BIA/Kelsey estimates that 90% of consumers use search engines when researching local products or services. But the local listings are not just for neighborhood businesses. National brands should also have a local marketing strategy to gain more visibility, according to Jon Schepke. He provides some advice, such as localize content with automation, manage ratings and reviews, and step up performance measurements and reporting efforts to get a complete picture.

The dynamic search marketplace continually takes action of others into consideration directly influencing a marketer's ability to achieve goals. So Jason Tabeling set out to dig into some numbers of competitors that appear alongside his ads, as well as index CPCs by hour of day and day of week. He tells us what the insights reveal as well as how to gain hourly insights for paid-search ads to optimize campaigns.

The right area of the search engine results page now displays a mixture of recommended Google+ results rather than one brand page. Previously Google highlighted the +1 button and Search Plus Your World as ways that Plus enhances the search experience. Andrew Warren-Payne shows us a variety of examples in screen shots and tells us what he believes are the factors causing the brand pages to feature in the search results.

Multiple sources of traffic to a Web site make it healthy. For starters, it means bringing down the percetage of traffic coming from Google's search engine. It's called diversifying, similar to a stock portfolio. It's best if Google comprises between 40% and 60% or less of the site's search traffic, according to Michael Martinez. He tells us that regardless of where the traffic sources fall in the analytics reports, typically sites will have more than three sources of traffic. Martinez shows us how to find them.

Cassandra Caswell-Stirling serves up a list of all the ways that marketers should use a landing page to improve paid-search campaigns. On that list marketers will find restructuring, ad copy testing and optimization techniques. She tells us that if campaigns or ad groups have a strong click-through rate but a low conversion rate, and they are relevant to the landing page, it's time to take a good hard look at landing page optimization and some of the pitfalls.

Social media can become part of a lead-generation strategy for B2B marketers. David Kirkpatrick tells us about six social media tactics from seven experts. Each provides insights and ideas into making the most of media placements, ranging from combining social media with content marketing to taking advantage of Q&A forums and Twitter metrics.

Google continues to wait for Facebook to share data between the two company's services, according to Jon Russell. He tells us that Google Co-founder Larry Page used the words "still waiting" to describe the scenario. Speaking with talk show host Charlie Rose, Page explained that opening the flow of data between the two services would provide a variety of benefits to users.

In a "think-out-loud Friday post, rather than a definitive guide," Chris Lake identifies a dozen social signals from Twitter that could influence search rankings on google.com. On the list marketers will find volume, context and comment, bio information, and more. He explains each, suggests their use, and provides links to supporting posts.

Buying and holding a paid-search ad "is for suckers," according to Larry Kim. So when it came to Facebook's initial public offering, the WordStream founder bought into the IPO hype, and sold almost imediately. He called his broker at Morgan Stanley and placed an order for 1,000 shares before the stock went public, and then sold them shortly after. Although bullish on the social network, he believes it has a lot of work to do to support advertisers. Kim tells us why he bought and sold the stock.

Finding local companies selling specific products often takes people to Google's Product Search to look for the items. Amy Oliver tells marketers how to differentiate and track clicks coming from organic Google Product Search listings, as well as Product Listing Ads and Product Extensions. She tells us to use "adwords_redirect" to differentiate the keyword and source, provides a couple of examples, explains how to use it, and provides product tracking hints for other Google products.