Over the past couple of months we have been communicating to our clients as to what Universal Search is.  We thought we would just perform a quick recap of Universal Search for those who still may have questions about it.

Breakdown of Universal Search 

WHO: Google
WHAT: A comprehensive way to search for and view information online involving more than just  typical text-based search results.
WHERE: Google search results pages.
WHEN: Released May 16, 2007.
WHY: To provide more comprehensive information to the searcher that includes standard web search results, blog results, images, video results, local/map results, news results, books, patents, finance, code and catalogs.

Simply put, Google's Universal Search blends content from Google Images, Maps, Books, Video, and News into their web results.  For the average user of Google, this means that depending on the query that you are searching for, you may be served up with various forms of media.  Try a search for Amazing Spiderman, Clint Eastwood, or iphone.  You will notice that the results are now filled with news listings, videos, images, blog results and of course traditional search results.  Previously you would have only received the later. 

Does Universal Search Improve the Search Experience?

Well this is debatable. It depends if you are interested in video or image results that may "distract" you from your intent.  The problem with Universal Search is that it can "cloud" the results and provide results that are not relevant to your search query.  For me personally, I want relevant results all of the time.  If the most relevant result is an image that's fine just don't show it to me when I am actually looking for the latest news story or for the latest blog post about a topic of interest.

If Universal Search returns irrelevant results, the least Google could do is make Universla Search an optional feature that users could have some control over.  As it is right now, there is no way to "turn off" Universal Search.

More on Universal Search

Official Google Press Release on Universal Search
An Intimate View of the World through the Eyes of Google
What Influences Universal Search?
Guide to Google's Universal Search

As with any reputation issue, there are numerous factors that can affect your online reputation. External factors on your business as a result of rumors or gossip can have a negative impact on your online visibility. Here is a look at some of the most common factors that can affect your online reputation.Factors Affecting Your Online Reputation

Questionable Business Operations - This is where corporate activity adversely impacts on stakeholder groups. Examples include the Enron dilemma and more recently the World Wrestling Entertainment having to defend themselves against allegations that the use of steroids is rampant with their performers in the wake of the Chris Benoit murder suicide. From a PR disaster viewpoint, in Enron's case they were unable to recover resulting in the downfall of the company.

Corporate Moves - With things such as acquisitions, mergers or takeovers, there's plenty of room for dissatisfaction and even scandal, such as when a jury found Martha Stewart guilty on all four counts of obstructing justice and lying to investigators about a well-timed stock sale. Other examples of corporate downfalls include the Bre-X scandal when in 1997, Bre-X collapsed and its shares became worthless in one of the biggest stock scandals in Canadian history, and the biggest mining scandal of all time.

Legalities / Court Proceedings - When issues are debated in court, then reported in the media - such as the much publicized McDonald's 'McLibel' case, the potential for PR disasters can be enormous. Many labeled the McDonald's libel case as 'the world's biggest corporate PR disaster'.

Rumors - Gossip can be highly damaging for brand reputation. For years Procter & Gamble were linked to rumours of Satanism. The rumours started in part by a competitor plagued the company for decades forcing an international logo redesign and extensive reputation management and damage control efforts.Staff - the story of two former Walmart executives—Julie Roehm and Sean Womack—accused of engaging in an affair while hunting for new ad agencies for the retail giant. Another well publicized PR blunder involving staff took place in 2001 when New York's Twin Towers collapsed on 9/11, staff at one of the city's Starbucks charged rescue workers for bottled water they needed to treat victims of the attack. When word got out 'virally' about this incident, the PR fallout was highly damaging.

Scandal - Financial, sexual or personal exploits generally capture the media's attention, such as when Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick was recently found to be involved with a dog fighting ring. After the media caught wind of the story, Vick's lucrative sponsorship deals (Nike, Reebok) and image of rags-to-riches became jeopardized.

Reputation disasters can emerge from almost any area including your business dealings or from the private lives of employees. These reputation mishaps can be difficult to predict, prevent or recover from. Offline PR blunders can affect your online visibility. The factors listed above are but a few factors that can affect your online reputation.

