People may or may not have mobbed stores this Black Friday - your humble author hid inside and didn't watch any live TV - but they definitely spent some time at their keyboards. Google has stated that searches for "Black Friday" increased by more than 20 percent on a year-over-year basis. That's actually a sort of low number, too, at least among the group of them that Google tossed out. A post on the Google Retail Advertising Blog also stated,

All sorts of corporations and individuals have agreed that the mobile market is key in China; many more people can afford Internet-enabled phones than PCs. Baidu may be onto something, then, as it intends to have an app loaded onto phones before they're made available for sale. If Baidu can get a solid mobile app in front of a lot of people right from the start, it'll decrease the odds of them ever turning to Google.

AOL is re-launching as a whole new entity. Last week, the company unveiled its new logo for its new brand identity post-Time Warner. According to the Wall Street Journal , AOL is reinventing more than just its logo, however, AOL will be focusing on producing content , and has even gone so far as developing algorithms to determine what kind of content to produce. Does this process sound familiar?

Keywords related to "black friday" increased by more than 20% on Google last week . The data was culled over a two-day period - Thanksgiving and Black Friday - and compared to the same two days last year. Two terms, "black friday sales" and "black friday ads," were up by over 50%. Searchers narrowed their queries by adding a brand name to the keyword phrase.

At SES Chicago 2009 on Wednesday, December 9, at 12:30 p.m., there will be a drawing to give away the "largest marketing library." Attendees of Search Engine Strategies Chicago can enter their business cards up until just before the drawing. The drawing will take place in the Exhibition Hall, and the lucky winner must be present to claim the prize. (If you are a twin or triplet, use the canonical tag to show that you are the original winner, not a duplicate.

Here's some more Black Friday-related search statistics to digest. The Google Retail Advertising Blog (Yup, there is such a blog on Google) is reporting that online shopping searches on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday were at its all time high this year. Searches for "Black Friday" increased by more than 20% year over year, while searches for "black Friday sales" and "black friday ads" also increased by more than 50% YOY. Likewise,

by Mike Krumboltz Chelsea Clinton recently announced her engagement to longtime boyfriend Marc Mezvinsky. The news inspired an avalanche of Web searches on Ms. Clinton, but those were small potatoes compared to the number of lookups on her betrothed. Almost immediately, lookups on " marc mezvinsky photos " and " marc mezvinsky job " surged into the thousands. Searchers quickly discovered that Mezvinsky is an investment banker at a Manhattan hedge fund,

Reports and screenshots have surfaced indicating possible further design changes to the Facebook home page. These changes would include an altered header with drop-down menus for things like chat, messages, and notifications ( Via SAI ). There would also be greater emphasis placed on the search box. It would be moved further to the left, and more into the center of the page. Such emphasis on search would make sense,

The branded ad network phenomenon has cooled a bit in the past year, but apparently some publishers still find value in the model. Spanish-language media firm Univision Interactive Media is the latest to extend its name to a network - in this case, one comprised of non-owned Spanish-language sites. "The new unit targets U.S. Hispanics and provides a far-reaching digital advertising and publisher network comprised of pre-screened,

We recently reported on the notion that Wikipedia losing editors could lead to a decline in accuracy. Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation , which runs Wikipedia, tells WebProNews growth in editing has slowed, but the number of editors is just flat, and not declining. The Wikimedia Foundation raised $3 million in just ten days right in the middle of the recession.