Maybe this is why Google's been publicly trashing Bing.

Microsoft's underdog search engine saw a jump in market share over the last month, increasing its U.S. market share 6 percent, according to an Experian Hitwise report today.

Google's U.S. market share fell 2 percent over the same period. No doubt it's because Bing was siphoning off searches for terms like torsorapy and mbzrxpgjys.

Experian reported that Microsoft-powered search engines - Bing and Yahoo combined - had a higher "success rate" in January than Google by a significant margin. It said that 81 percent of searches at Bing and Yahoo resulted in a visit to a Web site, versus a 65 percent success rate with Google searches during the same period.

But could searches also be considered a success if people found what they were looking for without clicking through and beyond the search results? For instance, searchers may have been asking Google to help spell a word or find a phone number that's displayed without cicking through.

Experian also listed the retail sites that drew the most paid clicks in January. Naturally the list was topped by Amazon.com, which drew 11.25 percent of paid click traffic in January followed by Target, JCPenney, Sears and Lowes.

Noted blogger and amateur hacker Long Zheng is profiled in a nice story by Ina Fried, who asks why Microsoft hasn't hired the Australian whiz.

Zheng built an instant Bing search app last year, well before Google's instant search.

"I thought that maybe Bing would at least see it was interesting and try to do something with it," Zheng told Fried.

Google today turned on a new feature called "Google Instant" that guesses what you're searching for as soon as you start typing in its main search page.

The feature, which will roll out over several days for people using the latest browsers, fills in the search box with shaded words as you start typing - attempting to complete your thoughts before you type them.

During a press event in San Francisco that was also broadcast on YouTube, Google Vice President Marissa Mayer called it "search at the speed of thought" and a "quantum leap forward" in search.

Google says the typical searcher takes more than 9 seconds to enter a term, and "many" searches took 30 to 90 seconds to type. It believes Google Instant will save two to five seconds per search. From the release:

Our key technical insight was that people type slowly, but read quickly, typically taking 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds (a tenth of the time!) to glance at another part of the page. This means that you can scan a results page while you type.

We'll see how that works for the people who take 90 seconds to type a search query.

But Google Instant will still change the way a lot of people use Google and could shake up the search marketing industry.

Some users may find it annoying or creepy and turn off the feature, although most probably won't bother to change the default setting.

Search marketers are going to have to rethink their complicated strategies to push their sites higher into Google's results. The golden ring will now be getting a company to automatically appear as people start typing.

A wonderful thing about Google's egalitarian search algorithms is the way they attempt to level the playing field and expose people to a breadth of information on the Web. I wonder if the serendipity and discovery that comes with searching will be sacrificed a bit for convenience and speed.

It's like over-engineering a library. The most efficient operation would be to have a librarian standing by the door, to hand you a book as you step inside, thinking that's what you'll like. Why bother to look further?

Google's pitch is that Instant speeds up your searches and saves people time. Google's already pretty fast, but it's probably getting tired of Microsoft saying that Bing's more efficient.

What is faster is the rate of innovation that's happening in the search business, now that Bing's getting some scale.

Google's latest upgrade comes shortly after Microsoft's search partnership with Yahoo took effect. Together they gave Bing a big jump in market share - 24.56 percent in the last full week of August, according to an Experian Hitwise report yesterday.

Experian's report said people were already using shorter queries on search engines. Longer queries, averaging five to eight words long, decreased 2 percent from July to August, and two-word queries accounted for 23.71 percent of searches. Google handled 71.59 percent of the searches during the full month.

Google's introductory video:

Grand wizards of the search marketing world were sharing secrets today at a seminar hosted by SEOmoz, the Seattle search marketing software provider.

Here are a few search marketing (and Twitter) tips and tricks from the sessions I attended at the Seattle Westin today.

A Redmond search marketing firm that promised top results to small businesses is toning it down and paying for refunds under a settlement with the state.

The AG's office has received about 160 complaints about Visible.net, which also does business as Captures.com and WebMarketingSource.com. In April a judge ruled that the company violated the state's telemarketing law, leading to a settlement announced today.

