Digital Advertising Expenditures Expected to Surge in China
 China’s internet population is by far the world’s largest, 513 million people at the end of 2011 and still counting. This growing online population, as well as recent governmental restrictions on broadcast advertising in China mean that advertising expenditures are likely to be headed towards the digital platform. Social networking sites, online video and mobile (smartphones) especially are expected to benefit from this shift.
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Yandex to Speak in Munich
 Russian Search Engine Yandex has been confirmed as a speaker at the International Search Summit @ SMX Munich. Joining a range of international experts, Bernard Lukey will share insights into Europe’s largest internet market, and its leading search engine. The Summit is on 29th March, and there are still passes available.
Check out the full agenda.
Early Bird Tickets for International Search Summit @ SMX London are also still available. Book by 30th March to save!
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Cutting Through the Confusion of Google’s Guidance to Multilingual Website Owners
 How to proceed when geo-targeting multinational sites using the canonical and hreflang tags? Google’s rollout of Panda internationally has proven to be quite challenging for international webmasters and search marketers as many new tags, most importantly canonical and hreflang, have been introduced by Google. Although Google firmly denies that those tags are a response to Panda, this article questions whether this is really the case and explains when and how to use them.
Read the full article
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Baidu To Take On Google In South America
 China’s leading search engine, Baidu, has experienced a phenomenal 2011, according to the release of its financial results for the year gone by. With such exponential growth rates, analysts have long been speculating that the Chinese market alone does not provide enough room for Baidu’s continuous growth, and now it appears that Baidu has picked its first major target market outside of Asia.
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Google Expands Its Encrypted Search Internationally
 Google’s launch of encrypted search (SSL) back in October affected only signed in users on google.com. This week, the search company announced that it is expanding SSL internationally, meaning that SSL encryption will launch on local Google domains over the next few weeks. Advertisers on Google will still have access to search term referrer data, whereas many SEOs who rely more on organic traffic are likely to see keyword traffic data declining rather significantly.
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US Now Has More Than 100 Million Smartphone Users
 This Tuesday, comScore released its monthly report on mobile market share among device makers and operating systems. According to the findings, the U.S. now has more than 100 million smartphone users, with Google and Apple covering nearly 75 percent of the market. While the aforementioned companies have upheld and even continued their gains, these recent figures must raise some serious concerns at Microsoft and RIM.
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Ecommerce Continues its Ascent in Brazil
 Brazilians have become keen online shoppers, reveals a recent report. Compared to the previous year, the fourth quarter of 2011 saw engagement with online retail content grow by double-digits across key metrics including minutes, pages and visits, the report explains.
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Yandex: Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2011 Financial Results
 Yandex’s disclosure of its financial results for the fourth quarter and the full year is demonstrating strong revenue growth, up 60% compared to FY 2010. Russia’s leading search engine has made heavy investments in talent and infrastructure in the past year, and this positions Yandex well going forward, says company CEO, Arkady Volozh.
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