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More than 9.4bn search queries were made in the US during January, a leap of 28.5% on last year, according to Nielsen Online.

Just one day after saying it would slash its 15,000-employee workforce by 10 percent, struggling Internet giant Yahoo announced Wednesday that its profit dropped by a whopping 64 percent during the third quarter.

Yahoo's string of product launches that compete with existing Google offerings continued into its second day, with the introduction of Yahoo Web Analytics. Yahoo is pitching its product as having the advantage of real-time reporting, while Google Analytics takes hours to report data.

Google is going after the media buyer crowd with its latest free offering, a bundle of tools designed to help advertisers find the best Web sites for delivering their messages to a highly targeted demographic. Google's Web analytics push undoubtedly is stirring up some anxiety in the industry, but the jury's still out as to how competitive its free services will be.

The time is ripe for companies to utilize online video in their search engine optimization and e-marketing efforts, says Peter Hamilton of ArteWorks SEO; however, they should limit the length of videos and strive for a high quality in production.

YouTube, which Google purchased in 2006 for $1.65 billion, on Thursday launched a new analytics service, YouTube Insight. The service includes free software that provides statistical breakdowns of who is watching a particular video, as well as when and where they're viewing the material.