The company agreed to pay $250,000, of which $50,000 will reimburse the state's costs and $200,000 will be refunded to customers. Eligible customers will be notified by mail and could receive payments in early 2012.

Visible sells Web site design, search optimization, online payment processing and other marketing services, charging setup fees of $3,750 to $9,750 and monthly fees of $40 to $100, according to the state's release.

It had promised too much. The settlement notes a sample pitch, deemed an unfair and deceptive trade practice:

"Just like my last client, you will be blown away when you can see what having a top search engine ranking can do for your business and pocketbook."

Under the settlement, the company agreed to not:

-- Misrepresent its ability to significantly increase traffic to customer Web sites by achieving top search-engine rankings.

-- Fail to provide refunds or honor cancellation requests.

-- Claim to provide around-the-clock customer support, technical advice or consultations, unless available. The attorney general's office believes the defendants misrepresented customer service representatives could be reached at any time.

-- Fail to register with the Department of Licensing as a commercial telephone solicitor.

-- Charge consumers' credit cards without authorization.

-- Misrepresent its affiliation with other marketers.

UPDATE: The company posted a statement on its blog, asserting that competitors were behind some of the "so called 'consumer complaints.'" It told customers that the settlement "will allow Visible to get back to doing what it does best: providing exceptional products and services to its customers."

This may not be enough to improve Microsoft morale after the Kin debacle and stealthy layoffs, but the company's search effort showed a healthy gain in the latest report from Experian Hitwise.

Bing share of U.S. searches grew 7 percent in June, to 9.85 percent, the firm reported. Google's share dropped slightly - 1 percent, from 72.17 percent in May to 71.65 percent in June. Yahoo was flat at 14.37 percent and Ask.com was up 2 percent, to 2.14 percent.

Bing showed particularly big growth rates in vertical categories such as health and travel, although it's still a tiny source of traffic compared with Google in these categories. In travel, for instance, upstream traffic from Bing grew 162 percent -- from 1.3 percent to 3.4 percent.

Google just announced that it completed a $700 million deal to buy ITA Software, a Cambridge, Mass.-based company that provides flight information used by airlines and travel companies.

The deal is expected to have repercussions across the online travel industry. Bellevue-based Expedia reportedly tried to thwart Google with a competing offer and may now bulk up through acquisitions to better compete with the search giant, according to travel biz site Tnooz.

I wonder if Microsoft will respond somehow. Bing now has better travel features since it incorporated Seattle startup Farecast's tools, but ITA gives Google much more to work with and a bigger role in the market.

Google is planning to use ITA technology "to pursue the creation of new flight search tools that will enable users to find better flight information more easily on the Internet."

"ITA's very talented team has created an impressive product to organize flight information," Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in the press release. "Their technology opens exciting possibilities for us to create new ways for users to more easily find flight information online, and we're looking forward to welcoming them to Google."

Perhaps Microsoft shouldn't have spun off Expedia after all.

Seattle online directory service WhitePages.com unveiled a big upgrade to its business search today, aiming to offer simplified search results for people looking for nearby businesses and stores.

The company's drawing on a database of 15 million business directory listings and 1 million store locations in the U.S. It's also adding social features for sharing business listings by email or text messages, and the ability to directly save them to Outlook.

It also begins the searches with a guess about the searcher's location based on IP address, so my search for "Starbucks stores" showed 118 nearby in the downtown Seattle area. A similar Google search returned the location of a Starbucks in North Bend.

A Starbucks store search at WhitePages.com:

A similar search at Google:

WhitePages may the easiest option for some business searches, if you're just looking for the phone number or address of a particular business, for instance. But it's a pretty dynamic space, with Google, Bing and others are putting more effort into local business services.

Even WhitePages' business search is evolving. When I did a search for "Seattle Times," the site and accompanying Bing map said the company's in the location of a defunct newspaper along Elliott Way. It actually provided 14 listings for the Times, none of which was shown at its actual location:

Here's this morning's demonstration of the new Bing social search feature that includes results from Facebook and Twitter to searches of trending topics.

