[Digital Jedi]

The Skype icon on vBulletin is actually hosted on Skype's website, and not yours. I believe you have the option of using this particular icon (which let's people know when your actively using Skype) or just a regular icon somewhere in vB's settings. But if this one isn't showing up sometimes, it's because of an issue on Skype's end.

I'm pretty sure there's a modification here that will do what you want with Google Search instead of the default one. But you'd have to search for it. I forget what it's called.