Quixey, the 30-person start-up based in Palo Alto supporting a toolbar to search for and identify the app that best suits a specific need, said Thursday it secured $20 million in Series B funding. The company will use the funds to build out its technology. It also will look for partnerships with mobile carriers and phone manufacturers to include the software in smartphones, according to Reuters.

"... people don't come to Facebook to see advertisements," not even for brands, according to Aaron Lee, who suggests alternatives to increase engagement on social networks. Based on experience, he shares methods to help increase Facebook page engagement. For starters, he writes, ask questions and request answers. People like to share what they know. Follow the old saying -- timing is everything. Update posts in the evening hours or weekends when people are typically on the site. And because pictures are worth a thousand words, snap and share.

Marketers should conduct a profit analysis when testing cost per acquisitions (CPA) to put campaigns in a better spot for gaining return on investments, according to Rob Boyd. He serves up alternatives to generating leads with a bunch of keywords that perform at the specific CPA, and a group of keywords that probably drive volume, but at higher than desired costs.

Bing will attempt to grab a bigger piece of the Chinese market through an agreement with Hudong.com, known as the for-profit Wikipedia site for China. Searches in China could expect to see Hudong results appearing in query results, similar to Wikipedia in the United States. Hudong claims to support 6.4 million articles, 6.46 billion words and 6.78 million images.

Comparing the 1960s television program "Doctor Who" with Google, Simon Heseltine tells us that both show and search engine present a new adventure weekly. Between algorithic shifts, new features and tools, marketers struggle to keep up with the changes. But some things can't be changed, he writes. Among those things marketers can change, keeping fresh content on the site is a must. Heseltine provides some insight into the tools giving marketers the ability to change direction in mid-campaign and sort through budget restrictions and restraints, and stresses the humble ability to ask for help.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) wants Congress to do more to stop online piracy. CEO Cary Sherman will ask Congress to demand that search engines Google and Bing take responsibility to censor pirate sites from search results, and come up with appropriate technological solutions to make it work.

Searching and researching information to purchase a car or an iPad isn't the same as conducting a search for breast or prostate cancer on Google, Bing, Yahoo, or Ask. Marketers know that based on ranking and other factors, results can vary. But for consumers searching for information on life-theatening diseases, the differing query results for the same keywords can become confusing. Researchers from the University of Missouri compared four major Internet search engines for obtaining medical and health information, and found that each has its own method for deciding the sites to serve up and how to rank them. The …

Most business owners admit shying away from the complicated technology supporting online paid-search campaigns. They run their retail shop or restaurant 10 to 14 hours daily and don't have time to figure out how search marketing works. They can hire someone to lead marketing who can figure it out, and there are success stories. Jennifer Hoyt Cummings points marketers to a couple of these -- and tells us how one company managed to turn several thousands of dollars spent yearly into profits.

There's no shortage of commentary on what the transition of Google Product Search to Google Shopping means for marketers. Andrew Davis gives us three reasons why it's bad for ecommerce merchants, in addition to the move from free to fee. For instance, he points to slower adoption rates as one of the disadvantages for smaller businesses that might not want to put aside the funds to ramp up as fast as they should.

Competitive analysis isn't the best way to build a link profile, but it can help identify patterns and give marketers ideas on where to start building connections. Julie Joyce gives marketers suggestions on how to gain links. She starts by breaking the list into two types before jumping into a basic plan describing directory, blogroll, sitewide, and comment, social media, editorial, guest post, resource, may I have, reciprocal, and many more. The helpful hints also explore how analysis fits in.