Microsoft Senior Vice President Yusuf Mehdi is explaining the features, which go live today.

Microsoft's adding a new "social" search feature to Bing today that shows trending topics on Facebook and Twitter.

The beta feature was demonstrated by Senior Vice President Yusuf Mehdi at the SMX Advanced search conference this morning. It's supposed to appear on Bing later today (here's the Bing announcement and link to bing.com/social).

It's the first time the full "firehose" of Facebook updates has been incorporated into a search engine. Bing did the same thing with Twitter last October and is now blending both networks' update streams into its social feature. The sources appear in the left column of the page, which appears designed to add additional sources in the future.

UPDATE: The social feature still isn't live late this afternoon but a Bing manager said it's coming shortly. He said it's happening in concert with back-end upgrades.

Mehdi said Microsoft plans to continue its massive investment in Bing's technology and marketing to lure new users to the company's search service. Although it still trails Google by a mile, Mehdi said Bing's showing progress and getting new users.

"We've grown every month since we launched. That's truest proof case of whether its working or not," he said.

"Knock on wood, long ways to go, it's working."

To demonstrate how far Bing has to go, Mehdi showed a handwritten page of market research done by his elementary school-aged daughter, showing only four Bing users and a long list of her friends using the competition.

"She goes, 'Daddy, we have a lot of work to do.'".

Host Danny Sullivan pressed Mehdi for details on Microsoft's deal with Apple that put Bing onto the new iPhone. Mehdi said the discussion started when Microsoft developed a Bing iPhone app and was helped by Bing's visual interface that works well on the touch interface.

"They said our customers said they'd love to Bing and choice is good for consumers," Mehdi said, adding that "It was a very easy discussion."

Sullivan pressed Mehdi on whether Microsoft paid for Bing's placement on Apple's phone but Mehdi declined to say or provide details on the business arrangement.

Talking about Bing's office tower in Bellevue, Mehdi said they're interested in putting Bing's logo on the side of the building but "there's some issues with the city or the policy."

Mehdi hopes to revisit the sign issue but in the meantime an employee figured out how to have the building's interior lights spell out "Bing" at night.

"We find ways to overcome," he said.

It ended with Sullivan presenting Mehdi with a cake to celebrate Bing's one year birthday and the audience of search marketing experts singing "Happy Birthday."

"I don't think we deserve cake and candles - we have a lot of work to do definitely ... but it's been a great year," Mehdi said, thanking the industry for its support.

Google engineers who built the company's new bicycle route mapping service didn't need to look far for inspiration.

The team is based at the Fremont office right alongside the Burke Gilman Trail. This screenshot of the bike route feature shows the office at left:

Zillow better watch out: The latest thing to emerge from Google's barrage of launches this week duplicates one of the Seattle startup's most valuable features.

Google is now offering an instant mortgage quote service that instantly connects lenders to buyers, and provides useful tools for comparison shopping. It also instantly estimates house values (a Gestimate?) provided by IntelliReal.

The mortgage rate feature showcases new "comparison ads" that it's launching in a limited test, selling space in free tools that consumers may use before making big-ticket purchases.

UPDATE: Google Maps is also adding Zillowesque real estate info. From the announcement:

First of all, we've made it easier to find real estate listings. Now, you can simply select "Real Estate" from the 'More' button on the top right of any Google Map to discover listings. From there, it's a simple matter to refine your search using the left hand panel - price, bedrooms, bathrooms, and so on. Of course, you can still pan the map to search for the perfect neighborhood and it'll automatically update with more listings.

I wonder if comparison ads will muddle -- in consumers' minds -- the information found by impartial search algorithms and paid placement. It may be handy if you are rate shopping, but it's no longer the results of an objective search engine.

Sound like Google's becoming more of a decision engine. Maybe it's time for Microsoft to buy Zillow before it loses zest.

Among the dignitaries speaking at today's ceremonial opening of the new Google campus in Kirkland was the guy who first approved the company's engineering office in the Seattle area.

Alan Eustace, Google senior vice president of engineering and research, said it began five years ago when three smart and persuasive people applied at once to work at Google and they wanted to work in the area.

