For startups that cannot afford to hire a paid-search expert, here are a few tips to get started. it turns out that with a little research and exploration, new business owners can get started with paid-search campaigns. These five basic tips should help put some fuel in the fire -- including finding two or three terms to make the phrase specific or unique, as well as setting goals, budget and conversion tracking.

Remember those ugly, bulky Christmas sweaters made popular in the 1970s and 1980s? Well they've made a comeback. Tim Parry shows us in a Google for Insights graph that "activity has really picked up since 2008, and interest this year seems even higher." He explains that just becauuse people are searching on the keyword term doesn't mean the price per click will rise. Parry provides insight into the company that won the paid-search battle on Google Shopping for the term "Christmas Sweater" one day in December, just for the fun of it.

Marketers spend lots of time with Twitter management tools rather than on the social site, which could have prompted Kristi Hines to write a detailed post that covers marketing on Twitter. Hines discusses topics such as the new activity stream, using RSS feeds, advanced Twitter searches, and how to search Twitter using google.com. And for those who want to know why Twitter followers follow, scroll down the list of recent posts to identify repeatedly used keywords. These are just a few of the tips that Hines highlights in the post. 

Did you know there are 100 million words translated every week in 200 different countries on Google translate? Google put together an infograph providing interesting search and download stats, such as the most and the least popular times to download apps from the marketplace -- Sunday night at 9, and Monday morning at 4, respectively. The marketplace hit 1 billion downloads in July 2010 and continually gained traction -- achieving 3 billion in March 2011, followed by 4.5 billion in May and 6 billion in July.  The infograph also lists the top 10 countries and categories. 

The latest version of the DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) API introduces Suggested Ad Unit Service, which allows marketers to approve ad units that have tags on their company's Web pages, but no corresponding ad units in DFP. Jeffrey Sham tells us how to search and approve the ads in the tool. He also provides a visual example through code to guide marketers through the process. 

Voice search clearly will become the preferred method to search content in the future. Last week Microsoft moved to make it happen on Xbox Live, introducing Bing on Xbox supported by voice search with help from Kinect technology.  And while Michelle Holtmann explains the nuances about using voice to search for content, consumers and the online advertising world have only witnessed the seed to this emerging technology to find content. 

Jeff Slipko defines the series of Google Panda algorithm updates designed to distinguish high-quality content on Web sites. Simply put, if affliiates don't add valuable content to their site beyond what suppliers provide, they could see a negative influence on page rankings. So Slipko tells marketers to pay close attention to a variety of attributes, such as thin content, high bounce rates and number of page views, and the number of times users block a Web site from serving up in query results. He offers valuable advice to affiliates to help them succeed. 

As Kansas City gets ready to gain faster Web surfing Internet speeds, complements of Google, Scott Canon tells us residents and business owners are not completely convinced it will work to their benefit. He writes that "the faster the Internet -- even measured in fragments of a second -- the more time people spend online," which means that Google could sell and serve up more ads. Apparently, the Google plan includes climbing power poles and snaking cable through the ground. Along with the skepticism, Canon provides some background on Google's road to Kansas City, chronicling the years since 1995, when Larry Page …

Match type bids in Google and Bing differ. So, Mickey Nguyen takes us through the differences in cascade bidding for Bing's Match types. Apparently, it's not uncommon for marketers to set broad-match bids, and fail to set an explicit bid for the phrase and exact, which causes all match types to have the same exact bid. Nguyen provides an example and tells us how to tweak the process in adCenter to make it work on Bing and Yahoo, similar to the way match types work in Google AdWords. 

A local recommondation search engine could become the answer to boredom for those who have a few days off during the holidays and want something different to do. Google engineers have launched the project Schemer, a search engine to help find local fun things to do. Partners in the endeavor include Zagat, Bravo, Food Network, and Southern Living, among others. The site aims to help people find new things to do through searches and recommondations.