Five For Friday — December 31, 2012 – January 4, 2013

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Here are five of this short week’s most interesting and important news items and articles:

1.  2012 U.S. Online Holiday Spending Grows 14 Percent vs. Year Ago to $42.3 Billion — If you are wondering what the grand total of holiday spending online wound up to be this year, particularly as compared to last, comScore has the details.

2.  FTC: Google Pushing Its Own Products in Search Results Is Fair Game — One of the biggest news stories of 2012 was the continuing FTC investigation into antitrust allegations against Google, but the case was settled this week in Google’s favor.

3.  Pinterest Makes First Acquisition by Scooping Up Recipe Discovery Site Punchfork — Marketing Land reports on Pinterest’s first foray into the world of acquisitions.

4.  16 Commonly Asked (and Answered) PPC Questions — PPC Hero has a nice roundup of frequently asked questions about pay-per-click marketing that should interest all levels of paid search pundits.

5.  Case Study: Quadrupling A Small Account’s Conversion In Just 90 Days — Brad Geddes at Search Engine Land provides an intriguing look at how some attention to CPA bidding resulted in an incredible increase in conversions.

Image: TGIF by Shutterstock

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