The latest addition in Google Labs is the City Tours, which will give Google an entry in the tourism business. If you write a city name, Google will not only suggest sites to see but also give a map of the multi-day itinerary and propose you minute-by-minute travel schedule to follow.

You can now get details about your favorite author/journalist by searching their name on Google News There are three different methods of doing this:

• Type “author” followed by the name.

• Use advanced search option on Google News.

• You can also click the link associated with the name featured on the Google News search results.

Google after releasing the guide to getting listed in news, has now released a much needed Google News Publisher FAQ for those who want to get included in the Google News. The FAQ will provide answers to the commons questions of publishers. Few days ago, Google also came up with a guide to get listed on business listings.

Ask.com has come up with a positive news that would be great for the search world. It has recently unveiled the proprietary database of 300 million Q&A pairs for the users in the United Kingdom and United States.

Microsoft has recently introduced two new methods for making Bing image and video search safer for the users.

The very first step taken by Microsoft was to post all the adult related images and videos on its new domain explicit.bing.net. If the content is served from a different domain, it will help schools and homes in setting up their own filters to block specific images and videos from the domain.

A few weeks ago, Google had launched a preview of their new Webmaster Tools interface. In response, they received a lot of constructive feedback such as:

• Missing option to switch listing 25, 50, or 100 rows in features such as links to your site. Although, Google didn't add the option back but increased default to 100.

Yesterday, Google launched a new dashboard feature in the Google Local Business Center (LBC), which will provide businesses with new visibility into the techniques their local listings are found on Google. It will also enable them to make better decisions regarding customer's attraction.

The new feature will provide business owners with information about Google users interaction with their local listings. The addition will help LBC to draw local search data and assist owners optimize their listings and efforts to attract more customers.

After the surprise upgradation of Microsoft Live Search sports update pattern, Yahoo and Google has followed suit. Although both Yahoo and Google had sports scores showing in their search results, they still decided to make some additions.

While Live Search presents sports stats in a box, Yahoo! pulls out brief information on current status and other information on the team. Providing shortcuts to follow your favorite team, it unburdens you from following the lengthy process of shuffling through search results.

Finally the long suspense and wait is over. Microsoft is finally launching its search engine with a new name- Bing. Bing is much like Live Search, with new added features and technologies like Powerset. Boasting of being the new Decision engine rather than the usual search engine, it is playing upon three key areas. As per the website it focuses on “features like cashback, where we actually give you money back on great products, and Price Predictor, which actually tells you when to buy an airline ticket in order to help get you the best price — help you make smarter decisions, and put money back in your pocket”.

Breaking news: Ask.com is not going to renew its contract with Looksmart. This step can be a big blow to Looksmart's revenue. Ask.com listings had generated quite a revenue for Looksmart Publisher solutions, around 89% in Q1 2009 alone.

The partnership which began in 2005 will end in December 2009, with no news of further extension. There had been no announcement or news release from Ask.com in this regard.