The future of search has been on my mind a lot lately. I've just done a series of interviews with some of the top influencers and observers in the space (Marissa Mayer, Danny Sullivan, Greg Sterling, Michael Ferguson, Steven Marder, Jakob Nielsen and others) talking about what the search results page may look like in 2010. I'll be trying to corral this into a white paper for the fall. I've also chatted with a few people about the future of search marketing. And here's the sum of it all. "Hang on, because you ain't seen nothing yet!"

Change is the Constant

I have remarked to a number of people in the last week or two that I've seen more change in the past 6 months in the search results page than I have in the last 10 years. And all my interviewees seem to agree, we're just at the beginning of that change. Whether its personalization, universal results, Web 2.0 functionality or mobile, our search experience is about the change drastically. Search will become more relevant, more functional, more ubiquitous and more integrated. It will come with us (via our mobile devices) more often and in more useful ways. It will expand our entertainment options. It will change forever our local shopping trips. And it will all happen quickly.

As Search Goes, So Goes SEM

The question is, what does this do for search marketing? Again, in a conversation I was having just this morning, I was asked where the major innovation in the search marketing space was coming from. This was prefaced by the person saying that when a well known industry analyst was asked the same question, they (I'll keep the gender neutral, as there really aren't that many industry analysts out there) said there was almost no innovation coming from search marketers. They were "living off the fat".  My first inclination was to jump to the defense of the industry, but this proved harder than I thought. I realized that I haven't seen a lot of innovation from our industry lately. Certainly the engines themselves are innovating. And I'm seeing innovation in adjacent areas (web analytics, competitive intelligence). But I'm not seeing a lot happen in the search marketing space. After a raft of proprietary bid management tools hit a few years ago, there's been little happening to move the industry forward. In fact, I've noticed a lot of SEM heads buried in the sand. Not only are we not encouraging change, we're actively fighting it.

There are probably a lot of reasons why. First and foremost, I think a number of companies that have been in the space for awhile are tired. I've touched on this in a previous three part series here in the Search Insider. Secondly, it's tough to develop new tools or technologies when you're completely dependent on API's or (worse still) scraping information from the search engines. It's a very risky call to spend time and resources developing new tools or technologies that can be rendered useless by an arbitrary change at Google or Yahoo or obsolete by the rapidly increasing pace of innovation.

Either Help Push or Get Off!

Whatever the reason (and I'm sure the Search Insider blog will be getting a number of posts from you refuting my observation) the fact is that if search marketers are, in fact, riding the wave, that is going to come to a crashing halt very soon. The need for innovation and changing your strategic paradigm is greater than ever. As the search engines change up the rules, if search marketers want to survive, we have to change. Innovation will become a necessity.

And, in the end, this will be a very good thing. The change that's happening in the search space is reflective of the change that is happening throughout marketing and advertising. It's the continuing evolution of a much more efficient marketplace, where connections between customers and vendors are made tremendously more effective through access to information on both sides. The traditional uncertainty of advertising is being leeched out of the system, due in large part to the tremendous effectiveness of search. And as search becomes more relevant and useful, it will make those connections more reliable, less intrusive and more successful for both parties. The opportunity is there for search marketers to help advertisers negotiate this more efficient marketplace successfully. It remains to be seen if we're up for the challenge.

Originally published in Mediapost's Search Insider, July 26, 2007 

Google Alerts have been around for a while now, yet when I mention using them to many clients it is apparent that they have not used Google Alerts or do not understand how they can be used as an effective online reputation management tool. 

What Are Google Alerts?

Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic. 

There are 5 types of alerts that you can sign up for: 

1. News alert is an email aggregate of the latest news articles that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top ten results of your Google News search.
2. Web alert is an email aggregate of the latest web pages that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top twenty results of your Google Web search.
3. Blogs alert is an email aggregate of the latest blog posts that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top ten results of your Google Blog search.
4. Groups alert is an email aggregate of new posts that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top fifty results of your Google Groups search.
5. Comprehensive alert is an aggregate of the latest results from multiple sources into a single email to provide maximum coverage on the topic of your choice.

