Most consumers visit a brand's Web site first when looking for information about a product or service, but do you know that short and funny video clips are the most shared type of mobile content? Some 66% of respondents cited in an eMarketer survey said they share this type of video, followed by 52% of music videos and 35% of movie trailers. Personal content also plays a major role in sharing habits, with 31% saying they share content created by themselves or someone known to them. Interestingly, 16% share mobile video content every day, and another 33% do so weekly. …

In a quirky glitch that went unnoticed for many months, Google's text-to-speech engine and Google Translate often ended sentences with the phrase "he now praises the iPad" for no obvious reason -- but that has since been fixed. Some reports point to a badly trained algorithm, rather than an Easter egg planted by a Google developer. When asked "what is a giraffe," translate or search would describe the animal and end the description with "he now praises the iPad."

Publishers seeking news footage might find it helpful to know that a new search engine from the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT in Ilmenau has developed a piece of software called "NewsHistory" that will search and identify specific footage and individual sequences in video. Researchers will present a demonstration of the smart video search engine at the CeBIT trade fair in Hanover in March. Search engines can identify meta tags to pinpoint a video topic, but the researchers of this search engine claim the technology can identify the exact point of a specific topic.

Google answers questions in the "DFA Personal Trainer for Advanced Users" manual to help marketers become "power users," providing insight on advanced techniques. The manual offers an introduction to advanced features and troubleshooting techniques, interactive scenarios and solutions, multiple choices for testing concepts, introductions to features such as DFA verification and multichannel funnels, and a certificate of completion on completion of the program.

Dennis Yu, self-proclaimed data geek, believes search engine marketing will require marketers to gain cross-platform experience and rely more on analytics companies to perform and measure the tasks. The increase of data will force search experts to dig deeper into goal objectives, which may mean clarifying in detail each step in the client's goal.

Google plans to introduce next week at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) a mobile and TV pairing feature supported by devices from Bang & Olufsen, LG, Panasonic and Sony. This year, consumers will see devices from Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Toshiba, Vizio, Western Digital and others to search and view content.

Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, and Canonical are creating respective marketplaces that will allow developers to build apps for multiple operating systems, and sell them directly to consumers and businesses. The companies will also provide support for developers who want to create their own apps store. It aims to give developers the freedom to break the chains that bind them to iOS, Android and Windows.

Peter Da Vanzo shares a guide that looks at fundamental SEO pricing techniques, ideas and strategies to determine the rate to charge a client, and how not to undercut competitors to stay on top. Undercutting can get experts stuck in what Da Vanzo calls the "race to the bottom," an endless price-cutting war. Most of the suggestions are common sense, but putting them into action could take creative thinking. Da Vanzo believes experts must first know their clients' needs and their value. Don't turn the service into a commodity. And always have the best interest of the customer in mind.

Long Web site load times can force consumers to close the browser and move on to another site. Brian Taylor points to a study suggesting that 40% of people abandon a Web site that takes more than 3 seconds to load. And a 1-second delay in page response decreases customer satisfaction by 16%, which in turn results in a 7% reduction in conversions. Taylor provides tips on determining load speeds and optimizing images to render faster, and describes how to inline CSS and JavaScript files into main HTML pages. This and more will increase speed.

Learn something new by picking a pace that doesn't demand so much you quickly find ways to avoid it, even when it comes to learning something new about search engine marketing. Tony Schwartz describes how to make changes that last. His example, which uses his daughter's lack of desire to exercise, applies to any behavioral change worth pursuing. Never a runner myself, I've been off on the same quest as Schwartz's daughter, and I can say it works to alternate one minute of running with 90 seconds of walking, for a total of 30 minutes. By the second week, I …