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An important factor to success for any online retailer is which keywords to find and add to your search marketing efforts. Most retailers keep a lid on their most successful keywords, but the process for finding them isn't exactly a secret. Kate Goodman, vice president of e-commerce at women's apparel retailer Talbots, and Courtney Wegner, client services manager at iProspect, a search marketing firm, shared best practices to finding your brand's keywords in a session titled, How I Found My Best Keywords, at the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition in San Diego yesterday.

According to PriceGrabber's 2011 Father's Day consumer spending survey, 45 percent of Father's Day shoppers will search daily-deal sites for a gift this year. When those consumers were asked which daily-deal sites they would use, 52 percent indicated Groupon, 46 percent said PriceGrabber's new local deals category, 29 percent said Google Offers, 20 percent said Living Social, and 15 percent indicated Facebook Deals.

Companies are clearly gearing up for anticipated growth and adoption of mobile banking. According to our recent surveys, however, consumers appear to be dipping their toes rather than jumping in to the digital wallet waters.

Consumers today are looking for a fun and easy shopping experience. Will technology like Google Wallet help with those goals?

The growth of the web over the last decade-and-a-half has been a mixed blessing for brick-and-mortar retailers. While it's created a vast array of new customer touchpoints, it's also introduced the pernicious problem of maintaining those touchpoints across channels.

"I'm currently thinking about using Groupon to promote my local retail business. Are there any best practices around it that I should follow?"

Mia Sara, a Manhattan transplant in Los Angeles, misses window shopping in New York, but has found a replacement — shopping on her iPad.

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt and Google Vice President of Commerce Stephanie Tilenius announced at the D9 Conference that Google Offers beta is launching today in Portland, Ore. 

Google was sued by PayPal over claims it misappropriated trade secrets from PayPal’s mobile payment business. Osama Bedier, a former PayPal executive now at Google, stole PayPal’s confidential information, the company said in the lawsuit filed yesterday in state court in San Jose, California. Stephanie Tilenius, another ex-PayPal executive now at Google, violated contractual obligations by recruiting Bedier, PayPal said.

Major retailers are joining forces with Google to test Google Wallet, an Android application that allows consumers to use virtual versions of their existing plastic credit cards. Consumers can pay for an item using a credit card or gift card, redeem promotions and earn loyalty points — all with a single tap of their smartphone.