Get ready for a new kind of ad that may appear when you search with Google.

The company is inviting advertisers to help test new "product ads" that display photos and prices of products for sale, including specific offers based on your search. It's a new program that looks like a response to Microsoft and a challenge to Amazon.com.

These new ads could change the look of Google search results, if you're using the site to look for information about products. The testing is going to begin soon in just a few, unspecified areas of the U.S.

But the program is apparently designed not to change the consumer experience as much as give companies using Google's affiliate program more options to sell their wares.

It's probably been in the works for a while, but the timing is interesting, coming as Microsoft repositions its Web search service as a better tool for shopping. Microsoft's Bing search service includes a number of product shopping features for consumers and vendors, returning product images, prices and specific offers when you search for, say, an Apple iPod.

Google product ads may also increase tension with Amazon.com, by giving companies a new alternative to Amazon's affiliate product marketing program and a product search ad program the retailer started last year. (I wonder how commissions will be divvied up on Amazon product ads placed by Google?) It could also be a significant challenge to smaller, product-oriented ad networks such as Seattle's WidgetBucks.

Google Product Ads will appear as sponsored links, separate from the Google's AdWords text ads.

A company spokeswoman initially said the "experiment" began a few weeks ago, then clarified that it has not yet begun, and provided the following statement:

"At Google, we're constantly experimenting with new features, tools and visual representations to improve the user experience and usefulness of our ads. In accordance with that philosophy, we're planning a beta test to show richer product information in the ads for shopping-related queries. This test will only be visible to a small number of U.S. users."

Microsoft and Amazon declined to comment.

An invitation to the beta includes FAQs with this explanation of how product ads differ from Google's AdWords:

"Product ads represent individual offers with product information directly in the ad itself. Unlike keyword targeted text ads, product ads appear when the user's query matches information provided in your product feed. During the beta, product ads are shown independently from text ads."

Google is encouraging testers to be aggressive with the commissions they pay to sites that display their product ads. Its pricing advice:

You specify the commission rate for conversions that take place via clicks on Google product ads. Minimum pricing is your standard publisher rate, plus the network fee. To maximize your competitiveness among advertisers participating in product ads, we recommend a higher commission with the Google product ads relationship.

Google's affiliate program is based on the DoubleClick Performics Affiliate it acquired in March 2008.

Not sure how meaningful the week-by-week Bing reports are from comScore, but Microsoft's remodeled Web search engine continued to grow in its second week.

Microsoft's "average daily penetration among U.S. searchers" reached 16.7 percent in the week of June 8-12, up 3 points from the week prior to Bing's launch, comScore reported this morning.

Microsoft's overall share of U.S. grew to 12.1 percent during the week.

But the rate of growth seems to be slowing post-launch: The share grew 2.1 percent in the first week since Bing's launch, and 0.8 percent in the second week. I wonder if fear of Bing is still gripping Google ...

Here's Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt's take on Bing, from a Fox Business Network interview conducted at Google HQ:

"It's not the first entry for Microsoft. They do this about once a year. From Bing's perspective they have a bunch of new ideas and there are some things that are missing. We think search is about comprehensiveness, freshness, scale and size for what we do. It's difficult for them to copy that."

Nice timing -- just as comScore releases a note saying Bing had some early traction.

The Bing stuff begins at about 1:04, and they get to Yahoo (and MSFT+YHOO) around 2:40:

Rebranding and a $100 million marketing campaign are working for Microsoft's Web search service, according to an early report from comScore that said Bing is "off to a good start."

It said Microsoft's share of U.S. Web search traffic jumped from 9.1 percent to 11.1 percent in Bing's first week.

Overall Microsoft Web sites drew 15.5 percent of U.S. Web searchers between June 2 and 6, up from 13.8 percent May 26 to 30, the firm said.

"These initial data suggest that Microsoft Bing has generated early interest, resulting in a spike in search engagement and an immediate term improvement to Microsoft's position in the search market," comScore Senior VP Mike Hurt said in the release.

The big question is obviously whether Bing can keep growing after the initial buzz fades, and the marketing budget is spent.