Why Use Google Alerts?

Google Alerts can be a useful tool in two main areas:

1. Gathering Competitive Intelligence – use Google alerts to see what is happening with your major competitors in the news, on the Web and in the Blogosphere.  It can be a great tool for finding out about new developments in a timely manner.
    
2. Reputation Management – find out about what people are saying about you and your products, what people are blogging about.  Use Google Alerts to monitor your brand reputation on the web and in the blogosphere

How Do I Set Up Google Alerts?

1. Visit Google Alerts by going to: http://www.google.com/alerts
2. Enter a search query that you would like to be “alerted” about.  This could be a product name, a company name, a website URL or a more general key phrase that is specific to your industry.
3. Specify one of the 5 types of alerts that you would like to receive.
4. Specify the frequency of the alerts.  Your choices at this time are once a day, as-it-happens or once a week.
5. Enter your email address.  Not if you are setting up a number of alerts, you may want to considering creating a new email account such as a Gmail account to use as your Google Alerts email.
6. Click “Create Alert”

Checking/Managing Your Alerts 

The easiest way to check your alerts is through a Gmail email account.  With a Google Gmail account you are able to:

• Create Alerts without email verification
• Change how often an alert is emailed
• Access other Google products like Answers, Google Groups and more!
• On the 'Manage Your Alerts' page, you can view, create, verify, edit, and remove any alert you wish.  This page is accessed by logging into your Google account.

You can create up to 1000 alerts in total.   

Google Alert Resources

Google Alerts FAQ
Using Google Alerts for Intelligence Gathering
Google Alerts at Wikipedia

Have you looked at your blog's stats lately and noticed that your blog's traffic is starting to plateau. Blogging is not simple, it takes a lot of hard work to continuously come up with new ideas for content and blog promotion. I remember last year at this time there were some excellent blog promotion strategies, however even some of those suggestions have been over exhausted. Some of these useful but sometimes over used suggestions included:

• Creating top 5, 10, 20 lists
• Submitting your blog to blog directories and Dmoz
• Using your blog's URL in your email signature
• Linking to your blog in MySpace

Thinking outside the box these days becomes challenging because the box is SO big. If you're looking for something new, give some of the blog promotion strategies below a try. They may not lead to instantaneous traffic nor are they necessarily easy to implement, but they will help you build your brand and help grow your long term traffic:

1. When writing a blog post trying using full names of organizations, using organizations' stock symbols and linking them to their Google Finance page (if applicable). Google Finance often has a section for blog posts related to an organization. If your post makes it onto a popular company's Google Finance page you can expect some decent referrals.
2. Release a free PDF of your blog's top posts or write a 4-5 part series on a given topic and develop that series into a PDF to give away for free. Within the PDF provide links for people to subscribe as well as information regarding advertisement opportunities.
3. Blogs such as the Google Blogs and Seth Godin's Blog have trackbacks turned on, meaning if you link to one of their posts that blog post will automatically generate a link back to your original post. This strategy has to be done in the right context because I definitely don't recommend linking to these blogs' posts in irrelevant context or overusing this tactic.
4. Rather than simply linking to your blog within your Facebook profile, develop a community surrounding your blog by developing a Facebook group. This can really expand virally if you have a large network of friends.
5. Reignite past hot topics with updates. If you wrote about "How Google Makes Money" last year, consider writing a quarterly or year update to this post.

*BONUS: People absolutely love widgets and apps, so I am going to give you a suggestion for an app to build: FeedBurner offers an API which allows you to retrieve a given blog's subscribers (if it's enabled), I would love to see an app which quickly allows you to compare subscribers between bloggers or EVEN better take a page out of GoogleFight's book and develop a FeedBurner Fight application.

The most fun and most difficult part of blog promotion is to be creative, although with millions of bloggers in the blogosphere it can become awfully challenging. To be successful, a blogger has to find their 'zone' and motivation, mine often comes when I start scribbling ideas on a piece of paper rather than typing them directly into my laptop. Sounds a little old school but it works.

