The Official Google Mobile Blog announced that  phone numbers featured on some mobile ads are now clickable. This means that when you see a business phone number on a mobile ad  for a particular establishment, you can simply tap on the phone number and make the call.

To make this even more useful is the fact that mobile web search is location-enabled. So much so that the numbers provided are also based on the phone number listing of a particular establishment nearest to your current location.  That pretty much saves you the trouble of calling a phone number only to find out that the business establishment is miles away from you.

If you’re a mobile advertiser, here’s how you can include clickable phone number on your search engine ads:

1. Set up location extensions and add your business phone number. Customers will be able to click to call your business location nearest to them.

2. Check that you’ve chosen to show your ads on iPhones and other mobile devices with full Internet browsers in your campaign settings

After doing these two steps do a search for your business name and you’ll see that the phone numbers you’ve listed are now clickable on your mobile phone.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Google Adds Click-to-Call Phone Numbers

Here we go, latest search market statistics released by Nielsen indicates that Google again rules the search market in December. Google gets 67.3% of all the 9.9  billion searches made last December. That’s actually 6.7 billion shares conducted on Google’s search engine.

Following Google  far behind are of course Yahoo and Bing getting 14.4%  or more than 1.4 billion searches and 9.9% or 986 million searches, respectively. Other searches were made at Ask.com, My Web Search and Comcast.

Looking back at Google’s November search market share would show that December’s search number was a big leap from 65.4%.  Interestingly, both Yahoo and Bing suffered from a loss in searches from November to December. Obviously some, if not all of these searches went to Google. What’s even more interesting was Bing’s significant drop in search market share from November’s  10.7%.

Could this be a sign that the hype being generated by Bing’s marketing strategy is starting to wane? Or maybe Microsoft and Yahoo better start working together to improve their search market performance?

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Google Gets 67.3% of All Searches in December

Everyone’s Tweeting these days. Name a celeb and we bank they have a Twitter account. Last month, the NY Post reported that Kim Kardashian makes 10K for endorsed tweets. And a quick visit to Twitter’s search directory, WeFollow, this morning confirmed the number one Twitterer as Ashton Kutcher, with over four million followers. But if you’re a Twitter nerd (meaning: you “follow” but no one “follows” you back), listen up. According to Amit Singhal, a Google Fellow:

“One user following another in social media is analogous to one page linking to another on the Web. Both are a form of recommendation,” Singhal says. “As high-quality pages link to another page on the Web, the quality of the linked-to page goes up. Likewise, in social media, as established users follow another user, the quality of the followed user goes up as well.” Read the full story.

Thanks to Google’s ranking system with Twitter, there are strategic ways to turn yourself from Twitter nerd to pseduo-Twitter celeb.

You know when you search Google for something and lots of relevant links pop up? Well now Google is including Tweets in real-time searches [the project is led by our man Singhal]. This is good news for Twitterers with business goals and objectives in mind.

To rise in the ranks of Google with your tweets, all you have to do is get a few Twitter power players to “follow” you back and you rise in the ranks of Google automatically. It doesn’t matter if you have a gazillion followers. If just one of your followers is someone reputable like Ashton or Kim, you gain the sort of Twitter entitlement of royalty. You get?

So now it’s time for you to log onto Twitter and target a Twitterer with superhero powers and somehow get them to follow you. Let us know how you fare.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Google Rewards Twitter Celebs & Influencers

Google has just added a useful button to its  mobile homepage – tagged “near me now”, this feature lets you search by using your location as the query.  Currently available for iPhone and Android phone users in the U.S., “Near me now” utilizes GPS for determining your whereabouts and then searches for results near your location.

The new Google mobile homepage feature lets you easily search for popular categories of nearby places. Just by clicking or tapping on the “Near me now” link right on the Google mobile homepage, you will find categories of places. And if you want more you can just select the “browse more categories” link.

You can also explore the whereabouts of specific locations including reviews or rants of other people about a specific restaurants and their menus and services.

To use this feature, make sure that the location feature of your iPhone, Nexus One or other Android phones is activated. Then visit google.com your phone’s browser and you can easily spot the “Near me now” tab.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Google Adds “Near Me Now” to its Mobile Homepage