A Visa survey reports that more than 70% of consumers in Singapore shop online at least once monthly, up from 59% in the previous year. The Visa Consumer Payment Survey polled 500 people in Singapore, of which 45% cited convenience and 31% cited competitive pricing as the main reasons they shop online. They also said they spent an average of 41 minutes on each online shopping session.

Google received 12.1 million link removal requests in the first week of 2016. Each year, as you might imagine, the number of requests during this period jumps significantly. In the first week of 2012, 274,000 links went missing. Last year, 7.8 million links met their fate in the first week of the year. Daniel Fuller explains.

Google has posted more than 50 jobs on LinkedIn looking to hire employees in China. The openings range from software engineers to communications managers, as the company hopes to reenter the world's second-largest economy.

Amazon is widening the doorway to ecommerce globally. The company is expected to acquire the remaining French package-delivery company Colis Privé that it does not already own, reports The Seattle Times. The move brings it one step closer to helping smaller businesses worldwide serve international consumers through quicker online orders and deliveries.

More than a third of Yahoo’s work force has left in the last year, The New York Times reports, citing sources. “Worried about the brain drain, Ms. Mayer has been approving hefty retention packages -- in some cases, millions of dollars -- to persuade people to reject job offers from other companies,” The Times writes. “But those bonuses have had the side effect of creating resentment among other Yahoo employees who have stayed loyal and not sought jobs elsewhere.”

Amazon pulled the innovative card Tuesday when Ford announced a partnership with the ecommerce tech provider at CES, rather than Google. Ford CEO Mark Fields described a partnership with Amazon that will help keep vehicles connected to their smart homes of the future. The automakers SYNC system will connect with Amazon's Echo voice-recognition system, allowing homeowners to ask Alexa to do things like start their cars and evaluate their electric range. 

Rand Fishkin details four steps to using keyword research to support and improve existing strategies. He shows marketers how to tailor tactics to niche's keyword demand distribution curves, rather than “targeting marketing blasts” to either in-demand or long-tail strategies. Fishkin says that by using a “niche demand distribution curve” it will improve SEO, social and content strategies.

Will the promise of grandiose search features in Pinterest get squashed by internal roadblocks? The Business Insider takes a look inside the company to uncover a growth spurt, but found that many employees have issues getting things accomplished because the cofounders keep the reins drawn too tight.

Oscobo, a U.K. startup, has launched a search engine with an eye for privacy. It collects no personal data and does not keep IP addresses or leave cookies. The creation from former Yahoo exec Fred Cornell, and BlackBerry exec Rob Perin aims to create a better way to search. There are desktop and mobile versions.

Erin Sagin starts the year off by showing marketers how to get more from paid-search media. She calls the "quick wins" with details on how to get more from ad extensions, better ways to use remarketing, and the use of Google Customer Match.