Original Post: Web Analytics World

For the first time in a long time I've been consistently frustrated with the result that Google's been returning for several of my searches.  It's not that Google's getting worse, it's that the nature of my searches have changed significantly.  My searches are getting fuzzier as I'm stepping into territory I don't know very well.  Google is not functioning terribly well as my "discovery" engine.

Aaron's Ambient Findability

Aaron Goldman wrote an absolutely fascinating column last week about ambient findability, based on Peter Morville's book.  I'll definitely be taking Aaron's advice and ordering my copy from Amazon soon.  The interesting thing was that I read Aaron's column shortly after I did an interview with Jakob Nielsen where he expressed similar cynicism about the practicality of search personalization.  To sum up, both instances pointed to the fact that doing personalization is very difficult to do right.  It's probably impossible to do perfectly.  But then again, personalization shouldn't be perfect because humans aren't.  There will always be the human element of variability and unpredictability.

Google's Limits as a Discovery Engine

As much as the topic of ambient findability fascinates me (I explored the territory myself in a previous SearchInsider) I won't steal Aaron's thunder because I know he's doing a follow-up column this week.  I'll take a more mundane path and talk about my increasing level of frustration with Google.

As I mentioned in last week's column, I'm currently doing research for a book.  Right now, what I'm doing research on is the nitty-gritty of why and how we make purchase decisions.  By the way, Aaron suggested an interesting book so I'll do the same.  Please do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of Clotaire Rapaille's book The Culture Code.  This is one of the most fascinating marketing books I've read in some time.  Rapaille talks about the challenge of doing traditional market research in trying to uncover people's attitudes towards brands or other aspects of our culture, like food, healthcare and even the American presidency.  The problem is that in most traditional market research vehicles (focus groups & surveys) we're stuck with what people say.  It's almost impossible to uncover what people really feel.  What people say comes directly from their cerebral cortex, the logical and rational part of their brain.  But what they feel comes from the limbic and reptilian part of the brain, the dark, shadowy corners of our personas. The minute you ask them a question, no matter what the format, you immediately get the cortex in gear. This got me thinking about neural marketing and the actual mechanisms in our mind that click over when we make the decision to buy or not.

Rapaille's book simply served to whet my appetite.  I voraciously started looking for more of the same but books, research or articles that explore the primal reasons why we buy seem to be few and far between (hint: if you know of some please pass them along in the SearchInsider blog so we can all share). I turned to Google and tried a number of queries to try to dig up academic research or websites on a subject matter.  I was definitely venturing into new territory and while Google usually acts as a reliable guide, it was leaving me stranded high and dry in these particular quests.

Personalization is an Idea, not an Algorithm

So, let's get back to personalization.  Would personalization, in the form (Kamvar's algorithm) that is currently being envisioned and rolled out by Google, help me in this matter?  Probably not.  The signals (search and web history) would be too few to help me zero in on the content I'm looking for.  It wouldn't really improve Google's utility as a 'discovery" engine.  It would run into the same road blocks that Aaron and others consistently point out.

But here's the thing.  Google is making a huge bet on personalization.  But personalization is not the only thing Google is working on. Personalization simply acts as a hub. MIT's Technology Review recently did an interview with Peter Norvig, Google's Director of Research. Norvig is, quite literally, a rocket scientist (he was head of computational sciences at NASA in a previous life) who is taking Google's research in some interesting new directions. Speech recognition and machine translation are two notable areas. Speech recognition can overcome some major input obstacles not only on the desktop, but, more notably, on mobile devices and on a convergent home screen that fully integrates our online world and entertainment options. And machine translation can enable a number of automated systems that can power further online functionality. Both are very much aligned with Google's engineering view of the universe, where introducing people into the equation just introduces friction in an otherwise perfect world.

