for market share against Google. But it is working? According to a new report from search optimization firm SearchIgnite, not yet. Bing has had little impact on Microsoft's share of U.S. paid search advertising in the second quarter of 2009, the study found. In fact, Microsoft's search has remained at 6% of the ad pie, where is has been for years, according to the report.

The tremendous potential of search advertising lies in its ability to advertise to a highly-targeted audience looking for very specific products and services. One big downside, however, is cost. Because only the largest companies can bid on the most popular keywords, like "CRM" or "antivirus," for small companies, the key to search advertising is focusing on "long-tail" keywords that tend to be significantly cheaper.