James Kuffner, the head of Google's robotics division, has left the company for a job at Toyota's research institute in Silicon Valley. Toyota announced a $1 billion investment in the center in November, but the institute has already opened for business at the Stanford Research Park in Palo Alto, and in Kendall Square in Cambridge.

Marketers can track print ads using Google Analytics. Here's how to get started. Decide on a vanity URL. Create and apply UTM parameters for the landing page URL for the ad. Redirect the vanity URL to ta URL with a custom UTM parameter. The rest of the details are in the post.

Joy Hawkins discovered by accident a few months ago that Google filters out organic pages for big brands, which seems to have a direct impact on which locations rank in the local 3-pack. She also discovered that it really depends on the coding at the end of the URL string. The filter is &filter=0. Hawkins writes that any big brand with multiple offices or branches serving the same city would possibly run into this issue. So she provides examples to show how sites with multiple pages can get them served on the engine.

Jennifer Slegg shows marketers how Google has begun to bold keywords in reviews displayed within Google My Business search results. She provides several examples, writing in a post that she first noticed the change last year, but now it has increased in frequency. The change, now apparently worldwide, she writes.

Microsoft touts that more than 200 million devices now run Windows 10, but the company and marketers have missed multiple opportunities to connect with consumers. For Microsoft, the push to upgrade Windows users missed the mark by not following through to support the personal computers that cannot upgrade due to incompatibility issues. Marketers who reach out to consumers do not understand the nuances related to the Windows 10 operating system.

Alphabet, Google's parent company, Monday disclosed that it paid $380.2 million to buy Bebop, the startup from VMware cofounder and former chief executive Diane Greene. Who, by the way, sits on Alphabet’s board of directors and is in charge of Google’s cloud businesses as a result of the acquisition? The news, found in a filing with the Securities Exchange Commission, explains the transaction. VMware is known for its cloud services and infrastructure. 

Marketing automation is as important for small and-medium-sized businesses as it is for large ones. Marketers can identify activities for automation by looking for repetitive tasks backed by data or logic. Often activities involve simple decision-making or are rules-based, explains Sophia Solanki, who details some opportunities that reside in lead tracking, social, content marketing, onboarding, and more.

As expected, Bing is now powering AOL’s Web, mobile, and tablet search with paid search ads and algorithmic organic search results. Citing comScore data, Microsoft now says that Bing is behind “close to one-third of US PC web searches.” As Search Engine Land notes: “Beyond providing web search results for Siri on Apple devices, most of the Bing search volume is on the desktop.”

We already heard that Cyanogen, the maker of a version of Android not affiliated with Google, will integrate Cortana, the Microsoft's version of the virtual assistant,but now WinBeta reports the two will have a tighter integration. The OS is used in more than 50 million handsets, per reports.

Adam Epstein, the president and COO at AdMarketplace, believes it's more important to go to work for a struggling startup rather than follow your dreams or start your own business. He says don't just give it your best shot. Get it done. Here's why.