People go to Google and Bing for lots of different answers. What's the temperature in Huntington Beach California, or what time does the Super Bowl begin? Some parents now turn to the search engines to ask whether their child is a genius. The word "gifted" is the most common word that follows after "is my 2-year-old." The biggest surprise: parents are 2.5 more times likely to ask that question about sons compared with daughters, although girls are more likely to use bigger words at a young age compared with boys.

Consumers have come to trust reviews, but what if that review is bogus? Yelp has begun running "sting operations" to find the fake reviewers. The company execs pose as review writers interested in selling reviews to whoever would like to buy them, Jeremy Stoppelman, chief executive of search and review site Yelp, tells The Telegraph. Yelp, along with businesses, must maintain consumer trust. Sophie Curtis explains.

Michael Sippey said in a post that he plans to move from his post as Twitter VP of product into an advisory role. While the Vine image might make you dizzy, the message came in loud and clear. Sippey is walking away. He will be helping with product strategy, providing input on the work lined up for 2014, and helping to find a new head of product.

Hopefully you wear the white hat. Kevin Lee provides some examples of white hat, grey hat and black hat marketing practices, telling us about how his wife received a complementary gift in the mail for making an online purchase. The note accompanying the gift asked for a review. He explains how rules for reviews are similar to rules for SEO links. Read the article here.

Could Microsoft release Cortana on Lumia phones in April? Yes, according to MSFTnerd. Jen Taylor will become the voice on the Apple Siri-like service. Comments in the post suggest Microsoft used TellMe to build the service, which the company acquired in 2007. Operating by voice prompts, the service provides information like the time of day and weather forecasts.

Brian shows how to use UTM parameters, a tag added to the end of a URL that allows marketers to track links in Google Analytics, to help distinguish the tweets and clicks driving the best performance for a specific piece of content. It enables marketers to analyze the tweets or shares driving traffic. View the video.

U.S. mobile users listen to music on smartphones at least sometimes, but they are far more likely to purchase music from a mobile device compared with a desktop, per eMarketer, which cites separate data from AYTM Market Research and ChoiceStream. Streaming music services like Spotify and Pandora have also become popular, with six in nine smartphone users saying they  have at least one mobile app, although most won't pay to listen.

Putting a Klieg light on Yahoo’s ongoing ad troubles, the company is finally parting ways with COO Henrique De Castro. As for the timing, sources tell Kara Swisher that heads had to roll before Yahoo’s soon-to-be-released quarterly results, which will “continue to lag the Internet industry badly once again.” Swisher sees the situation as a black eye for Yahoo head Marissa Mayer, who brought De Castro over from Google, and entrusted him with improving Yahoo’s ad operations. 

Adding another name to its future CEO shortlist, Microsoft is reportedly keen on Ericsson AB head Hans Vestberg. Presently, “Microsoft cloud-computing chief Satya Nadella and former Nokia Oyj CEO Stephen Elop … are also on the list,” Bloomberg reports. Who would want Steve Ballmer’s job is another question. For one, “Any new CEO will have to turn around Microsoft, whose main software business is struggling,” writes Bloomberg.  

Google sites garnered 67.3% of U.S. explicit core searches in in December, followed by Microsoft with 18.2% and Yahoo Sites with 10.8%. Ask Network accounted for 2.5%, followed by AOL with 1.3%. The market share numbers belong to comScore's analysis of the U.S. search market.