Google’s latest search engine algorithm will impact 35 percent of search engine searches, according to Google Fellow Amit Singal. Hint: it’s all about recency AND relevancy.

Google announced its new ranking algorithm change last Thursday. It builds on the Caffeine web indexing system, which Google introduced in 2010 to allow the search engine to quickly crawl and index the Internet for fresh content on a much larger scale than before.

1 in 6 Americans or 15 percent of U.S. adults now use an e-reader or electronic reading device, almost double the 8 percent in 2010. What’s more, of those Americans who don’t have an e-reader, 1 in 6 plan to get one in the next 6 months.

Based on a Harris Poll of 2,183 adults in July 2011, those with e-readers also tend to read more than American adults in general. While 16 percent of Americans read 11-20 books per year and 20 percent read 21 or more books per year, a third of e-reader owners (32 percent) read 11-20 books a year and over a quarter (27 percent) read 21 or more books per year.

Here’s a nifty free tool for checking for broken links on your website. It’s called, funnily enough, LinkChecker and it’s one of many handy tools for Internet marketers and webmasters available at Vebtools.

How does it work? Just go to LinkChecker, type in the URL of the webpage you want to test, key in the captcha code and click on the button to let it run.

If the conversion rates of telecommunications marketers are any indication, mobile ads are about 600 percent more effective than standard banner ads.

Research by MediaMind shows that, among telecommunications marketers at least, the conversion rate for mobile ads is six times or 600 percent the performance of standard website banner ads.

One in five U.S. consumers (22 percent) are using digital media such as email, text messaging and Internet sites to get household coupons to help them save money on products and services.

Despite the popularity of online coupons, however, they aren’t the most popular source of savings coupons. Not yet, anyway. In fact, Scarborough Research finds that Sunday newspapers are the most popular source of household coupons, followed by retailers themselves and good old fashioned mail.

Here’s more ‘mixed evidence’ over the benefits of daily deal sites for local businesses. July 2011 research reveals that while nearly two-thirds of U.S. businesses had run a profitable promotion on daily deal site, Groupon, 82 percent were unhappy with the level of repeat business generated by the promotion.

The research, conducted by Cooper Murphy Copywriters, also found that while only 35 percent did not make money from their Groupon promotion, most noted that Groupon users were more price-sensitive than the average customer. All in all, out of the survey of 300 businesses:

Consumers not only read online reviews before visiting local businesses, but they form their ‘first impressions’ of such businesses based on such online reviews.

Research by RatePoint shows that 76 percent of consumers read online reviews before buying from a company they’ve never used before. Meanwhile, 81 percent look for online reviews before engaging local businesses that provide in-home services.

Car buyers prefer good-looking websites, and are more likely to be satisfied with automotive websites with attractive colors, low visual clutter, well organized content, large fonts and minimal links, according to research by J.D. Power and Associates.

J.D. Power and Associates’ ’2011 Manufacturer Website Evaluation Study’ measured the usefulness of automotive manufacturer websites during the new-vehicle shopping process. In the May 2011 study, 10,400 new-vehicle shoppers were asked evaluate websites in four key areas: appearance, speed, navigation and information/content.

The days of a life insurance sales person coming to your home or office and selling you life insurance may be slowly coming to an end, if a new study by LIFE Foundation and LIMRA is any indication.

The organizations’ ’2011 Insurance Barometer Study’ shows that while two thirds of consumers (64 percent) still prefer to buy life insurance from an insurance or financial professional, that number is down from 1996, when 8 in 10 (80 percent) preferred to buy the product face-to-face.

A survey of 726 Americans by Ongo shows that more than half (56 percent) visit the Internet once or twice per day to read or view news. Nearly a third go online for news three or more times a day.

In other findings, Ongo reports that: