Yahoo has launched a new service called Yahoo PlaceFinder, which offers a multi-language global geocoding of named places. It’s a replacement for the Yahoo Maps Geocoding API.

Yahoo PlaceFinder allows web developers to make their apps location-aware via the “geocoding”. As Yahoo report: “The PlaceFinder web service allows you to convert street addresses or cities or regions into geographic coordinates [i.e. latitude and longitude coordinates].”

The service also works the other way. Reverse geocoding allows you to convert geographic coordinates into street addresses or place names.

The march of geography-specific apps grows apace.

If you needed another reason to blog for your business, here’s one. You will have noticed that Google has rolled out its redesigned search results page. Like other search engines such as Yahoo, visitors now see a left-hand navigation panel on the hugely popular Google site.

While most of the features on this revamped page are not new, many are now far more prominent. Some of the options are fairly standard, such images, videos, maps, and news. But there is much greater emphasis now being placed on other types of results such as, blogs, updates and discussions.

Google Blog Search has been around for a while but now users will notice it more – and will be much more likely to use it for searching. Instead of having to go to the Google Blog search engine itself or the “click to show options” link from a Google SERP, Blogs is simply a visible option for any given query. That means if people want to see commentary for the subject they searched for, there’s a good chance they’ll go to this set of results. So it’s time all businesses where blogging, isn’t it?

The latest news from Yahoo is the launch of a pilot programme called “More Sponsors”, in which it will add links at the bottom of Yahoo search results for more Pay-Per-Click ads.

What this means in practice is that when a user clicks on one of the links it will bring up a page with nothing but sponsored search ads. The feature is supported by Yahoo’s Search Assist features, which is a search engine “suggestions” feature.

This is an example of how it could work: A consumer might type in “campervan holidays” and Yahoo! will then suggest holiday packages, trips or resorts.

The “More Sponsors” feature will appear on Yahoo Search to begin with, but Yahoo plans to roll it out across more of the Yahoo Network where ads appear. It is likely that the ads will include images or logos in the future, and that if the ads are ranked highly in standard sponsored results for a given search term then they will be shown in sponsored-only results for that same search term.
This is interesting news for a wide range of on-line businesses.

While Google still reigns, Yahoo and Microsoft have been waging a huge battle in the search engine industry.

Just last year Yahoo rejected Microsoft’s offer to buy the company and many people seemed to give up on the search engine. Then Carol Bartz took over at Yahoo and expectations changed again.

While some people believe it would be an impossible task to make much of a gain on Google, others are wondering if Bartz might now, in fact, do a deal with Microsoft. Or perhaps all the changes that she is initiating in the company, including a rebrand, will be enough to turn the fortunes of Yahoo around.

Then there are Microsoft’s own efforts. The company recently launched Bing and although it is still too early to tell, initial data reports have been promising. Nielsen Online found that on Bing’s first day it came close to surpassing Yahoo Search for the second spot.

It’s widely believed that Microsoft will need to continue to innovate the user experience if they want to grow Bing’s audience but things are looking positive for the search engine company just now.

And what about Google? The other search engines do have a long way to go to catch up with the leader but there are reports that Google insiders are a little unsettled by Bing.

Only time will tell – but it would seem that the Battle for Search Engine Supremacy is only now heating up.