While Citysearch is not a new name in the Internet space, it has struggled to have the success it has hoped for. In attempts to catch the eyes of search engines such as Google, Citysearch is revamping its site by giving more power to its users. By doing so, search engines will take note of the activity taking place at Citysearch. Nevertheless, businesses will still have some control over their pages within Citysearch.

How does Citysearch plan on implementing these changes? Citysearch launched a beta version of its new site earlier this week, which incorporates a new design.  The website will be more user-focused. Instead of searching metropolitan areas, users can search towns and neighborhoods of larger cities. The user-generated content comes into play when users review areas that Citysearch has not fully covered.  Citysearch will also incorporate Facebook into its new site layout.  Facebook connect will allow users to log into Citysearch with their Facebook I.D.s and passwords. In turn, the Citysearch reviews written by Facebook users will appear in the Facebook newsfeeds.  The result of the Facebook and Citysearch coexistence will raise Citysearch’s syndication, which will be read by search engines like Google.

Not giving up its power to the user entirely, Citysearch will have different forms of reviews. NY Times reports that “Citysearch’s new design presents information in three parallel columns: from the owner, from Citysearch staff writers and from users”. With all of its innovations, Citysearch is set for success.

SalesForce.com, a company that prides itself in its customer relationship management, is teaming with Facebook and Amazon through several outlets. Its platform as a service tool, Force.com will serve as an outlet for both companies.

Salesforce’s partnership with Amazon and Facebook create many conveniences. Facebook’s partnership with SalesForce will enable SalesForce customers to create applications on Force.com and streamline them onto Facebook. For instance, a recruiter application could benefit a company looking for employees. The Amazon deal creates more storage space for developers. A developer in need of extra storage, for example, could offload some of their data onto Amazon’s S3 storage service. SalesForce’s impact on Facebook and Amazon will be tested in the coming months, but the convenience that the applications bring appear promising.

Following user trends is one of the challenges that businesses face as they struggle to capture a loyal audience. Sometimes, however, companies see a spike in their online traffic, or a sudden decrease. How can companies become more informed of the trends in their industry? While Google Trends has quickly become a tool for tracking trends on user searches, there have been more developments in tracking trends.

Trendrr is a new site which allows users to track the popularity of different products, keywords, videos and other outlets within numerous sites.  Some of the sites Trendrr uses to track trends are YouTube, Amazon, Technorati, Google News, eBay, BoxOfficeMojo, Monster and Compete. Trendrr’s insight into online trends comes in forms of charts and graphs which are interactive.  Trendrr also presents a social networking aspect to its site, allowing users to share their graphs, view recently updated graphs, as well as voting up a graph similar to how articles are dug on Digg.com. Trendrr has the potential of helping businesses see the popularity within their industry.

As a result of the rise of popularity in blogging, many companies have created different tools to help index and compile them. Some companies that have taken advantage of using search engines to index blogs are: Technorati, Google’s Blog Search, Sphere,  and Icerocket.  A new blog search engine, Iterend, has shown promise as a possible success. Iterend refers to itself as a “search and discover engine” stressing its emphasis on tracking memes, clustering results, and using tag clouds for navigation.

The tag clouds appear to be what sets Interend apart from other blog search engines is its ability to narrow its results by different phrases.  For instance, if one searches a name like ‘Joe Smith’, Iterend comes up with several categories such as ‘actor’, ‘person’ and ‘fictional character’ that users can click on to narrow a search.  These options appear on the left hand side of users’ search results.  If a user searches say, ‘Apples’, he/she can click on the ‘apple pie’ tag to avoid results having to do with Apple products.

Iterend shows a promising start and may continue to grow in the future. At the time, those interested in using the blog search engine can simply go on their site and get an invite by inputting their email address.

With the introduction of the upgraded Internet Explorer 8 released, Google has launched Chrome, its web browser that is said to change the way in which users browse the web.  Google wishes to enhance the web browsing process, by making it faster and more secure.  Chrome also includes a new engine for loading interactive JavaScript code (known as V8), that is designed to run yet to be invented Web applications. In addition to these features, Chrome also allows for tabbed pages, and more distinctly, allows for an ‘incognito’ tab, which does not log activity on that tab to appear in the computer’s log.

Google has already had some successes with Web browsers. It’s partnership with Mozilla’s Firefox, for example, has made it easier to get to Google with its built in search engine function. Gmail is accessible from a simple click through Firefox’s button functions. Google and Firefox will continue to work together where the collaboration makes sense. And while Internet Explorer holds the majority of users, Google plans on using its new web browser as another option to users. In fact, Google plans to make Chrome open-sourced. How will the search engine giant change web browsing?

