An anti-fraud system using Google PageRank described in the Microsoft Research paper could become the key to finding fraudsters, spammers and malware faster in Skype. Liam Tung tells us that the report's authors claim the methods used were able to detect 68% of these types of accounts with a 5% false-positive rate. It seems the method works best for more recent accounts vs. long-term accounts that go active for more than 30 months.

A federal jury found that Google infringed on SimpleAir's patent. The Mountain View, Calif. company could pay as much as $125 million in damages. The jury specifically points to the push notification service in Android, but found Google infringed on all five claims of SimpleAir's 7,035,914 patent that describes a "system and method for transmission of data."

Use the space above the fold to make readers want to scroll the rest of the page. Tim Allen provides sound advice to marketers on how to design below the fold and three ways to encourage scrolling, encouraging behavior through visual prompts. Allen explains that while the fold was once used to serve as a portal to explore other sections of a site, its purpose now is to grab the visitor's attention to make them move down the page or to another screen altogether. Read the article here.

Brad McMillen reviews how budgets work when you’re using ad scheduling for campaigns running daily. "Google uses a fixed 30.4 days for every month, so if you’ve got a budget of $500 to spend in a month, set your daily cap at $16.45 ($500/30.4 days = $16.55) if your campaign runs every day of the month," he writes. McMillen also suggests that daily budgets should be recalculated at the beginning of each month, and when using AdWords, ensuring that campaigns are set to pause when they hit a certain spend. Read the article here.

Sam Owen takes us through how to audit campaigns using an upgrade of a tool from WordStream called AdWords Grader. It uses tons of data to compare one company's account to others in the industry, and gives marketers a percentage score for how well it matches up. The tool analyzes impression share, negative keywords, quality scores, and more. Owen points to three major improvements such as Performance Tracker, which allow marketers to see the monthly grade for the account. Read the article here.

Google pulled two Chrome Web browser extensions after complaints came in following updates to the software for Add to Feedly and Tweet this Page that were updated to serve ads in unusual places on Web pages. These extensions are part of a larger business focus on toolbar extensions.

Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Web spam team, strongly suggests reconsidering your guest blogging strategy. “If you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop,” he warns in his latest blog post. “Why? Because over time, it’s become a more and more spammy practice, and if you’re doing a lot of guest blogging then you’re hanging out with really bad company” -- by which he means ethically loose marketing firms. 

While Yahoo’s revenue woes persist, the company continues to post impressive traffic numbers. Domestically, the company saw more unique visitors from desktop computers in December (195 million) than Google, Microsoft and Facebook. That’s according to the latest figures from comScore, which, as CNet notes, shows that “search engines, news sites, and social media pull in a heavy load of visitors.” 

Google has strict guidelines about how Chrome browser extensions can serve ads to users. Two popular extensions -- “Add to Feedly” and “Tweet This Page” -- broke the rules, so Google just booted them from its Web store. “In both cases, people described how the extensions were silently updated to include code that served undesirable ads,” The Wall Street Journal’s Digits blog reports. “Extensions are small bits of code that alter a browser by adding new features or removing others.” 

Bing's sponsorship of Seahawks training camp, along with a multiyear deal announced last year making Surface the official tablet of the National Football League aims to make the search engine more visible at Super Bowl XLVIII. Xbox has been the Seahawks' official gaming and entertainment console for about 10 years. There are also NFL applications. One includes the ability to get scores and stats on the entire league.