Looking for a Father's Day gift? So are thousands of others. In fact, Bloomreach, which supports companies through technology focused on search engine optimization, put together a top 12 list of Father's Day favorites. The list highlights searched items that dads are most likely to receive this year -- some good, some bad, and some downright questionable choices. Taking the No. 1 spot is embroidered gifts, followed by engraved dog tags, and father-and-son action figures. The list was compiled by more than 1 million search queries from May 28 and June 8. One unexpected product on the list is a nylon …

Bing and Yelp announced a partnership Thursday to bring local business listings to its search results pages in the United States. Content includes review snippets, photos, business attributes, and more. The companies hope the content provides consumers with information to support local businesses. Apple also announced a partnership this week with Yelp.

comScore has released its May 2012 U.S. search engine rankings, and there were few changes. Google kept the lead with 66.7% market share, up from .02% in April. Microsoft sites followed with 15.4%, with no sequential change. Yahoo sites slipped a bit from 13.5% to 13.4%. Ask and AOL rounded out the top five.

The computer in consumers' pockets give them access to information without being tethered to a Wi-Fi connection in the home or the office. Amanda WestBook explains how she built a mobile site for a client who couldn't make the investment, and earned four sales at a $2.52 ROAS in a 13 days. Testing the system, she designed a strategy using keywords that had converted for the past 30 days. 

Looking for competitive keyword research tools? Lisa Raehsler gives us a list of keyword tools that might cost a little more, but provides more analysis, competitive data, support, and extra features that are not available for free. Naming a few, Raehsler names and describes SEMrush, Wordtracker, Wordstream, Experian Hitwise, SpyFu, and Hubspot. What's your favorite?

Put fans first, create a brand voice, and measure what matters for long-term success in social media, according to Sherice Jacob. Based on a recent study from comScore on Facebook, Jacob serves up some tips on making social work and connecting it to other media strategies, such as crowdsourcing -- not just for search marketers, but online marketers in general. 

Will Apple become a search engine, asks Frank Reed. My answer is yes -- but not specific to text. It will become known for specializing in voice search. Earlier this week, Apple announced upgrades to Siri, including the ability to power a map application, partnership with TomTom, and agreement with major car manufacturers. While Reed mostly poses questions rather than providing answers, he does serve up insights on Apple as a "true competitive threat" to Google.

An unnamed business-to-business company gave Glenn Gabe the lowdown on how Panda affected the company's Web site, forcing it to make some difficult decisions before it recovered. Gabe guides us through the events such as the drop in Web site traffic, strategies to increase quality content, and other steps that should be taken to recover after being hit by Google's algorithm changes. He reminds marketers that any site can get hit, moving fast doesn't mean a speedy recovery, and "no Panda recovery is a full recovery" -- so remain vigilant and be prepared for change.

Sucess and failure: both products of innovation? Yes -- communication becomes key. That's how Joseph Kerschbaum explains it. He tells us the positive side of failure, how to mitigate it, and way to learn from mistakes when it comes to testing paid-search campaigns. Kerschbaum also suggests how to own up to failures, open up to discussions on how to correct the problems, and what tests to conduct in the future to avoid the poor performance.

Data can provide a ton of insight, but marketers need to know how to sort through the numbers to understand the "nuggets." Lars Lofgren tells us why it's important to take note of aggregate numbers. But while these numbers can do a good job of providing an overview of the campaign, they hide the gems and nuances that could help return higher profits. He suggests starting with segmentation and analyzing people, and shows us where to look for data.