comScore has released its July 2014, ranking of U.S. desktop Web activity for the top online properties. Google sites ranked No. 1 on desktop with 191.2 million unique visitors, while AddThis topped the Ad Focus ranking with a U.S. Internet reach of 97.7%. Yahoo sites ranked No. 2 on desktop with 165.1 million unique visitors, followed by Microsoft with nearly 165 million, and Facebook with 144 million, respectively.  

Turn on your phone's GPS and Google knows your whereabouts. Not just one location, but every stop along the way. Google tracks where your smartphone goes and puts "a neat red dot on a map to mark the occasion." per The Big Picture. The post points to a page that allows mobile users to access their history. The mobile number links to the history to see the record of everywhere the user has been from the last day to the past month. Users can "pause" their location history tracking, but Google warns that doing so "will not delete the existing Location History …

In September Google will begin applying close variant keyword matching to all exact and phrase match keywords in AdWords. The feature -- an option for more than a year -- will become the default for exact and phrase match. It should allow marketers to reach more potential customers by improving click-through rates and conversions at a lower cost per click.

Regina Dugan, who now works at Google, has been accused of violating ethics rules by the Defense Advance Research Project Agency for using her position within DARPA to push RedXDefense, a company she founded and led prior to joining DARPA. The Defense Department tipped off in 2011, by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) alleges RedX received $1.75 million in contracts following Dugan's appointment to DARPA. Google commented to the Navy Times on Dugan's position.

Google is in talks with Hewlett-Packard to bring its Google Now voice recognition software to enterprise applications -- similar to the way it developed a search appliance or engine for businesses. The partnership would allow Google Now to become the workhorse for company data. It means Android would have the ability to dig out financial information or inventory data when needed. HP would be valuable to Google in this case because of its wealth of relationships with corporate customers.

Take a look at how U.K. consumers consume media. For 16- to-24-year-olds, laptops are more important than television. Adults rank phone calls, email, text messaging, live TV and books as the most important media. The top 10 Internet properties where people spend their time include Google, Facebook, Yahoo, BBC sites, Microsoft sites, eBay, and AccuWeather.

Searchmetrics appointed Robyn Forman to VP of marketing to lead global branding, product marketing, demand generation, and marketing communications. Forman comes to Searchmetrics from SugarCRM, where she built the company's global marketing organization. Prior, Forman co-founded Pipeline Demand, a marketing consultancy to venture backed start-ups and large enterprises; and Engine140, a social media software company acquired by Vocus.

Rather than speculate about the increase in use of mobile data, Mark Irvine takes us through ways to quantify mobile data. He provides insight on how to determine a good click-through rate for mobile search ads and ways to calculate a mobile quality score, and analyzes AdWords mobile data to fully understand how the search engine results page differs across devices.

Mikey Dickerson will lead a new government team intended to identify and fix the government's failing computer systems and Web sites after the Google employee fixed HealthCare.gov last year. Dickerson becomes the deputy chief information officer of the federal government and the administrator of the United States Digital Services Team, leading a small group of technology experts.

Customer retention software company Windsor Circle raised $5.25 million in Series B funding led by Comcast Ventures with participation from existing investors. Existing investors IDEA Fund Partners and Triangle Angel Partners (TAP) also participated. Steve Case, former AOL CEO and chairman, added $100,000 of funding to the round.