But the really telling part of the interview came when the conversation turned to search. Norvig talks about the current imbalance of search, where there is an avalanche of data available, but the only gate to that data are the few words the searcher chooses the share with the search engine. We're trying to paint personalization into a corner based on Google's current implementation of it. And that's absolutely the wrong thing to do. Personalization is not a currently implemented algorithm, or even some future version of the same algorithm. It's is an area of development that will encompass many new technologies, some of which are under development right now in some corner of Google's labs. Personalization, in its simplest form, is simply knowing more about you as an individual and using that knowledge to better connect you to content and functionality on the web. There are many paths you can take to that same end goal. Sep Kamvar's algorithm is just one of them. By the way, Norvig's particular area of expertise is artificial intelligence. Let's for an moment stop talking about personalization and start talking instead about what the inclusion of true artificial intelligence could do for the search experience. But artificial intelligence requires signals, and personalization is a good bet to provide those signals. It doesn't have to get it perfect every time, it just has to make it better.

Just as a last point, Marissa Mayer said in an interview that Google's current forays into personalization serve no other purpose than to give Kamvar some data to play with to improve his algorithms. We've all quickly jumped on personalization (and yes, I'm probably the most guilty of this) as the new direction of search, but many of us (and I believe my guilt ends here) are making the assumption that personalization means a form of what we're seeing today. It doesn't. Not by a long shot. And, at the end of the day, what we're looking for is a jump ahead in matching our needs with what the web has to offer. To win, Google doesn't have to do it perfectly. It just has to do it better than everyone else.

Originally published in Mediapost's Search Insider, July 19, 2007

Original Post: Online Reputation Management: What You Need to Know from SEO-Space

It's safe to say that reputation management is vitally important for all organizations that exist. In fact, whether it's on a personal or corporate level, everyone should be concerned about their reputation. On a personal level, having a damaged reputation can mean being a part of the "in-crowd" or being a loner. For businesses a damaged or negative reputation can mean millions of dollars. The importance of reputation management cannot be emphasized enough. In the wake of a negative experience and tarnished reputations, organizations have lost millions overnight, have had CEO's step down immediately and have even folded within months of negative publicity.

Prior to the development of the Internet, news often travelled slowly and methodically, but with the increasing popularity of blogs and social networks, news tends to travel rapidly and reaches the masses with swiftness as never before. In many cases, the general public is aware of information about your organization that you may not even be aware of yet. Online reputation management is a necessity.

Online Reputation Management What You Need to Know

Rumour, gossip, disgruntled employees and customer scorn can be highly damaging for brand reputation. Competition is increasing and PR firms are often reactive as opposed to proactive when dealing with their client's reputation. In fact studies about the world's top 10 PR firms suggests that around half of them have been linked to supposed PR disasters. So how do you go about protecting your online reputation? There are five keys to online reputation management.

1. Monitor Your Existing Online Presence - consumers use search to find information. When they perform a query in hope of finding information on your organization or brand, you want to make sure that your website and online properties are listed high in the search results. In order to manage your online reputation, you need to know what is being said about your brand online. An easy way to do this is through tools such as Google Alerts to see how your brand is fairing in the online world of Google. Set up alerts for key branded phrases including your company name.

2. Analyze Your Online Presence within the Search Engine Results - the search engine results update their index on a regular basis. With the increase in consumer generate content out there, it is not uncommon for a blogpost or negative article about your company to surface in the first page of organic search results. A company scandal or an ongoing law suit can provide fuel for the fire and can appear in the prime real estate of Google or other search engines. You need to get a grasp and develop a keen understanding of your search engine environment and that of your key competitors.
3. Control Your Online Destiny with Optimization - optimize your site and online properties so that you dominate the search results for your important branded terms. This includes optimizing your main corporate site, any micro-sites and sub-domains, corporate blogs, press releases, articles as well as online properties such as employee blogs and partner sites.
4. Control Your Online Destiny with Participation - Be active in industry forms, social networks, consumer review/opinion sites and the like. If your online reputation is suffering, participation within these areas can help change the negative perception that you may be incurring. Blogs are extremely popular for consumers and are often the first place they will go to find information. As a reuslt commenting on blogs can help communicate your stance and promote your company in a positive light.
5. Repeat Steps One Through Four - online reputation management only works if it is ongoing. Being proactive and understanding the consumer's perception of your brand and your organization is one of the best ways to begin with your online reputation management strategy.

