Microsoft reported Thursday that revenue from Bing search advertising grew 34%, driven by continued search improvements and query volume growth. Bing has now grown its share of search queries to 18.2% in the U.S. Office 365 Home Premium adoption continues to be strong, per SeekingAlpha. The transcript notes that customers always run the most up-to-date version, have content available across their devices, with SkyDrive innovation, and get free Skype minutes.

About one billion people touch, find, engage, play, explore, produce, are entertained, and get things done with Microsoft products and services. Greg Nelson points to a Microsoft Web site that lists stats on everything from Bing to Xbox to Skype. For example, there are more than 76 million Xbox consoles worldwide, and more than 100 million Windows 8 licenses sold to date, Bing indexes more than 2 billion Facebook status updates and 500 million tweets daily, and 300 million Skype users spend up to two billion minutes per day on the service.

While there's not definitive answer, marketers frequently are asked to define what makes a good click-though rate (CTR). Of course, it depends on many factors and variables. Alan Mitchell explains that it's a little like asking someone about a good speed to drive on a road without knowing where they are or where they're going. While Mitchell tells us there are many considerations that go into providing the answer to what makes a good CTR, he does give us 11 points to consider. Read the article here.

Rand Fishkin shares his tips for creating a positive relationship with people who are highly selective about what they share. Getting them to amplifying their sentiment to help companies rank higher on the list of their priorities isn't easy -- it takes a lot to get them to share. Start by asking why influencers would want to share the content. You must begin with a personal connection, and they must believe in the product or service that they use themselves. Honesty also works. Of course, good products that honestly work win fans and prompt people to share. Fishkin provides guidelines …

Google has added a feature on its search engine that serves up additional information about Web sites. Tied to Knowledge Graph -- which connects persons, places and things -- the information will surface when the site is widely recognized, there is enough information, or when the content is relevant. As Google expands information in the databases, it plans to provide more information about more things.

The Defense Department selected BlackBerry as the smartphone of choice because it's the farthest along with complying with security requirements set by the Pentagon. It also validates BlackBerry CEO John Chen's strategy of returning the company to its roots in enterprise services. The Pentagon plans to purchase more than 80,000 devices. Marketers focused on government contracts might want to rethink their search marketing strategy.

What's Bitcoin, you ask? An online currency originally set up to easily send money around the world, but it recently got sidetracked into something undesirable. Could Google change that perception and use? Overstock.com integrated it as a payment system. Would Google? Kashmir Hill runs down a series of events and iterations with Google that led to this: "Although it hasn't adopted Bitcoin into any of its products, Google has been more Bitcoin-friendly than most other major tech firms. While Apple has not allowed a single Bitcoin client into its iOS app store, dozens of Bitcoin wallets are available for Android. …

The Tor project from a non-profit group refers to free software that enables users to communicate anonymously on the Internet. It's a technology Edward Snowden seems to admire. Bloomberg's Dune Lawrence notes that in many photographs of Snowden he appears with his laptop. On the laptop a sticker shows a purple-and-white onion that signifies the "o" in the word "Tor," an acronym for the onion router, the software. Lawrence explains how Tor works, the types of searches accessible through the software that don't even show up on Google, and how it began as a project of the U.S. government.

Google has made it easier to detect crawl errors for redirected URLs. The report will now show the error on the final URL -- the one that actually returns the error code. John Mueller explains the process, what webmasters will see, and how it affects reports and back-end programming. Read the article here.

Facebook said Tuesday it made an update to the News Feed algorithm that will reduce the number of text posts shown from business pages, and more text posts being shown from friends. After the update, use the link-share button -- rather than sharing an embedded link -- to foster engagement, explains Chris Turitzin. This will provide a better experience for Facebook members, he writes.