News

SEO and content marketers take note: Bing has announced the top queries of 2011, and the annual overview might give insights on big end-of-the-year search traffic (as well as popular queries to come).

Black Friday resulted in substantial sales increases for businesses both online and in-store, according to separate reports from comScore and MarketWatch.

Google reported on Monday the addition of the Spotlight button, which will show users stories their friends +1’d on Google+.

Market research firm comScore estimates that ecommerce shopping will rise 15 percent this holiday season.

Google announced a new iPad search app aimed at simplifying mobile search and making social sharing easier for those using the popular tablet. The update helps position search and social marketing efforts for more engagement with tablet users.

A report from Facebook’s data team found that the average degree of separation between Facebook users is 4.74 people, and marketers might find this helps them leverage fans to reach a very broad social audience.

A report from Socialbakers found that Walmart is leading the social media marketing initiative ahead of Black Friday, and internet marketers should strive for similar success to engage the wave of consumers who turn to social platforms to inform holiday shopping.

A report from eMarketer said that one-third of web consumers will own tablets by 2014, and this means more opportunities to reach on-the-go audiences with content marketing.

A report from TechCrunch reveals that Sponsored Stories will now appear in users’ news tickers.

Yahoo said on Friday that it has finalized its transition to Bing, and its Site Explorer services are shut down. Marketers trying to gauge Yahoo traffic volumes must use Bing Webmaster Tools.