Marketers in charge of advertising budgets find that the complexity of technology makes it increasingly difficult to prove and measure return on investments (ROI). Only 10% of C-level executives participating in a 2016 survey say more than 75% of their advertising and marketing budget is accountable to ROI -- down from 40% in 2015.

Woven into the political news making headlines Tuesday, Google introduced new features to Google Search that track the primaries to teach those who are interested more about the candidates.

Google will soon allow ads for games to stream in Android search results, enabling users to take them for a spin before choosing whether to download -- and sometimes buy - them.

Google has sent a clear message to bloggers. Disclose the relationship and don't link to brand Web sites in exchange for products or services mentioned in blog posts that could contribute to an increase in the brand's position in organic search listings on its engine when receiving a freebee. Bloggers must add the nofollow code to the link that prevents its crawler from giving the post too much, well, equity, the quality of being fare and impartial, which could push it to the top in search query rankings.

Search engines are complicated, but I'm pretty sure I don't need to make that case with search marketers. While on my way to Austin, Texas to attend South By Southwest Interactive, I picked up "The New Yorker" magazine. The lead story, titled "Annals of Technology, Learn Different, Silicon Valley Disrupts Education," caught my attention. The headline on the cover read "Learning to Think Different."

Cisco, a leading manufacturer of network equipment, has acquired a search engine. While the financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, Rowan Trollope, VP of Internet of Things and Collaboration Group at Cisco, shed light on the company's integration plans.

Mobile contributes 88% to all "near me" searches, with those growing at 146% year-over-year. The key to success, however, is recognizing and optimizing marketing campaigns for theme-specific keywords in categories such as cars and hotels, according to Google data.

TubeMogul has launched war on Google through a cross-channel advertising campaign aimed at people who work in the ad business. It's a scene out of the playbook of search marketers.

Experts said the use of content would explode this year in ways not seen in the past. I'm not sure they imagined the ability to post in an instant without the need to index the content before serving it up in query results on a search engine, similar to the way Facebook posts are done.

Microsoft will use data from Bing to help basketball fans feel a bit more educated when making predictions about winning and losing teams. The deal syncs Bing data with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).