If you’re searching Google from your mobile phone, you now have access to their mobile-optimized search results in 60 countries and 38 languages.  It began as a test late last year, but has now been officially rolled out across the board.  Happy searching!

Wow! Everything has been so busy lately.  Here’s a roundup of what’s going in in international SEO, search, and social media.

• China has blocked YouTube, Twitter, Bing, Flickr, and a host of other social and email sites (especially those from Microsoft).  The block occurred in the countown to the Tiannamen Square anniversary, but is likely to continue.  Some users in China were reporting successful access of services through third party apps.  Many have noted that is is the first widespread blocking of social media.  Google.com and Facebook have not yet been affected.

China also announced that computer makers will be required to install filtering software, known as “Green Dam,” on all Windows computers sold from July 1 (there are no Linux or Apple OSX versions).  This will allow the “government to regulary update computers with an ever-changine list of banned websites.”  Many industry experts and civil rights waters are very concerned by these new directives, issued suddenly by the Ministry of Information and Technology.  The software maker insists that users will be able to turn off the filters, and that the software is merely a program designed to neutralize others that are built to override the Great Firewall.

• Bing has attracted a lot of attention lately, but it’ll be a while yet before we know exactly how searchers feel about its technology and results.  In the meantime, Bing Canada has launched officially.  Andrew Goldmann at Traffick played around with it and noticed a few issues.  In the US, others have noticed unusual related search suggestions or contextual ads.  User Centric is already conducting eyetracking tests to determine how users might behave differently on Bing and Google.  Interesting that the categories displayed on the left got much more attention than the flyouts on the right.

• Facebook in launching vanity URLs this weekend.  Go here to claim yours as soon as it opens at 12:01 am EST on Saturday, June 13.  With a custom URL you’ll have an easy way to direct people to your profile or fan page.  Usernames are currently for Romanized text only, but they do say they are looking into supporting other input texts in the future.

• A family in the US was shocked to discover their picture being used on a supermarket advertisement in the Czech Republic.  The family only found out about it when a friend travelling in the Czech Republic saw the advert and notified them about it.  The store owner says he found the picture online.  He’s agreed to take it down and would offer the family a bottle of wine - if they lived locally, that is.

• StumbleUpon has launched a new URL shortening service: Su.pr.  The service will also allow syndication with Facebook and Twitter to post your interesting content.  Su.pr will also “provide you with tools to identify the best times to post, schedule future posts and see real-time results on clicks, tweets and traffic associated with your posts.”

• Hitwise Canada is releasing stats on search behavior up there.  The top Canadian searches include “Facebook,” “YouTube,” and “games.”  Hitwise has also examined the number of keywords in search queries, as well as where Canadians spend their time on line.  Interesting reads!

That’s it for this news roundup!  As usual, there will always be more to come!

Reminder: Don’t forget to sign up for the International SEO Webinar on Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 11:45am CST.  Sign up here and download our previous webinars too!

Looking for a webinar on international SEO?  Well, look no further!  I’ll be doing on on Wednesday, June 17, at 11:45am CST.   Sign up for the webinar today! I’ll be going over what international optimization means for you website, as well as discussing some of the latest updates / trends in the industry.  International SEO is always a hot topic, so you’re not going to want to miss this!

There’s a new search engine out today. Instead of adding it to your bookmarked list of search engines, you can simply replace one of them: Live is now Bing. Microsoft is still trying to gain more of the search market, and has opted to rebrand its search engine as Bing.

As of today (June 1) you can access Bing through its homepage, and Live.com is redirecting (by June 3 it will no longer be in “preview” mode and any traffic still going through Live will be redirected).  Searches done on the MSN homepage (where it still says Live search next to the box), appear on Bing.com.

Bing is also launching internationally.  The UK Bing is going into beta this week and is accessible to users outside of the US (the homepage picture is different).  It will officially launch in the coming weeks.  Bing has a list of supported countries and you can change your display language in search options.  I typed in ‘bing.de’ and was redirected to the UK beta in German.  Hopefully this is a sign that like the UK, there will be more customization of the features to each country.

Naturally, there’s a lot of speculation as to how successful Microsoft’s new search endeavour will be.  Danny Sullivan at SearchEngineLand has written some good articles on Bing’s features and Bing’s position in search.  Already, people are looking for tips and tricks to using the new search engine.

Microsoft has a lot of ground to make up in search.  Only one of their problems was the confusion about what their search brand was.  With a name like Bing, Microsoft is clearly hoping that it will turn into a verb and reflect a new way of searching.  Only time and millions of more searches will tell if the third time is the charm for Microsoft.