Google is developing a third-party keyboard for iPads and iPhones running iOS that builds in a variety of search options, according to The Verge, citing people familiar with the project. Declining searches on mobile devices reduce the number of ads that serve up and are clicked on. On desktop, a high percentage of searches are for keywords like "Facebook" or "Gmail," according to The Verge. These are unnecessary searches on mobile phones, where users can simply tap on the relevant app to launch it.

Sean Quadlin, product marketing manager at Google, talks about best practices of finding the correct keywords for campaigns. Some of those tools include the keyword planner, and opportunities tab. He outlines the steps showing how to use the tools as well as the search terms report to identify the types of words that consumers use to search for specific products and services. For example, the keyword planner will make suggestions for keywords.

Mark Leech has put together a 2,500-word guide to help marketers improve content-led organic Web site traffic with free tools from Google. He provides tips on trend analysis from search reports on engines and YouTube, as well as insight into using Google Correlate, a tool designed to show other search terms that have similar search trends as the intended target terms.

Google Cast-based SmartCast technology will appear in future soundbars and stand-alone speakers of Vizio smart-TVs, according to Joseph Palenchar, citing the television manufacturer. The company embedded Google Cast technology in the TVs, enabling them to stream content through thousands of apps running on a mobile device, including music- and movie-streaming apps. The technology pulls content directly from the cloud instead of the mobile device, reducing the drain on the batteries of mobile devices. It also provides better audio and video quality, per Palenchar.

Advertisers should care that consumers want to know they can visit a Web site using a Chrome, an Edge or a Safai browser without being hacked. At this year’s Pwn2Own hacking contest, the teams found 21 vulnerabilities in Windows, Mac OS X, Flash, Safari, Edge and Chrome, for which they were awarded in aggregate of $460,000. The report found that Safari was attacked three times. Microsoft’s Edge browser proved more difficult to attack compared with its previous browsers, but still successful. Hackers attacked Chrome twice. One attack failed; the other deemed a partial success, according to one report. 

Not unlike Netflix, GIF search engine Giphy plans to slowly transition from indexing third-party content to original content. “We'll be focusing on high quality, high-end content,” Giphy co-founder Alex Chung tells Engadget. “Our original content will be a small part; we'll do branded agency work as well … A team of animators and editors will be working on it.”

The owner of two privacy search engines will merge the brand names beginning March 26, according to a notice on the company's Web site. IxQuick.com, launched in 1998 by David Bodnick in New York, was acquired by the Dutch-based corporation Surfboard Holdings. The search engine is known as StartPage in the United States. The company is merging the two names and will be known as StartPage.com. 

Microsoft announced that Bing Ads is testing social extensions in the U.S. Bing's social ad extension allows companies to place a link under their search engine results listing to promote their social accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr. It appears similar to the links in Google's Knowledge Graph that appear in the right column of search query results.

PR Newswire, a UBM company, has unveiled an updated Web site, boasting the company's ability to drive search traffic from its press releases in query results to PRNewswire.com. It reports the site drives  58% more monthly unique visitors, according to compete.com, and 175% more organic search traffic from Google, per SEMRush, compared with its closest competitor.  

Shiwangi Peswani explains how to redirect searches from Edge and Bing to Chrome and Google when using a PC running the Windows 10 operating system. She writes that a "small tweak" in the browser settings does the trick by enabling the Windows desktop search redirection flag on Chrome Web browser.