"The past three seasons had not seen a front runner quite like Adam Lambert, who has dominated search competition week after week," write 360i's John Cole and Katie Perry of "American Idol" Season 8. Still, that's not the only marker for predicting him as winner, they write. By looking at Google search trends--volume, demographic and geographic--from March through May for the top three finalists of prior seasons, Cole and Perry spotted patterns in the data that also seem to gibe with the prediction.

Google has introduced a new beta Bid Simulator feature on selected AdWords accounts, according to Tom Simpson. Providing an overview, he writes that the simulator can calculate where AdWords would have placed an ad at a different maximum CPC, how many clicks the ad would have received at the positions and estimates the cost for the clicks. Simpson doesn't believe the bid simulator has been rolled out to all accounts, but provides a link to a reference guide for all those interested in reading more about the tool.

Stefan Pollard offers up some tips on getting e-mail opened and read by recipients. He offers up a host of guidance, but begins by suggesting that marketers think about ISPs as the first line of defense, followed by the recipient, who applies the "mind filter" when deciding whether to open or delete or report e-mails as spam. After reviewing about 352 emails messages received in different accounts, Pollard believes marketers still don't get it. Among other insights, he notes one in 10 named the brand in the subject line or had it visible in the top quarter …

Some people believe Web developers and SEO professionals don't speak the same language. Web developer thinks that they know how to build the site "good enough" without talking to an SEO expert, and the SEOs assume the developers don't have a clue about marketing online. Both are wrong, according to Mat Siltala. Siltala interviewed Web developer Brandon Buttars, who says the first thing SEO experts need to know is the difference between development and programming. For starters, development refers to the look and the feel of the site, whereas programming refers to code and mechanics. Most …

For those who didn't make it to SMX London, Kevin Gibbons provides a list of takeaways that even those who did make the trip might want to bookmark, on topics like search needs and trends, social media and linkbait, reputation managementkeyword research and Web analytics. A few insights include reviewing on-site SEO factors such as where keywords appear in title tags, URLs, H1's and body text; or using extra space in display URLs to contain targeted keywords for paid search campaigns. Gibbons says this helps to describe the landing page more clearly, so users know they're …

Microsoft has released a series of adCenter upgrades that aim to provide more control for the targeting, bidding, and distribution of advertising campaigns. Marketers can apply customer targeting and incremental bids for the entire campaign at the campaign level, and then refine targeting at the ad group level, for example. John summarizes the changes and tells us Microsoft also has improved keyword research tools, Account Management, adCenter Desktop, and Content Ads in the United States only. While Microsoft has worked to deliver new features, the updates simply bring adCenter up-to-date with Google AdWords, he writes.

Howie Jacobson provides food for thought to get online businesses moving faster. He begins by telling us the most interesting transformation that happened to the bicycle was the length of time it took for someone to put wheels on it. But once they were invented and put on the bike, wheels helped build velocity, which changed everything. Similar to putting wheels on a bicycle, when volume, velocity and quality of traffic increase on a Web site, lots of things change. Jacobson writes that "if you're getting 20 leads a week from AdWords, it's hard to imagine what 200 …

For those who didn't attend MediaPost's Search Insider Summit in Captiva, here are tidbits from the keynote by comScore's Gian Fulgoni. While the number of search queries continues to climb, paid clicks have risen at a much slower rate. (Google has said targeted search will drive down the number of queries, but expects the ability to target consumers with specific ads will drive up sales.) Aside from targeting, comScore data shows search queries are getting longer and as searchers become more experienced they use more words to gain information in fewer queries. Fulgoni writes that this apparently reduces …

Click fraud could be one reason businesses are shifting from paid search to search engine optimization (SEO), according to Aaron Wall. He shares his own experience. About a month ago he cleaned out some of the spammy sites from his content targeted ads to find abnormally high clickthrough rates, and PageRank 2 search engines he had never heard of before. Wall believes the rise in click fraud has led Google to change its policy on trademarks. The changes allow advertisers to use branded keyword from partners in ad copy in the United States. He makes the point that …

A federal court issued a restraining order against Yahoo, MSN, AllTheWeb and Altavista to prevent the search engines from allowing mortgage finance scammers to use a government URL in sponsored search results, according to Jason Lee Miller. Miller points to a link that redirects homeowners who seek information on President Obama's Making Home Affordable program. The sponsored links in search result pages appear to lead to the United States government's makinghomeafforable.gov, but really take redirect searchers to sites that offer paid loan modification services.