This week, Inc. 5000 magazine published a list of the 5000 most successful businesses in terms of growth. Marcel Media is proud to announce its ranking of 817 out of 5000 of the fastest growing companies in the nation.  The rankings are based on the amount of revenue growth of an independently owned company from 2004 through 2007. Within these three years, Marcel Media’s growth has reached 434 percent.

“Marcel Media is honored that our customers and dedicated management team have made it possible for us to be named to the Inc 5000 list,” said Kelly Cutler, Marcel Media Co-Founder and CEO.

Marcel Media also ranks 70 for the Top 100 Advertising & Marketing Companies.  Not only has Marcel Media ranked high nationally, but its honors are prominent in the Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin regions by ranking number 39 for Top 100 Businesses in Chicago-Naperville-Joliet, IL-IN-WI.

Since its start in 2003, Marcel Media has brought many successes to clients in an array of industries.

“For over five years, our team has established a proven track record of helping our clients increase website visibility, traffic, and customer acquisition,” added Ben Swartz, Marcel Media Co-Founder and President.

Success appears to be at the horizon for the Inc. 5000 company, which hopes to see continual growth in the upcoming months and years.

Online advertisement has changed drastically throughout the years. Online ads are becoming more and more personal, so much that things like customized ads have become largely popular among businesses. Internet provider, AT&T is considering observing the online behaviors and activities of its users to help understand their reactions to ads. This can help businesses track what users do when they go online, and can capitalize by advertising on websites users frequently visit. Although AT&T has not created the software or tools that would enable them to monitor its customers’ activities, they report that they have their customers’ best interest in mind.

While this can be beneficial to businesses and marketers, users may be turned off to AT&T’s services, as they can feel like their privacy is being compromised. AT&T, however, is aware of this issue and reports that having one’s Internet activity monitored would be completely optional.

Advertisers have taken notice of the ever-increasing popularity of blogs.  As a result, the search engine company specializing in blogs, Technorati, has launched Technorati Media. Technorati Media will create ad networks for blogs. Technorati prides itself in being a search engine that gathers and categorizes different blogs.

What will set Technorati apart, reports state, is that Technorati will cater to all blogs, not just those with high traffice. Nevertheless, Technorati Media already has a network of advertisers, which includes: Honda, T-Mobile, Sony,Visa, Universal Pictures and Best Buy (just to name a few).  As a search engine, Technorati is seen as competition to larger companies like Google and Yahoo! Its new addition, Technorati Media, may just give the company the edge it needs to make its presence known.

Wikipedia has quickly become a go-to resource for users looking for quick bits of information. More importantly, Wikipedia is innovative in its emphasis on user participation. With Wikipedia, registered users can add and edit different Wikipedia pages. The next step for Wikipedia is conquering search. Wikia Search will begin letting anyone participate in building its index by adding, deleting and rating Web pages.

What sets Wikia Search apart from big names like Google and Yahoo! is its reliance on its audience and users to maintain interaction and keep content fresh. Although Wikipedia requires users to register in order to create and edit pages, this will not be the case for Wikia Search. Anyone will have the ability to edit information including ranking the web pages, even editing headlines and preview texts of pages and articles shown in search results. Also unlike Wikipedia, (which has moderators approve of edits and page creations), Wikia Search will have automatic updates. However, Wikia Search will always be on the lookout for possible spammers, deleting content and banning users who spam the search engine. Wikia Search also plans on evolving to include blended search, allowing for: images, videos, news articles and all of the other search results offered by larger search engines.

Wiki Search has the potential to attract many users, and Google may see some competition in the future.

Microsoft announced its partnership with Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP), as Microsoft struggles with gaining more traffic to Live Search. Microsoft will have many advantages as a result of the partnership. Beginning in January, HP computers shipped to the United States and Canada will see a lot more of Microsoft already installed onto them. These computers will have Internet Explorer and a Live Search toolbar as their default web browser. This deal will bring forth many users for Microsoft, as HP holds the title of the world’s largest PC maker. Not only has Microsoft secured this deal with HP, but they have also made a similar negotiation with Lenovo.

Nevertheless, search engine leader, Google also has a deal with Dell, which means that all Dell computers are shipped with Google toolbars already installed. It is only a matter of time before one can see the results of these partnerships.