Microsoft has agreed to invest about $100 million in Uber Technologies, reports Bloomberg, bumping up Uber's valuation by $10 billion to to $50 billion. Last month Microsoft sold part of its Bing mapping unit to Uber, which offered positions to about 100 Microsoft employees who work on image acquisition and data analysis as part of the mapping team for Bing, Microsoft’s Web-search engine.

Avinash Kaushik shares how he thinks about two strategies he calls the See-Think-Do-Care framework and metrics. The idea is to help marketers with content, marketing and measurement skills by helping to unlock their imagination through building intent-based audience strategies that accelerate profits.

Review, reevaluate, and receive are three ways to keep search engine optimization strategies new. Brittney Sheffield believes there's always something search marketers can do to spice up campaigns. Thinking about these three simple steps can keep landing pages fresh and messages relevant. 

Russian search engine Yandex reported Q2 revenue of $250.7 million, up 14% year-over-year. The company also said it increased ad clients by 9% compared with the prior quarter. Yandex CEO Arkady Volozh said the company is focused on improving its search ad products, especially for mobile, and will experiment with new audio ads via its Yandex.Radio streaming service.

Investors are calling for Yelp to merge with another big company after posting second-quarter loss. They say it's the only way for the company to remain relevant in advertising. Reports suggest Google has also put pressure on Yelp in changing the way restaurants listings appear on search engines. Yelp enables businesses to deliver targeted search advertising to large local audiences through its Web site and mobile app, and promote sponsored search results.

Why do some U.S. companies find it difficult to look for advantages in their own country? As CEOs set their sights on expansion outside their home country, the United States ranked No. 1 at 64% as the country or region where they see the most potential for new market growth worldwide, according to eMarketer, citing stats from KPMG. China followed at No. 2 with 46%. Western Europe as a whole trailed in third, followed by Central Europe and then India.

Google has a car company. It's called Google Auto LLC. The Mountain View, Ca. company created it years ago even as it courted carmakers about its self-driving car, according to documents obtained by The Guardian. Chris Urmson leads the project. At the North American International Auto Show in January, he told the press, analysts and attendees that Google would seek a partner, but none have materialized. It could be because Google already has its own carmaker, reports The Guardian.

Carlos Escalera tells marketers how to stop ghost and crawler spam in Google Analytics. He explains how it has become a serious issue due to a deluge of referral spam from social buttons, adult sites, and many other sources. He takes us through the steps on how to filter out the spam and provides links to other resources.