All too often SEM (both sponsored and organic) is defined by and limited to the big five engines, but there is a vast amount of search occurring outside of these engines -- which means an array of opportunities for those smart enough to go after them. I have discussed these ideas with a variety of search experts who fully agree with me, but I have also talked with far too many who look at me as if I have lobsters hanging out of my ears. So I see a need for a wide-scale industry discussion to align the narrowly focused …

Geographic targeting has long been employed by search marketers and has even revolutionized the delivery and management of search campaigns of both local and national advertisers -- but we still long for behavioral and demographic bidding overlays. With every inch of additional targeting available, we want a mile. Still, I have to take a minute to call us out. This call out is specific to paid search. There is always something new or a change to adapt to, but in terms of impact, there hasn't been anything groundbreaking in a while.

It's official! With this column I break David Berkowitz's Search Insider column count record, with 225. And to commemorate the occasion, I wanted to follow up on a request that came in response to my column two weeks ago. I had warned any would-be students of human nature that this wasn't a quest to be taken lightly. A few readers responded by asking for a recommended reading list. So this week, I went through my bookshelf at home and jotted down a list of titles that I found particularly insightful or interesting in understanding the human condition.

As I wrote the title above, for a moment I had to stop to determine whether or not I might have been subconsciously influenced by the new social search engine Wowd's name (or had maybe given in too easily to writing puns, as I am sometimes prone to do), in boldly making the claim that other readers would all share in my first reaction to this new real-time search offering.

Just as my "Failure is the New Success" column was coming out last week, I had a conversation with my friend Richard. "Your name came up recently," he told me. "We were talking about failure so of course it reminded me of you." Yes, he is a friend. And, no, this would not ordinarily seem a kind thing to say. But Richard was referring to a little story I had told him about how I first met my business partner, Melissa.

If you want to know where the relationship between Google and the content industry is headed, you might start thinking about a wedding: specifically, the wedding of Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz. That couple's wedding march video, better known as the JK Wedding Entrance Dance, has currently gained close to 27 million YouTube views. It provides a great story of Google's role in taming online piracy, and it offers some wonderful insights into why Google and the content companies -- from Hollywood to book publishers to news agencies -- may finally learn to get along.

To be honest, I had written off mobile and mobile search. Despite years of hype, we've seen only pockets of relevant opportunities for our clients, and even there the opportunities were very, very small. The other week, however, I had a conversation that piqued my interest. In speaking with the heads of mobile at Google and MSN, respectively, I learned their data independently verified that smart phone users exhibit mobile search behavior almost identical to that of desktop-based searchers. This is a profound and deeply important insight: smart phone users are treating their handsets like a portable desktop; they are …

This week, I moderated a session at SMX about real-time search. Personally, I find the convergence of social and search to be perhaps the most significant trend of 2009. Social adds an entirely new dimension to search. Traditionally search has been used to find "what" you wanted to know more about. Social adds the dimension of time. Suddenly, relevance isn't the only measure. Search now needs a "stale date," a measure of the freshness of the results.

As loyal Search Insider readers know, I've been fleshing out marketing lessons learned from Google for three consecutive columns as a precursor to a book I'm writing -- Everything I Need to Know About Marketing I Learned From Google. I figure it's never too early to start working on a sequel so, today, I'd like to focus on lessons learned from Google about product development.

Last week, a company called The Department of Doing hosted the first-ever TEDx conference in New Zealand. One of the speakers, a guy from Microsoft by the name of Nigel Parker, focused his talk on reframing our perception of failure: in the absence of failure, he claimed, success is impossible.