Google Analytics Motion Charts give analysts the ability to give data "point pattern analysis," according to Jessica Hullman. The visualization tool offers a wealth of insight at one glance, but Hullman has noticed the Google's feature hasn't gained much traction. She attempts to analyze why, suggesting that many marketers' and SEO professionals' relative lack of experience graphing data could contribute to the problem. Did Google goof, Hullman asks. "Despite the focus on the graphs themselves, thinking about the audience is a huge part of the successful application of a visualization tool," she writes. "A user's 'graph sense' is …

Establish a plan, create a tactical mix of social media efforts, and put together metrics to measure goals. Sounds simple, but planning a SEO and social media roadmap has never been more critical, especially since marketing budgets remain tight and gaining and maintaining customer confidence is critical to success. Lee Odden runs through steps to create a roadmap and provides additional insight by outlining an example. Pointing to the site The Student LoanDown, a blog about student loans and college financing from Wells Fargo, he identifies 29 keywords -- yet the site doesn't rank in Google's first page …

A new toolbar recently launched by social news site Digg has sent bloggers into a tizzy. Some suggest it stands between Internet content and Google's search indexing algorithm, according to Mark Mullen. In response, Digg said Wednesday it would work closely with SEO experts to ensure search engines could index the code. Mullen suggests the new toolbar brings up host of other issues, too, from "Digg drinking all the [link] juice," to taking up prime "onscreen real estate." But it also lets sites weave in ads and other features to "improve the browsing experience." Digg might have settled …

Live Search Lead Program Manager Monica Buggia, and former Googler Vanessa Fox, gave a presentation on identifying a Web site's SEO setbacks in Los Angeles Tuesday night. Reporter Virginia Nussey writes that Fox compared a Web site's rankings to the tip of an iceberg -- merely the surface appearance of a larger hidden structure. Focusing on one piece of the SEO and Web development relationship, Buggia and Fox outlined steps to diagnose ranking and indexing problems. A flow chart to locate a clog in the pipeline demonstrated how to identify traffic drops, as well as crawling, indexing and ranking …

Todd Mintz believes that Google selectively ignores description tags, which means the giant giant algorithmically decides whether a meta-description tag "sucks or not based upon how well the user query maps to the tag." Mintz suggests that "If it sucks," Google shows a relevant text snippet. If it's good, the search engine displays the tag verbatim. This would make the results from search engine queries much clearer and more precise for searchers, Mintz writes. It would also solve problems of having to write meta-description tags that map to all possible user intents, which Mintz suggests is nearly impossible to …

JumpTap launched tapMatch, a mobile pay-per-click (PPC) campaign marketplace. Greg Sterling writes that it accommodates both display and text advertising, including search and contextual ads across major carriers. The company claims marketers can target consumers by content, keywords, demographics, handset type, carrier, location and publishers. In the video accompanying Sterling's post, Lara Mehanna shows how to set up a campaign in tapMatch in five minutes. Marketers designate target information in ad bundles, which hold the marketing message. And within those ad bundles, marketers can set up as many as 15,000 keywords.

PandaLabs is reporting a black-hat SEO attack using the Ford Motor Co.'s name as bait to distribute malware on the Internet. The security firm has discovered 1.2 million results in searches related to the well-known car manufacturer that point to these malicious pages. Malware is distributed when people searching for information about Ford click on one of the malicious search results. The link directs them to the Web page that suggests they watch a video. If users try to watch the video, they will be prompted to download another program that has fake antivirus software. PandaLabs has detected …

Daniel Scocco provides tips for using RankSense, a SEO software package offering 12 integrated tools such as On-Page Analysis, Sitemap Builder, Link Structure Analysis, and Link Research. The software comes with a collection of tutorials. There are four main modules -- Search Engine Friendliness, Market Research, On-Page Optimization, and Off-Page Optimization -- and two secondary sections -- Scheduled Tasks, and Analytics. Installation is quick and easy. Scocco writes that one drawback is the software only works in Windows. Sorry, Apple users.

Malin Kennedy explains how marketers can increase the likelihood ads will appear in premium positions for any specific age group or gender through an ad targeting tool from Yahoo. Each time a user who matches preset specs performs a search on one of the preset keywords, the ads will have a higher tendency to serve-up at the top of the page. It's all about geographic targeting. Yahoo lets marketers take advantage of knowledge gained about the company's audience, and then focus spending on specific age range and gender segments, according to Kennedy. The tool is available for both Sponsored …

Search advertising budgets slid sequentially by 3.3% in the first quarter 2009, but return on investments improved by 10%. The numbers reveal advertisers are reducing the amount they spend to maintain a higher return, according to an Efficient Frontier report. The report highlights several trends as marketers adapt to recession trends. For starters, more consumers continue to a shift toward comparison shopping. And, impression volume rose across all search engines, especially in financial, retail and travel as consumers continue to look for ways to save money on good deals.