• Quality Score Coming to Microsoft adCenter – Last week, Microsoft announced that starting this spring, advertisers will be able to leverage a new adCenter Quality Score for optimizing campaigns in the Bing & Yahoo search marketplace.
• Changes to ad groups that target both placements and topics – Display Network ad groups targeting both placements and topics (categories, that is, not to be confused with keywords) will be switching from “or” logic to “and” logic.  This change should increase relevancy, but will reduce volume significantly.
• Negative Keywords for Product Listing Ads – Product listing ads managed through Google Merchant Center are getting negative keywords, just like AdWords ads.

SEO

• Removing Snippets and Instant Preview – If you are looking to prevent Google from displaying snippets and Instant Preview for specific pages, use this tag: <meta name=”googlebot” content=”nosnippet”.

Analytics

• Hands-On With HootSuite’s New Social Analytics Dashboard – Follow-up from last week: a quick rundown of the new features in HootSuite.  Overall looks to be a good, inexpensive way to track social media.
• Facebook Insights Gets Real-Time Analytics – Facebook recently updated their insights data and now provides additional info on like button analytics, comment box analytics, popular pages, demographics, and organic sharing.

Link Development

• A Model For Link Building: Beyond “Great Content” – Many link building experts claim that simply creating great content will result in a plethora of inbound links. However, creative link building strategies are still crucial in link development and acquisition.
• Journalism, ‘Churnalism’ & the Sticky Subject of Anchor Text Links – Find out how and when to approach the press with an anchor text objective.

Social Media

• Infographic: Which Social Sites Are Best for Which Marketing Outcomes – Are you looking for page views, then Facebook and Twitter are the sites to use. Flickr and YouTube are better for SEO.
• List of Social Media Policies – Still need to create a social media policy for your company or revamp your current policy? Here’s a great database of social media policies from top companies in every industry: Social Media Governance.com.
• SXSW Coverage – Weren’t able to make it to SXSW this week? Stay informed with all the news coming out of the premier social media event of the year by following Mashable’s coverage.

Local Search Engine Optimization

• Infographic: Owning Your Local Web Equity – Illustrates the big picture of local internet marketing and how the pieces relate.
• Facebook Launching Local Deals Subscription Service – Facebook subscribers to Deals location-based check-in rewards program will soon get news feed updates about nearby promotions.
• Facebook Places Page Owners Get Reports On Check-Ins And Deals – Owners of a Facebook Places Page can now get reporting on how many people are checking-in to their business, and how many are redeeming deals they’ve offered through Facebook

Landing Page Testing

• How to Increase Leads & Sales with Mobile Landing Pages – Ion Interactive provides an overview of QR codes, group based coupons, and effective mobile landing page strategy.
• Silver Ribbon Which Test Won Award – See the Travel & Hospitality Silver Ribbon award wining test, and how the booking page received a 9.2% lift in conversions.

B2C

• Changes for Google Product Search Merchants – Few updates for Google Product feeds, starting May 3rd including: unique product identifiers, shipping and tax information and sale price attributes.

B2B

• Top Tactics for Developing B2B Content – In terms of developing new content for lead nurturing, the top rated strategy is to reformat existing content and encourage customers to submit their own testimonials and case studies.

Retail/Storefront

• SCVNGR Launches New Hybrid App – Called LevelUp, a new app will attempt to merge the location-meets-game-mechanics with deals in effort to solve the loyalty question that other apps might have.  Users can “level up” and earn better deals at a local merchant each time they check in.

Web Design

• IE9 is out! – Internet Explorer 9 is released and it a tremendous step in the right direction (for both users and developers) for Microsoft.

Mobile

• Google to Test Mobile Payments in NYC and SF – Google is testing NFC payment systems in NYC and SF.  Mobile payments are in their infancy, and it’s still early days to determine who will dominate this space.
• Nearly 50% of U.S. Adults get Local News through Mobile – Especially important for local publishers.  Other highlights: 42% get weather updates and 37% info about restaurants or other local businesses.