Jonathan Allen tells us marketers should keep an eye on Facebook data and focus on Bing local results. He acknowledges attempts made by Google to personalize search results by bringing in signals from social network, but for the most part those attempts met with failure. Allen explains how Facebook's open graph data will likely have its biggest impact on Bing local results.

Alyssa Engleson tells us all the privacy loopholes in the latest version of Facebook Groups. She points out that Facebook decided to forgo the invitation process and a check box to block friends from adding others to random Groups. To top it off, she explains that any Group member can view a chat history. Engleson steps through the process of adding groups to provides insights that will help members protect their privacy.

Ruud Hein explains how to calculate URL depth using Microsoft Excel. He believes simple and clean URLs work better to optimize a Web page and site. The example automates the three-step process. So, Hein demonstrates how many levels deep URLs go, even if those levels are URL parameters.

Rand Fishkin released Linkscape index stats, but makes an apology for releasing the numbers late primarily due to hardware failures at Amazon's EC2 where SEOmoz runs processing on a large link graph to produce the metrics and views for the API. Fishkin provides graphs identifying a few trends during the past few months in the Web's adoption and use of certain protocols.

Flower delivery service Interflora is suing retail chain Marks & Spencer in Europe for the placement of Marks & Spencer's floral paid search ads next to Interflora's link. So, when consumers search for "Interflora" they see the Marks & Spencer ads running alongside. Most in the ad biz will recognize this as a fairly standard Google Adwords practice. Interflora insists buying search keyword terms using competitors' brand names is a trademark violation.

Some might ask: Image ads, why bother? Jessica explores the differences in ad groups targeting image ad delivery only vs. similar ad groups targeting text ad delivery. For starters, Jessica sees a trend toward better cost-per-lead performance for image ad groups than their corresponding text ad groups. She provides other reasons, too, such as lower costs, along with screen shots to emphasize her points.

Sherice Jacob explains how five unique calls to action could prompt consumers to click twice. She provides an example for one site that required an action to perform after reading. The Activate Your Free Trial requirement includes a form field for credit card details.

Google is setting up a system to measure daily inflation. The Google Price Index could one day provide an alternative to official statistics, according to Robin Harding. The work done by Google Chief Economist Hal Varian highlights how economic data can be gathered rapidly using online sources. Harding explains by providing an example: Searches for "unemployment insurance" become a tool to predict actual claims for unemployment insurance or the unemployment rate.

Microsoft has partnered with China's largest online retailer, Taobao.com, to power Etao, a shopping search engine that will display results on a range of categories. The site, powered by Bing, is owned by Alibaba Group, co-owners of Yahoo China. Chinese advertisers can place ads through Bing and reach English-speaking countries through a dictionary feature that provides translations.

Those looking to improve rankings in Google News might want to bookmark Andrew Shotland's latest advice. His Google News SEO tips includes submitting news articles as soon as possible and making news videos embeddable. The lengthy post offers up 21 tips. For example, although there's no penalty until something is perceived as spam, Google wants only the most recently added URLs in News Sitemap as it directs Googlebot to breaking information. So don't include older URLs.