Siddharth Shah has a fascinating post over on Search Engine Land. The key point: Customers searching for a singular term (shoe vs. shoes) are more valuable than customers searching for plural terms (shoes vs. shoe).

Takeaway for marketers: There’s gold in them that Adwords data.

Remember how we all used to make fun of those little infographics on the front page of USA Today? Well, you’ve probably seen an explosion of infographics online over the past year or so. Here are 12 ways you can use them personally and for your business.

Takeaway for marketers: That thing you’re laughing at today might be an actual marketing tool tomorrow.

Social media is just like all of them, at least if you believe these articles and videos explaining why social media is like …

a string bikini
mini-golf
high school
a raucous bar
ranch dressing
fishing
long-distance running
sexual harassment
a small town
a 3D movie
Shakespeare
the Ed Sullivan show

We’ve been used to getting soda by vending machine for a long time, but how about pizza? Or bicycle parts? Or live crabs? Check out a gallery of the world’s most unusual vending machines over here.

… dollars. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 billion, that is. That’s how much Google contributed to the U.S. economy in 2011 … according to Google, of course. Social Times reports.