Do brands make the most of keywords on mobile sites? With the growing use of paid search by brands, David Moth set out to look at financial brands visible for the three most valuable keywords: mortgages, insurance and loans. He found that companies leave a lot of opportunities on the table. He points to missed opportunities and runs through the benefits for optimizing sites on mobile search, quality scores, and more.  

Business owners jumping into new services might struggle with how to price goods and services, but Gregory Ciotti tries to take down some roadblocks by offering up advice. He analyzed some recent research studies that examine pricing of products and services in the hope that folks might better understand how to price their own goods. Apparently, pricing something with a number 9 doesn't always work. He shows us the results of a number 9 pricing experiment compared with another ad showing the original price and discounted price conducted by MIT and the University of Chicago.

Richard Baxter introduces a conversion rate optimization strategy that he's sure will increase returns on earned traffic. Marketers failing to produce results typically adopt random testing and guesswork. He tells marketers the real trick to improving conversion resides in identifying target core barriers to conversion, and scientifically testing changes. An infographic guides marketers through the process to help understand optimization through prospecting for missing links, testing, creating visual mock-ups, and more.

Google tweeted the release of Panda 3.8 on Twitter Monday. The data refresh began rolling out Friday. There were "less than 1% of queries noticeably affected in the U.S. and 1% worldwide." It's the second update in one month. Dating back to February 2011, marketers interested in keeping track of Penguin and Panda Update Calendar can review about 17 updates that have occurred since.

Microsoft Atlas will offer tracking to measure the delivery and performance of ads on Facebook, allowing advertisers to measure impressions, clicks, and user interactions. Geoffrey Coco tells marketers all it takes is submitting Atlas tracking tags along with their creative to Facebook during trafficking. Perhaps Microsoft will improve Bing search results in Facebook next.

There's no shortage of posts on how to prepare for Google's paid-inclusion hybrid format, Shopping. Here's another from Kevin Lee that provides insight on reducing spam, and improving relevancy and revenue. He tells us to pay attention to the higher-converting items, what contributes most to profits, and analyzing historical data and the data between now and the full rollout to paid shopping clicks to increase the potential for a successful transition.  

How do marketers in a "boring" industry build excitement for products and services? Stephanie Chang gives marketers ideas on how to develop an integrated long-term content strategy for any type of business. Choosing what she calls a boring industry to demonstrate the strategy, Chang guides us through how to determine the correct questions to ask, dig through the data to find answers, and define the target audience to identify project goals. She also describes how to analyze the results.

The Bing Maps team has updated the Bing Maps World Tour application highlighting 153 locations of high-resolution aerial imagery captured and published as part of our Bing Maps Global Ortho imagery program. Using the application, users can view the aerial imagery through the automated slide show mode or explore locations manually. The images support 165 terabytes of data. A refresh cycle will update images more frequently. 

Google held its annual shareholders meeting on Thursday in which the majority voted in favor of a plan to split the stock that does not give the new shares any significant voting rights. The outcome, of course, was never in doubt, as noted by The New York Times, because Larry Page and Sergey Brin have voting control. Aside from wading through the irony, investors wanted to know about YouTube captioning for the deaf, viability of ads on mobile devices, and the acquisition of the low-margin hardware maker Motorola. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said the company bought Motorola for its patents, products and …

A post in Google’s online storefront noted that the next Android operating systems would go by the name "Jelly Bean." The 4.1 version appeared in Google Play. As Wired points out: "It also seems to have been a mistake." A developer saw the description and name in the store and posted the information in the XDA Developers forum. Wired tells us Google quickly removed the mention and declined to comment on the mishap and nickname.