Google is advertising new Chromebooks to some users for $249. While the ad is unobtrusive and momentarily makes the start page more interesting, users who have seen the ads aren’t impressed, especially those who can’t even buy one in their country.

A new report from CPC Strategy looks at how Google Shopping fared against its rival, Amazon Product Ads, after making the switch to a commercial model in Q3 last year. The analysis finds its performance changed significantly compared to Amazon Product Ads, and further evidence that the move… Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Google’s Pierre Far said on Google+ that the Google Data Highlighter tool, which originally only worked in English, now supports all the languages supported within Google Webmaster Tools…

This has happened to most of us at one point or another: We start optimizing a website’s URL structure or permalink slugs to be more user- and SEO-friendly, and we end up forgetting about an old URL that dozens of websites were already linking to. Since your old page no longer exists, Google will likely Author information James Parsons James Parsons is the SEO Client Manager at AudienceBloom.com , a Seattle-based SEO firm. You can find him through his personal blog , Google+ , or by email .

Tampa-based BlueGlass has strengthened its European presence with the acquisition of Swiss digital marketing agency Idealizer. The move comes as the company also launches a new operational hub in Switzerland aimed at serving the EMEA region.

An ongoing WebmasterWorld thread has some chatter around an increase in GoogleBot crawl activity as well as some early ranking fluctuations.

Did you know 2.5 quintillion bytes (25,000,000,000,000,000,000) of digital data is created every single day, the majority being centered around you? Every day, we send 145bn emails, 340m tweets and 2 million searches queries to Google.

The week in big brand social media marketing started off with a lot of buzz.  On Monday, the verified Twitter account for Burger King was taken over and rebranded for McDonalds.  It took a few hours for Twitter to suspend the account and restore control to the flame-broiled burger chain

While buyer personas (user personas) are an established concept in broader B2B marketing discussions, it has taken on new life in recent years. The shift organizations are making to a digital marketing strategy coupled with innovation in technology (should) allow Internet marketers the ability to…

(and No, “Content Marketing” Isn’t One of Them) Link building is a problem. And it’s more of a problem now than ever, because it requires real humans with real brains in their heads, having real ideas, and really implementing those ideas