Yahoo announced the Yahoo Maps update. Among the improvements there are the increase of usability and better integration of local search.

In addition, new routes were added to the the maps, page prints were completely changed with the addition of interactive elements. For better visibility users can minimize the individual elements saving screen space.

According to the Wall Street Journal publication, the Time Warner Inc. company has finished all the internal preparations for the full AOL division into several parts. This process is seen by analysts as part of AOL's pre-sale preparations.

First of all, Time Warner has divided the ISP dial-up Internet connection and content and advertising department. For several months the company has been considering the possibility of partnerships with other market players, but hasn't found support because of the dubious prognosis of profitability.

The process of portal and advertising department separation from the Carrier services has been launched early this year. The end was scheduled for the end of the second quarter, but the company took an additional month to resolve all issues.

According to analysts, a clear separation of the two branches of the business will contribute to better AOL attractiveness, as it will underline the potential of company's advertising products, which currently are the foundation of all AOL business.

In the AOL's talks with other market players, Yahoo assessed AOL at $10 billion without the dial-up-parts. The market price for shares, however, is not more than $3 - $ 4 billion. Possible buyer of advertising and content part is not only Yahoo, but also Microsoft.

Among the buyers of the "Carrier" part of the company appears the U.S. market leader EarthLink Inc. Analysts estimate the cost of this part of AOL from $2 to $3 billion.There are about 8.7 million AOL subscribers.

About a month ago Google launched its own tool for planning advertising campaigns called Ad Planner. Despite this recent release, there is already a new version of the planner. New features have been added to the basis of user feedback:

* New statistics, including the time spent on forum, the average number of visits. These data are particularly useful for understanding the "points of entry" of the site.
* The function of adding a site to a media plan directly.
* Media plan indicator. Google Ad Planner notes sites which have been added to a media plan which prevents multiple submissions of the same site.

According to Search Engine Watch

Google launched a new service for advertisers - Google Insights for Search. This product provides advertisers with a flexible and highly-functional approach to defining the users' search behaviour on the basis of their location, giving representation on the amount of interest in the search for any product in different contexts.

Functionality of Insight is similar to the functionality of Google Trends.To view the amount of requests and search patterns you must enter a query into the search.

In addition to the amount, the service provides information on similar requests, the most popular queries, information on "categories" (search verticals), the geographical distribution over a period of time.

Microsoft announced the commencement of the action "back-to-school" on the Live Search portal. Promotion is valid in the United States and the customers will receive a discount when buying through the Live Search cashback site.

This action is designed to promote search engine and create traffic, attracting visitors by substantial (up to 36%) discount. Such actions have already been conducted in the past and, ostensibly, were quite effective.

According to Search Engine land