Consumers are more often turning to social media sites to research brands and and their reputation, according to Bruce Clay. It's a shift in social media, where consumers use Twitter, Facebook and Google+ as recommondation engines, rather then searching for research on google.com, bing.com, and yahoo.com. This trend contributes to changes, prompting "turmoil" among search experts attempting to optimize Web sites, according to Clay. After being asked by Abby Johnson to describe search events in 2011, he runs through SEO process changes made as a result of Google's Panda algorithm update. He points to social media as the "big, bright …

Kevin Lee analyzes the passing of Steve Jobs, the biography by Walter Isaacson, and a column from Malcolm Gladwell, and compares the events with search marketing. Lee says the list of things search marketers can "tweak" in a paid-search campaign seems almost endless, and provides a list of some good places to start. That list includes keywords and match types, devices and syndication, and ad copy.

Derek Edmond provides four recommondations for planning a 2012 SEO strategy. The suggestions come from the Webmarketing123 state of digital marketing report. The report takes an in-depth look at digital marketing and the impact of SEO, paid search and social by surveying more than 500 B2B and B2C marketing professionals -- with roughly a 66% to 34% split, respectively, about their budgets.

Samsung has decided to ban Google from adding its electronic payment option Wallet to the Galaxy Nexus, claiming that security concerns drove the decision and that they are open to reconsidering. Miranda Miller tells us that skeptics point to the ISIS consortium between Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile as a more likely reason for the last-minute request. 

Bill Slawski tells us about a Google patent granted this week that describes how the search engine might expand the amount of text shown to searchers right on the search page when they hover over a box to the right of that search result. The patent does not include the use of thumbnails or visual representations of Web pages. It does suggest concern about the length of the snippets shown -- which might not always be helpful to searchers, he writes. Slawski also describes other related patents, insight into snippets, and the cost and benefits of making changes.

About 117 million searches are made for the keyword "google" in Bing, according to a post on SEOmoz. A study compares Bing and Google click-through rates and ranking of words and searches. The study conducted on actual clients by Slingshot SEO shows CTR on Google as 18.2% for a No. 1 rank and 10.05% for a No. 2 rank. Results from the Bing study showed the CTR was 9.66% for a No. 1 rank and 5.51% for a No. 2 rank.

Google released a mathematics graphing function in Google search engines results that might put the Mountain View, Calif. company in direct competition with Wolfram Alpha. Typing in a function serves up an interactive graph on the top of the search results page. Adi Avidor tells us that users can zoom in and out, and pan across the plane to explore the function in more detail. 

Appearently, consumers like to shop for footware online. Thirty-seven percent of people who research footwear online rely only on online resources when shopping for footwear, according to a joint study from Google and Compete. Eva Barbier serves up several stats suggesting that online footwear purchases continue to rise, and offers strategies that retailers can use to target ads. For example, it appears that people who search the Web more often tend to make more in-store purchases. The study finds that 43% of searchers said they make a purchase in-store, while only 36% of non-searchers purchase in-store. Barbier's recommondation: Measure how search influenced in-store sales, and …

Felicia Coover calls Sitelink extensions one of the "easiest and best options" in Google AdWords to increase a Web site's click-through rate (CTR) because it helps searchers find the correct content in one click. Coover covers the basics, from defining Sitelinks to suggesting the best way to use them. She writes that regardless of the budget on the campaign, CTRs can rise "fairly high" -- and the cost per click for the Sitelink can come in below typical costs for the average campaign.

Alistair Dent serves up the recipe for bid management success. Making it work means marketers need conversion data, a database or spreadsheet and the ability to export data from AdWords, he explains. That recipe includes the formula to provide an optimum cost per click to pay, which Dent provides. Dent provides insight into bidding the true value, finding the low-conversion-rate keywords, predicting conversion rates, and tips on getting every major keyword into the top position.