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You can't visit a webpage these days without it begging for a compliment: Like us! Share us! Follow us! Social media promotion is one big reason why--just look at The Washington Post , for example, which seems intent on replacing its brand name with the Facebook logo, and barely refrained from slapping a "Like" badge on everything from its user agreement policy to its copyright acknowledgements. But viral promotion isn't the only reason. Increasingly, social media is impacting search-engine rankings.

Google and Bing have come a long way since Mapquest.

Today, Microsoft launched Bing for the iPad, an app that integrates the company's search experience with Apple's tablet. In essence, it's no different than Google's iPad app: You'll find all the features you'd expect from Bing (search, maps, etc.) optimized for the device's touch-screen interface.

We branded it the Great Search Engine War of 2011 , when Google launched an all-out attack on Microsoft's Bing , accusing its arch-nemesis of copying search results. After several months, however, it's unclear what impact the war has had on Microsoft. Has Bing been planning a response?