One, if you’re not making Google the focus of your search engine optimization efforts, you’re making a mistake! According to Hitwise Google’s share of search now is at 69.17%. Whether this number is real or not, (some think it’s low!) it’s clear that that at least for the moment, the big G is really the only show we’d like to attend! Yahoo hovers just under 20%, while MSN has tanked to about 5%.

The other item is that Google apparently is toying with the idea of ranking your searches. This is part of a Google Labs experiment, and it’s really not clear just what their eventual aims may be, but the output does look very Digg-like! Take a look at the article on TechCrunch and see for yourself!

You may have neard this last week of two items that came across our screens regarding Google, Yahoo and Digg.

The first of these was the announcement by Yahoo that it is contracting with Google to serve up contextual advertising on their sites, and will share in that revenue. Yahoo feels it can raise some serious cash by allowing Google to place their advertising next to Yahoo search results. The prevailing sentiments are that Google is far better at targeting this kind of search anyway, and it will be a win-win for both sides, as well as for advertisers and consumers. The deal still has to pass muster with government anti-trust types, so it may well be several months before we see any of this.

Also, Digg has apparently entered into some sort of arrangement with Google as well, possibly even the sale of Digg to Google. No one’s saying anything officially yet, but Digg would fit in nicely at Google, especially as how Google is trying to make inroads into the social marketing scene. These developments both bear watching!