To prevent the loss of revenue and repeat business, an ongoing online reputation management strategy should be developed by all organizations. Online reputation management can ensure the ongoing success of your brand and your organization.

I was reading Adotas this past week and noticed an article titled Google To Acquire Facebook? Google has been on a purchasing frenzy as of late and the acquisition of Facebook would further strengthen their arsenal. However a $900 million pending deal with MySpace (who provides Google with 11% of Google's traffic) and a no-compete clause makes Google have to tread very gently. Google does not want to end up losing MySpace to Yahoo! Personally, I think the purchase of Facebook would have quite a positive outlook for both Facebook and Google, here's why:

• Facebook would receive hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars in return.
• Google would get access to more personalized information from the millions of Facebook users. This would help Google in offering the most relevant search results.  Google does own Orkut, however Orkut only owns approximately 0.5% market share in the Social Networking space, primarily in Asia.  Personally I think Facebook is the superior product of the two.
• Google would gain yet another point of access to user behaviour data including upstream/downstream data at Facebook, Popularity of Groups / Locations / Users / Applications and time spent.
• Google could display contextual advertising throughout Facebook, furthermore they could offer users the ability to display AdSense on their profile/group pages allowing them to make money through Facebook.
• Facebook would receive enhanced search functionality.
• Google would have the ability to integrate many of its other services including gadgets, maps and checkout.
• If Google opened up Facebook profiles publicly (outside of the log-in), users and groups would become indexed in the organic search results. Public profiles would also allow images in Facebook to get indexed in Google's image search. Facebook users tag their images and this would make the images very relevant to search queries.  I know that this would violate the privacy of users, however Facebook could do something similar to LinkedIn where you can specify what is public and what is private.
• Google could apply authority based on the amount of friends a user has or the amount of people a group contains.
• When Google purchases a company they often make many services free, as they did with FeedBurner. Perhaps with Facebook they would offer gifts and polls (and related demographic data) for free.
• With Google's resources and deep pockets Facebook could receive numerous enhancements.

Facebook provides an excellent service and if Google does plan on acquiring Facebook they will have to work fast because Microsoft and Yahoo! are most likely lurking very close behind.   With the recent rumblings of a Facebook IPO the chance of Facebook being Acquired is looking much slimmer than ever before as I am sure Michael Zuckerberg and team have plans of their own.

I've been writing this column for almost 3 years now. In that time, one of the most rewarding and often humbling aspects is when I get to connect with the community that's formed around the SearchInsider column. I applaud MediaPost for introducing the SearchInsider blog, allowing us to turn each column into a conversation. As a writer, you get lazy and a little sloppy when you get too far disconnected from your audience. Getting feedback brings you back to earth. It reminds you that your musings are not going out in the great void. You're connecting with readers, and hopefully engaging them enough with a concept with which you elicit a response. It's one of the most powerful aspects of the internet.

Rewiring Communities

I'm tremendously intrigued by how the internet has rewired our concepts of community. I've talked about this before, and it formed the basis of my opening remarks at the Search Insider Summit in Florida in May. I love how we can participate in so many communities that are not tied by geography, but form around ideas and concepts. The online manifestations of our communities are the conversations that ensue. Each one of these columns can instantaneously create an ad hoc community that debates a topic. My column a few weeks ago was a great example. We formed a community around the concept of whether advertisers "get" search advertising in Canada, and together we created content through our conversation. I started the ball rolling, but the 18 of you that chose to leave a comment picked up the momentum and left something of value. You provided different perspectives, and the conversation grew richer for it. Some of you questioned my premise; some questioned my delivery and forced me to defend it. Many of you, while agreeing in principle, went further and added your own vision and expertise. For as long as MediaPost decides to leave that conversation accessible, anyone who chooses to see if such a community exists can pick up our threads through a search. They can connect our conversations with others that may have happened on the same topic through linking. They can build on the community by starting their own conversation. They can do a little detective work and track down some of us that commented and re-engage us with further dialogue. The community has permanence. It is real, and it is defined both by the concept we shared and by search, which connects the online outposts that make up the community.

