Just in case our friends to the south haven't driven it home to us repeatedly, Canada is inconsequential. We're a rounding error in revenue projections. We're a few scattered bodies somewhere north of the 49th, a far-flung geographic extension of Montana, Minnesota and other assorted northern states. But haven't you heard? Google is investing in the Canadian market! The company is ramping up its sales team here. Well, you can be forgiven if you haven't heard, because the news was barely a drop in the PR bucket next to the roar that was the launch of Google Instant.

A major Google announcement just wouldn't be the same without a marketer or blogger throwing out the equivalent of a digital Molotov cocktail, declaring the "death of SEO." Even before Google officially had its press conference, Internet marketer Steve Rubel posted that Google Instant makes "SEO irrelevant," and effectively "kills SEO." There is always an audience of search haters that laps up this kind of commentary, and this time was no different, with yet another frothy swarm of comments, forwards and status updates ensuing. People are still retweeting that post as a serious SEO critique, but an even greater number …

I have often thought that I have nothing to worry about when it comes to online identity theft. Who, after all, is interested in my identity? Who would bother to intercept the various packets of data that comprise my online footprint and go through the (I imagine) laborious process of reconstructing them into something, well, stealable? My inability to fathom anyone's desire to commandeer my digital person, however, was based on an utterly false premise: namely, that in order for me to be so unlucky, I would have to be targeted. But there is a fundamental flaw in this simplistic …

Google recently announced that page loading speed is now a signal within its SEO ranking algorithms. This forces many organizations into a serious conundrum on how to modernize their online presence without lowering their Google search ranking and giving away precious click-throughs to competitors. So what can organizations do to ensure their Web 2.0 online presence not only gives customers the best online experience possible, but also keeps them ranking high on Google searches?

All the news this week in the search business is about Google Instant and how SEO is now dead. If you follow the same news sources I do, you could actually believe that nothing else happened in the whole entire world. In fact, other things did happen. Google settled the Buzz lawsuit for $8.5 million. Google is being investigated by the Texas Attorney General. Anyhow, today we will stay focused on Google Instant because I'm sure by now you've only read five or six other opinions on it. I, of course, have my opinion as well and I'm going to …

As I mentioned a few weeks back, I'm reading Nicholas Carr's book "The Shallows." His basic premise is that our current environment, with its deluge of available information typically broken into bite-sized pieces served up online, is "dumbing down" our brains. But is Carr correct is saying that online is dulling our intellectual capabilities, or is it just creating a different type of intelligence?

Over the past couple months, I've been on a crusade to bring sexy back to search. I started off with some search haiku to set the mood. Then I turned up the heat with 10 reasons search marketers are positioned well to come out, er, on top. And, in my last column, I compared search to Groupon, one of the hottest companies around. Today, I'm ready to go all the way and imagine what it would be like if search marketers ruled the world.

I live in Christchurch, New Zealand, and four days ago, our world was rocked. At 4:35 a.m. on Saturday, the house began to shake. Hard. Like it was a vending machine and a giant had put his quarters in and his bag of potato chips hadn't quite shaken free and he was trying to get them out.

I am convinced that there has never been a more exciting time for search marketers. As the lines between search, social and display media fade, advertisers, agencies and marketers face a new kind of challenge -- one that search marketers are uniquely suited to solve.

Just a few years ago there was a lot of brash boasting about how cutting-edge companies were, but it's been a long time since I've heard that confidence. Even former dot-com rock stars are realizing that they have a lot to learn. They know things are messed up and they think it's their fault. Here's the secret that most of these companies don't know: they're not alone. Everyone is struggling with gut-wrenching change these days.