You’ve probably heard something about PRISM – a secret U.S. government program to give the National Security Agency direct access to Google servers. Google’s CEO Larry Page denied speculations that Google joined this program. “First, we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government—or any other government—direct access to our servers”, – he said in the Official Google Blog.

A new video by Matt Cutts tells how using rel=”author” structured data can help Google’s Web spam team improve search quality. He explains that moving from the anonymous Web to a Web with identity helps Google understand the authority of content writers and trust the person writing that content.

Google has created the Structured Data Markup Helper. This tool helps webmasters markup their webpages with schema structured data. You start by submitting a web page (URL or HTML source) and defining the key properties of the relevant data type. When you’re done, the Structured Data Markup Helper generates sample HTML code with microdata markup included. This code can be downloaded and used as a guide as you implement structured data on your website.

Yahoo! has officially announced that their new modern design for web search in the U.S. is now live. A new navigation bar at the top of the page has been introduced. It helps you easily browse other Yahoo! sites. Organic search results are now placed higher on the page and some under-the-hood performance improvements were made.

Google has announced the official beta for Image Extensions in AdWords. It allows AdWords advertisers to display relevant images with text ads.

Pinterest added a new useful feature – now you can filter your search results to just your own Pins. Pinterest also promises to enable this search feature on mobile soon.

The WebCEO team has included new updates in their all in all platform, offering enhanced features and tools for webmasters.