Is Anybody Out There?

You know, for as long as I've been writing for SearchInsider (and I believe David Berkowitz and I are the two remaining original writers) I have no idea how many of you are out there, reading it. At the beginning, I asked MediaPost what the number of readers was and I never did get a reply. At first, this was important to me because I was looking at it as a promotional vehicle. But I think one of the reasons I didn't pursue it is because I've realized that writing this column is more important than just getting my name out there. As I travel from search show to search show, this column acts as a way for me to connect with many of you. The connection is more one sided than I may like, but it's gratifying when you mention that you read the column, or that the topic of one piqued your interest. They're like little "community seeds" that can in turn sprout into another conversation. And isn't that what the Internet is all about? Isn't that where the tremendous power of it lies? It's the world's largest conversation, and it's most powerful when it's a reciprocal activity.

Sorry to get all philosophical on you, but I've actually been doing research for a book and these concepts are inextricably tied into the topic of it. I've been threatening to do a book for a long time and someone (probably tired of hearing me go on and on about it with no apparent intention of actually doing it) told me that committing publicly is a great way to make it happen. So I've gone on record, and I hope each of you when you see me at a show ask me how the book is going. Or just tell me to get my butt in gear! One of the biggest challenges is for me to take the same interactive conversations that happen online and figure out how to incorporate that into the creation of a book. The internet has changed everything else. Why should writing a book be any different?

But back to the topic at hand. I often wonder about the future of anything that is centered on search, and this column is no exception. I'm an ardent believer that search is such a fundamental online activity, the glue of the internet, that soon search will disappear as a distinct function. It will go under the hood, powering the new evolution of the web, connecting us with the very best matches to our intent. I hope this column evolves along with search, and the conversations continue. In my mind, the best ones are yet to come.

Search Engine Marketing Buzzwords… you either love them or you hate them. Working in the marketing industry you hear (and use) your fair share of buzzwords. Earlier in the year I compiled a list of some of the more common marketing buzzwords. I was reviewing that list and noticed that there were a number of search engine marketing buzzwords. Being that search engine marketing is still fairly new, I was curious as to whether people were gettin sick of hearing search engine marketing buzzwords.  So I conducted a little study and found out that search engine marketing buzzwords are not unlike other buzzwords as they are often over-used and in cases misused.  Here is a look at some of the more "popular" search engine marketing buzzwords.

• SEO
• Search Engine Optimization
• Customized SEO
• Ethical SEO
• Black-hat SEO
• White-hat SEO
• Positioning
• Search engine friendly site
• Linkbait
• Backlinks
• social networking
• social media marketing
• indexing
• PageRank
• supplemental results
• SERPs
• redirects
• "dupes"
• SES
• SMX
• content is king
• external link inventories
• sitemaps
• optimization
• keyword density
• page optimization
• Meta-Refresh
• no-index no follow
• meta tag optimization
• search engine referrals
• Web 2.0
• SEO 2.0
• long tail keywords
• social bookmarking
• mobile SEO
• page stickiness
• bounce rate
• below the fold
• bringing SEO in-house
• keyword placement
• blogging
• SEM
• doorway pages
• mirrored sites
• calls to action
• conversion triggers
• online KPIs
• User-agent
• anchor text
• IBL factors
• text links
• site architecture
• traffic-generation tactics
• submission strategies
• Internet marketers
• pay per click
• pay per action
• natural rankings
• organic placement
• organic rankings
• algorithmic search
• link popularity
• feed readers
• RSS
• search volumes

We could go on and on.  I think that you get the point.  For those who are not search engine marketers, the lingo can get confusing if not frustrating.  Marketers are the ones who create these buzzwords and are the ones who, for the most part, use these buzzwords.  The average Joe (or Jill if you prefer) could care less about fancy search engine optimization buzzwords.  Unless of course they are trying to rank for any of them.  It wasn't too long ago that the buzzword "Google" became a wildly popular verb in the English language.  Hmm, maybe we do need buzzwords after all.