Some of the missed opportunities include the role SEM plays in partner and affiliate management. Less than 40% of marketers surveyed agree that paid search can play a strategic role in brand protection from competition, and only 43% agree that it helps to streamline the customer journey. Some 90% agree that SEM can provide insight, but only 41% have ever tracked how their company performs against the competition. The challenge of how to implement this remains.

The Lens feature will now identify more similar online products to purchase, with more than 2.5 billion objects across home and fashion Pins, according to the company.

Some 25% of marketers surveyed said they aren't prepared to use chatbots, with 23% citing voice search, 17%, artificial intelligence and machine learning; 17%, podcast advertising; 12%, visual search; and 6%, video search.

Looking to tackle invalid or misleading online reviews across its search engine, Google on Monday announced an algorithmic update to rich review snippets, a short excerpt of a review rating from a website.

Depending on the product category, sponsored listings can improve consumer search effectiveness and increase conversion rates and marketplace profit, Columbia Business School research finds.

Directive Consulting, a global enterprise search marketing agency, will launch a full-learning management system that educates the user through practical templates, tools, approaches for SEO and paid search, and conversion rate optimization. The company is on track to build out technology that will help enterprise companies focus on their brands.

SharkNinja marketers worked with Clarabridge to analyze keywords and identify unmet consumer needs -- not just in the company's own products, but competitive products too.

Google's nofollow link attribute will act as a "hint" rather than a specific directive for ranking. Google will also add two new attributes for sponsored content and user-generated content.

Microsoft Advertising has released what it is calling a product negative keyword conflicts report for shopping campaigns to ensure ads don't serve up in response to irrelevant search queries.

Attractive reviewers have more clout with online recommendations, Cornell University research finds. The studies could have implications for marketers seeking to save people from making superficial judgments.