Frederick Felman tells us about a study using branded keywords with trademarks that triggered paid search ads for counterfeit goods. The study examined nearly 480,000 paid search ads triggering more than 280 keyword combinations. Aside from promoting suspicious goods and driving up costs for marketers bidding on branded keywords, the study uncovered questionable affiliate marketing practices, and in-bound links from sites Felman calls "cybersquatted splogs."

Rand Fishkin defines some popular metrics for link building and SEO analysis. Looking at what he calls "primary metrics," he defines each and tells us how to best use them. Link metrics come from a variety of sources and tools. He runs through a variety of tools such as mozRank. He also steps through the meaning of page authority and domain authority.

Tom Demers walks through a review of QueryMiner, a free negative paid search keyword tool. He explains the tool recommends negative keywords for campaigns. It pulls query reports, sorts by cost, and finds phrases and words with no or low-number conversions.

All marketers want to improve click-through rates (CTRs) and conversions. Melissa Mackey serves up general suggestions on how to do so -- like not bidding on high-volume key phrases only marginally related to the product or service, and more tightly targeting your audience by adding additional words. For example, rather than just "Nike shoe," add the word "running," so the phrase becomes "Nike running shoe."

Federal Judge Danny Chin Tuesday rejected a settlement deal Google stuck with authors and publishers over its Google Books archive project. He ruled the proposed agreement gave Google too much control over digitalized books. Laurie Segall provides an interesting recap of events that led to the final decision.

Google rolled out changes to its algorithm to decrease visibility and rankings of low quality sites. The update, called Panda, would limit or send to the back of the ranking lineup content poorly written and copied. It turns out user-generated content, as expected, gets high marks. Nadia King tells us why after studying UGC Archive sites, which include a basic navigational link structure.

Paul Anthony gives us a thorough look into Google Analytics. A wealth of data resides behind its reporting tools, and Anthony shows us how to dig it out. He steps through custom reports and segments, enhancements and scripts, filters, and more. For example, he tells us marketers can find "16 various Greasemonkey scripts, rolled into one plugin, including Social Metrics in Google Analytics, Google Docs integration and more."

It took nearly 10 years, but Google finally won a U.S. patent for its cycling logo known as "Google Doodles, which also covers a "periodically changing storyline." This means the doodles that change during a consecutive series of days might collectively create a story.

It's all in the data. Benjamin Estes believes competitive research can identify the potential strategies most likely to provide a Web site's unique value. Estes explains basics techniques, ways to organize and navigate the data, and methods to "tweak" the process for high traffic -- or only for long-tail terms.

Google has slowly been working out some of the bugs in its review system and reports for Google Places, according to Mike Blumenthal. He provides personal examples of how some of the problems are slowly being resolved.