• Consumers Averaging $250 Mobile Holiday Shopping
    Some 35% of Hipcricket survey participants will spend $250 or more using a mobile device for holiday shopping this year, and 17% will spend more than $500. The findings from the survey show the shift in mobile commerce. The findings are part of the mobile shopping survey for the 2013 holiday season.
  • Tech Resistance Slows Ad Innovation
    How do you feel about technology and how do you think it can help your business? The MIT Sloan Management Review and Capgemini Consulting conducted a survey of executives to gauge their sentiment, and found that companies face diverse challenges when it comes to adopting new digital technologies. Competing priorities across the company stood out as the No. 1 issue. Some 52% said they are held back by a lack of familiarity with digital technologies, and four in 10 resist new approaches.
  • Tips On Tracking Mobile Clicks
    Jeremy Hull reminds us that a key strength of search marketing is its ability to track clicks and conversions. The challenge with mobile, however, has been users looking to complete an action outside of an easily tracked purchase or download. Hull takes us through conversions that marketers cannot ignore. He tells us that recent innovations from Google and Bing make it easier to incorporate these conversions into the strategy. Read the article here.
  • Advanced Enhanced Paid-Search Tips
    Crystal Santos believes improving performance with Google Enhanced Campaigns requires several steps. She looks at all five -- mobile-optimized ads, keyword-level mobile bid control, enhanced sitelinks, geo bidding, and opt-out options -- providing tips for each. For example, Santos tell us that marketers can load in up to six sitelinks, but only four typically show. It turns out that click-through rates are significantly higher compared with the same ad using two-to-three-line sitelinks. Read the article here.
  • Google's Secret Barge Project
    A barge appeared in the San Francisco Bay that has reporters buzzing about a Google secret project. Pure speculation suggests that Google is building a water-based data center, but actually KPIX 5 learned that Google is building a floating marketing center, described as a "giant Apple store" for Google Glass. Read how "clear" laws could complicate building the infrastructure on the water.
  • Valuable Referrer Data
    Links still matter, according to Dave Davies. "The death is in links that are easy to manipulate," he writes. He explains the meaning and how to support marketing strategies through the value of referral data. He provides insight on how to determine what sites are directing traffic, and what sites to link with. Most importantly, Davies tells us how to pull referral data from competitors. Read the article here.
  • When You Just Want To Keep It To Yourself
    Want to keep it hush, hush? Here are seven sites that allow people to privately search for information. There are the old standbys like DuckDuckGo, Wolfram Alpha, and Blekko. Let's not forget the little-known IxQuick, Yippy, Mazoom, and izik. Kim Komando runs through each, providing the attributes, but offers up warnings for some.
  • Facebook Shares Details On Building Graph Search
    Facebook engineers share the details of what it took to build Graph Search. In a detailed post, Ashoat Tevosyan describes the project's history: collecting the data, ranking results, updating and serving text, and building the index. Surfacing content requires the use of two primary techniques: query rewriting, and dynamic results scoring. With a trillion posts in the index, most queries return many more results than anyone could ever read -- which, similar to Google and Bing, requires ranking. That's just a small piece of the social site's search service.
  • Microsoft Touting Paid-Search Ad Segmentation
    Bing Ads now provides better compatibility with Google's Enhanced Campaign platform on Google AdWords, which means that marketers using Bing Ads can import campaigns from Google AdWords to Bing Ads without losing information. The accompanying video touts Microsoft's ability to distinguish between tablet and desktop devices. Read the article here.
  • When To Switch To Google Universal Analytics
    Thinking about switching to Google's Universal Analytics? In a video, Brian provides some advice on whether it's a good time to make the move. Google's new measurement protocol allows marketers to pull in other data from other devices like point-of-sale systems and call centers. Brian guides marketers through some of the features from the old and the new to help them make the correct decision. Watch the video here.
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