From search, social and content marketing insight offered at this week's SMX Advanced conference to market reports validating the efforts of internet marketers, this week saw a lot of buzz for the online marketing community.

The week started off with news that +1 might boost SEO. As Brafton reported, Dutch firm SEO Effect released a white paper indicating that it saw 20 percent more traffic after integrating the +1 button onto its site. There were clearly some limits to the study, and the company admits it was hard to isolate data to understand the impact of +1. Still, any +1 results available may be of interest to marketers as Google's Matt Cutts has suggested the data could become a ranking signal.

Should these social shares become a ranking factor, Google will be offering +1 analytics soon, Matt Cutts said at this week's SMX Advanced. The conference started on Tuesday – the same day Google announced the integration of Webmaster tools and Analytics. This combines marketers' ability to understand what drives clicks to their sites in the first place and what visitors do when they arrive.

Bing unveiled news of updated analytics this week, as well. Director of search Stefan Weitz announced Honey Badger (also announced in the company's blog). Honey Badger allows users to establish crawl settings and define role management, and Bing also explains its new Index Explorer in the Honey Badger announcement.

At SMX Advanced, Honey Badger was just a small part of Weitz's keynote. He focused on social search as the wave of the future of online shopping. With the company's Facebook-powered search, his theories (compellingly, albeit conveniently) position Bing as having a clear edge in the social search market.

Indeed, the power of social marketing in enhancing SEO was a widespread discussion topic at SMX Advanced. As Brafton reported, Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz shared data indicating that 61 percent of the top ranking websites in Google (for various keywords) also boast high Facebook share volumes. Of course, Matt Cutts made sure to remind attendees that correlation is not causation in his Q&A session later that day.

As Brafton reported, Cutts made clear that Google does not currently use Facebook share data as a ranking signal. Instead, he suggested that good content is perhaps as likely to be shared as it is to rank well. In fact, Cutts reiterated the need to use quality content marketing – especially in the post-Panda search landscape. Additionally, he hinted at new iterations of Panda to come, particularly focusing on the need penalize sites for scraping content and reward original publishers.

Further enforcing Google's commitment to promoting high-quality content, the company announced this week a new authorship markup. The markup can attribute content to specific authors, and Google says this aims to “highlight authors and rank search results” accordingly.

Bing also emphasized the need for quality content in order to achieve SEO success. As Brafton reported, Duane Forrester who runs Bing's webmaster program reminded marketers that content is still king when it comes to search rankings.

Of course, marketers may value this insight as it relates to Google more than Bing. ComScore's most recent search rankings indicate that Google is still No. 1 for search, and Bing's share seems static. This may be related to the fact that SMX Advanced insight suggests Bing is less efficient when it comes to crawling the web, and users have more search result options via Bing. (Marketers looking to rank well in the post-Panda search market can check out Brafton's blog on Panda survival SEO tips from SMX Advanced experts, as well as tips on using brand efforts to boost SEO.)

Of course, Bing may be trying to promote itself in the search world via mobile search. The company announced its iPhone app discovery tool, exclusively offered to Bing searchers. Plus, Search Engine Land reports that Bing discussed more mobile search social features during its SMX Advanced sessions surrounding its Bing Business Portal feature. The updates include a “Share on Facebook” service that allows users to share content directly from search results and local business listing.

The integration of social, mobile and local marketing was another big topic at SMX Advanced. As Brafton reported, attendees offered insight on successful SoLoMo campaigns. The event support data Brafton shared earlier this week, suggesting branded content and social advocacy are key to mobile success.

While much of this week's news revolved organic search and content-driven social efforts, paid search also made headlines. An eMarketer forecast indicates that online ad spend will grow 20 percent this year, and paid search will account for the lions

Next week, marketers will want to look out for more info on Panda 2.2, and also be on the lookout for headlines from SES Toronto. Stay tuned!