Here are the search engine stories we have found interesting this week:

• Ballmer Critical Of Google’s China Decision

  Ballmer suggested that Google’s decision to no longer filter out internet searches objectionable to the Chinese government was an irrational business decision. (SE Land Jan 22 2010)

• Google Founders To Sell 10 Million Shares Over Five Years

  Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin each intend to sell approximately 5 million shares (SE Land Jan 22 2010)

• Google Still the Top Search Property Worldwide in 2009

  Interestingly, while Google retains its lead among the search properties worldwide, Microsoft’s search market share seemed to be growing by leaps and bounds. (SE Journal Jan 22 2010)

• Google Adds More Answers & Info To Search Results

  Adding to last year’s announcement of rich snippets for reviews and people, Google has created one for events, too. (SE Land Jan 22 2010)

• Google SEO resources for beginners

  Google Webmaster Central on search engine optimization (Jan 21 2010)

• Search Engines Bringing Back Variables In URLs – At Your Expense

  Now search engines are saying variables in URLs are good, as long as you use the canonical meta tag. (Online Marketing Blog Jan 21 2010)

• New Data on Twitter Usage Can Strengthen Your Twitter Outreach

  The average Twitter user is now following around 170 people and is being followed by an average of 300 other people. (Jennifer Laycock Jan 21 2010)

• New York Times to erect pay-wall by 2011

  Will it take a year to build? (techradar Jan 2010)

• SEOmoz Launches Open Site Explorer, A Competitor (Replacement?) To Yahoo Site Explorer

  Open Site Explorer provides a number of data points pulled from SEOmoz’s Linkscape tool and its index of the web. (SE Land jan 20 2010)

• Microsoft And Apple Discuss Making Bing Default Engine On The iPhone

  Becoming the default search provider on 70 million (roughly) iPhone OS devices would be an enormous boost for Bing. (SE Land Jan 20 2010)

• Microsoft To Purge Search Data on Bing After 6 Months

  Microsoft’s Bing blog announced they will reduce the time frame they store search data, from 18 months to only 6 months. (SEO Roundtable Jan 20 2010)

• Helping computers understand language

  Google Blog: Enabling computers to understand language remains one of the hardest problems in artificial intelligence. (Jan 19 2010)

• Google Now Shows Synonyms Bold

  Google considers the word “photos” to be synonymous to “pictures” and bolds it. (Blogoscoped Jan 20 2010)

• Bing Updates Autosuggest With News & Trending Queries

  Bing’s autosuggest feature now provides more current suggestions as you type a query. (SE Land Jan 19 2010)

• 44% of Google News Visitors Don’t Click Through

  It seems that many online news consumers are more like grazers. (Marketing Pilgrim Jan 19 2010)

• 11 Tools For Domain Name Research and Registration

  I’ve used each of the following domain tools at one point or another, and they each have a different approach. (Will Reinhardt Jan 19 2010)

• hakia Launches NoBrandSearch.com, a Blind Test of Search Engines

  Each time you search, two sets of results are provided. They’re chosen from four search engines: Google, Yahoo!, Bing and hakia. (SE Watch Jan 18 2010)

• Marketing in the Age of Google: Vanessa Fox Interview

  Vanessa has a new book coming out called Marketing in the Age of Google, which I’ve had the opportunity to preview (Online Marketing Blog Jn 18 2010)

• Kngine Launches Web 3.0 Search Engine

  Multiple meaning word perception, question answering technology, structured information as well as new user experience model (AltSeachEngines Jan 24 2010)

• Kartoo gone?

  Kartoo, one of the first of the visual search engines, with it’s particular mapping technique would appear to have died. (Phil Bradley Jan 23 2010)

• Rummage Through 450,000+ Comic Book Covers

  A huge collection of comic book covers (over 450,000+), more resources, and fun tools for playing with them. (ReseachBuzz Jan 20 2010)

• Sweet Search – new search engine

  Phil Bradley: “To be honest, I think I’d be more inclined to produce more, smaller search engines based on Google’s custom search engines. ” (Jan 19 2010)

• Local.com Starts Up Events Site

  It gives you a list of what’s happening in your area, including music, festivals, conferences, sports, family-friendly events, etc. (ResearchBuzz Jan 18 2010)

• Insta.Found – insta flop more like

  Phil Bradley is not impressed (Jan 18 2010)

• 20 Real-World Uses for Google Wave

  Share your photos, files, projects, draft documents, plan trips etc. (MacLife Jan 13 2010, via Beyond Search)

• Bing’s Stefan Weitz: Rethinking The Search Experience

  And part of the problem comes with a decidedly human factor that doesn’t play well with artificial intelligence—language. (SE Land Jan 22 2010)

The video of the week

Listen to Matt Cutts on the stage of the Google index. He gives a good summary of what Google has been up to in 2009.