• Google's Interactive Halloween Doodle
    Knock-knock. Who's there? An interactive Google Halloween doodle that takes searchers directly to search query results related to the U.S. holiday. The image, a narrow row of apartments "reminiscent of New York brownstones," as Damon Poeter describes it, lets searchers click on doorways and garbage cans to reveal ghosts, black cats, and other spooky things.
  • Bing Launches Election Coverage Site
    For those searching for information on Obama vs. Romney election coverage, Microsoft Bing launched a site to provide a view into Election 2012, including news; poll information across national, state and local races; and analysis of social conversation across Facebook and Twitter. It also supports a tracker to find the nearest polling sites, and real-time results on Election Day. The editorial content that comes from partnerships with MSN, Politico, Real Clear Politics, The Cook Political Report, Huffington Post and The Associated Press should help those interested make sense of the onslaught of available data and information.
  • Scariest Search Marketing Mistakes
    Kamal Thakarsey takes a look at some of the scariest search marketing mistakes, such as rogue keywords she describes as "Freddy Krueger." She provides a list of mistakes and then offers up solutions on how to fix or avoid them. For example, it's important to find unfriendly or irrelevant keywords making their way into ads that generate more clicks than what "would make you comfortable." Thakarsey suggests continuously mining for negative keywords across your campaigns. "Each click you save from an irrelevant query is a click that's made on a relevant, and hopefully converting, query," Thakarsey writes.
  • What To Expect From Google's, Microsoft's Step Into Hardware
    Although a little dramatic, an investor "interested in creating passive income streams through dividends" explains how Google and Microsoft run scared as both plunge into the hardware business to follow Apple down the path. The two, traditional software and Web-based services companies, are now trapped in a strategy "competing against natural allies." The author, who is more concerned with what the companies offer investors rather than consumers, gives us some history on their respective journeys. With Microsoft, he breaks down revenue generated by each business unit. 
  • How To Determine A 'Good' Google Conversion Rate
    Google makes more than $100 million in search advertising, with 5.6 billion daily ad impressions through Google search and another 24.2 billion impressions from the Google Display Network, according to WordStream. Crunching performance numbers, WordStream analyzed more than $1 billion dollars in aggregate spend to determine averages and benchmarks. An infographic breaks down averages on daily clicks, conversions, click-through rates and more.
  • Google Acquires E-Payment Patents
    Bill Slawski tells us about electronic wallet patents that Google acquired, and explains the back story about a patent infringement lawsuit: E-Micro vs. Google, Samsung, Sprint, Amazon, Best Buy, and others. The lawsuit involves 13 patents and 1 pending patent application from E-Micro, according to Slawski, who describes and links to each.  
  • Google PLA Tips
    Google transitioned more than 100,000 retailers to the paid service Google Shopping, supported by product listing ads. Mary Weinstein points to some of what she calls the "more important" things to understand about PLAs. For example, she writes, they are organized by a cost-per-click (CPC) hierarchy. She defines what this means and takes us through a few tips and strategies that marketers should know to optimize content and keep Web site traffic, revenue and return on investment consistent.
  • eBay Uses Lots Of Data In Site Search Queries
    Spandas Lui tells us that eBay has begun to use "big data" to get site visitors to buy more stuff -- about 10 petabytes in raw data. At the Big Data Summit in Sydney, Hugh Williams, Ebay's vice president of experience, search, and platforms, said the company has been working to make its site search more interactive, Lui writes. The site uses data to make predictions about whether a listed item will sell and how much it will sell for, among other assumptions.
  • Google, Yahoo Lead Video Views
    Data firm comScore released September 2012 U.S. online video rankings for sites on Monday. YouTube primarily drove up video viewing for Google's sites, which ranked No. 1 with 150.3 million unique viewers, followed by Yahoo sites with 57.4 million, AOL with 53.8 million, VEVO with 50.3 million and Facebook.com with 46.4 million. The release provides more information on the top properties by video ad views and partner channels.  
  • Google Cancels Android Event Due To Sandy
    Google cancelled an Adroid event previously scheduled to take place in New York City on Monday due to Hurricane Sandy. The company had planned to announce a new Nexus smartphone made by LG, 10-inch tablet made by Samsung, and 32GB Nexus 7 tablet.
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