German data protection officials warn Web companies in Germany not to use Google Analytics, or they'll risk getting fined. Country officials claim Google still fails to meet privacy guidelines, according to Danny Goodwin. German officials also broke off talks that began in November 2009 with Google. Goodwin cites numerous sources explaining the breakdown in privacy controls and why the German government crackdown.

Several bugs during the past several months have marketers ticked at Google Places. The problems range from lost reviews to 501 Errors. Now a new bug has been spotted that prevents Google users without a public nickname from leaving reviews. Several screen shots elaborate on the problems.

Tina Kelleher tells us about three advertising campaign management tools to use with Microsoft adCenter. While Kelleher only briefly describes the tools, clicking on the headline for each description provides a landing page that details the features.

Rick Egan queries colleagues to find out their predictions for the biggest developments and newest opportunities for organic search in 2011. The predictions range from how Bing will become a formidable competitor to Google, and why data will become more important to marketers.

Roger Barnette lays out some tips for those who want to run complementary search and display campaigns. He points to demand0side platforms (DSPs), which highlight the effectiveness of real-time bidding (RTB) in display. These companies provide one interface to manage connected search and display campaigns.

David Greenbaum offers answers for those wondering what ad text display URL to test. He outlines several possible approaches companies could take. Using the term "personalized gifts" as an example, he walks through five options, from dynamic keyword insertion to capitalization to search queries.

Jen offers an additional way to generate traffic and leads for those who have mastered optimizing search campaigns. She points to the large collection of Web sites known as the Google Display Network. Jen steps through the process of creating ads. She tells us how to choose the campaign, template, ad group, and adjust the layout.

Does the age of a Web site or links influence a site's ranking? Rand Fishkin set out to discover the truth. It's always good to keep content on Web sites fresh, but does the site have more clout the older it gets? "Almost certainly not," says Fishkin, and explains why.

SEO experts make plenty of optimization mistakes, but it's now time to make some New Year resolutions to stop. According to Simon Heseltine here's some of the most important mistakes to avoid: moving staging robots.txt to production sites, and removing duplicate meta tags.

A report from Econsultancy released Wednesday says the U.K. SEO market hit about $680 million, 16% up from the prior year. The report highlights key trends and the total amount of investments spent in SEO last year in the U.K.