The Opera State of the Mobile Report shows that Google claims 9% o all search page views on the mobile web, while Yahoo claims only 4.3%. Bing manages just 0.03%.

News of a milestone in the big wide world of “search”. The European Commission (and the US Department of Justice) has just given its approval for a proposed Microsoft and Yahoo search deal. The 10-year deal will see Yahoo’s search engine powered by Microsoft’s Bing.

What this means, of course, is that Microsoft and Yahoo will have a much greater chance of being able to compete against Google, which currently has a huge 90% share of the UK search market.

The new “alliance” agreement will see Yahoo taking 88% of revenue from all search ad sales during the first five years, while over the next five years Yahoo will get its hands 93% of revenue earned.

Many internet users and businesses now spend a lot of time on social media sites. They use such sites to connect to others – and also now to find information. This information seeking could be for news, business updates, product reviews etc.

So it’s no wonder that many of the big search engine players are now falling over themselves to add social media features to their interfaces. First, there’s the Google and Bing deals with Twitter and Facebook. Then there’s Yahoo’s new Twitter tab for new results.

Given that people are getting more information from social media sites, it’s obvious that the search engines want a piece of that, because their whole reason for existence is to help users find what they are looking for on the world wide web.

Really, according to the search engine experts, this is just another reason why web-based businesses should be thinking about social media with regards to search. If you are having discussions on social media sites, for example Twitter, about relevant topics, they could appear in search results not only in real-time search, but some years down the line on Google or Yahoo.

Of course, no one knows all this for sure but if you want to have a chance of ranking higher on the search engines in the future then there’s little to lose right now in spending a bit of time getting with the social media trend.

Google is king of the search engine market but there are other search engines – namely Yahoo and Bing – that businesses should be taking into consideration.

Bing keep their search engine cards close to their chest, so it’s not easy to know what they are looking for in terms of boosting a website’s ranking. However, Bing guru Rick DeJarnette has recently shared some “dos” for link-building for Bing.

Like Google, Bing places major emphasis on “good quality” links to determine its rankings. But this doesn’t happen overnight, warns Rick. Successful link building requires effort an a long-term commitment

Here’s what to do:

* Encourage relevant industry experts, reviewers, bloggers etc to find and use your site.

* Get involved in relevant chats on blogs or forums and refer back to your site’s content if applicable

* Publish to-the-point and informative press releases on-line

* Publish expert articles to on-line article directories

*  Create an email newsletter with notifications of new content

* Launch a blog or forum on your site

* Aim to become a trusted expert voice for your industry (while also promoting your site).

Much of this advice is the same as for Google, but it’s worth knowing that the other search engines rank quality and relevancy just as highly.