At PubCon Las Vegas, WebProNews spoke with David Roth, Yahoo’s Director of Search Marketing, who has an interesting perspective on the recent Microsoft/Yahoo search advertising transition (or “Search Alliance“), because not only does he work for Yahoo, he does Yahoo’s …

Google introduced a new feature to its AdWords Search Funnels today: the Top Paths (Query Paths) report. Search Funnels are a set of reports that describe ad click and impression behavior on Google.com that leads up do a conversion.  

Google has announced that it is rolling out AdWords Campaign Experiments to all U.S. advertisers. This is a free tool that the company says makes it easier to test and measure the impact of changes to keywords, bids, ad groups, and placements.

Google has announced a new advertising format for Google Merchant Center users. The format is based on the product extensions AdWords format that lets advertisers add specific product listings.

Google has announced a new location extensions ad format with map features. Businesses can feature their locations and phone numbers on an expandable map ad that can appear on mobile sites and apps in the Google Display Network.

This format shows up as a banner text ad with a business icon that expands to show the business location on a Google map, including ad creative, a click-to-call phone number and an option to get directions.

Yahoo has begun testing organic and paid search listings from Microsoft. Up to 25% of its search traffic in the U.S. may see organic listings from Microsoft, and up to 3.5% may see paid listings from Microsoft adCenter. I guess you could say that the early stages of the Search Alliance’s transition have begun.

Will you place more emphasis on Bing optimization as it integrates with Yahoo Search? Let us know.

Google Ventures has invested in a paid search marketing firm called Trada. Google Ventues has invested $5.75 million in Trada, along with Foundry Group, which previously invested $2.2 million in the company.

Microsoft and Yahoo have released a new video illustrating how the two companies intend to create a "powerful new choice in search" with their Search Alliance, due to begin making its way to customers before the end of the year.

There is not much in the way of news about the alliance to come from the video, but it does put its goal into a simple, easy-to-understand 2 minutes without going into all of the specifics.