Michael Gray believes personalized search can make the searcher miss out on what an algorithm could never find: the human touch of serendipity. He gives an example of a quirky New York Times story about a New York City debutante who was the real-life model for a character on "Gossip Girl" -- and is also trying to have a monument built for her ancestor James Madison. "This was a story chosen to be featured in the New York Times by a human editor, not by an algorithm," he writes. "This kind of random discovery is what the editors are …

Alex Cohen tries to tell us the future of paid search doesn't include keywords, but the process continues to evolve. This evolution puts more emphasis on targeting, images and pricing. Cohen believes Google Product Listing Ads and Google Boost offer the best glimpse into a future of paid search without keywords. He tells us why.

Doodle 4 Google, the annual competition that invites schoolkids, grades K-12, to create a logo for Google.com, starts today. Registration closes March 2, and submissions must be postmarked by March 16. This year's contest asks kids to use the statement "What I'd like to do someday..." as a creative springboard for an illustration. In a video on the Web site page, Marissa Mayer explains last year's contest.

It's not an area Caleb needs to worry about most days, but still good to know. So, he defines the term "low search volume keyword," how to manage such keywords, and how too many of them can impact an a campaign.

The Russian search engine Yandex reported 2010 revenue rose 43% to 12.5 billion rubles, or $420 million at today's exchange rate, according to Stephen Shankland. He reminds us there are search engines that live outside the U.S. and that Google doesn't have "a total lock on search."

Frost Prioleau gives us seven reasons why marketers should tap into search retargeting. As one example, he suggests using it to target upper funnel, broad search terms -- typically expensive in verticals from travel to financial services.

Justin Briggs created a guide to backlink analysis, providing a list of tools, data sets. and tips on breaking into the top 10 listings on page one of search queries. The strategy runs through link root domains, exact match anchor link root domains, and how to look at the percentage of anchors using the exact match phrase. The long post also covers creating tag clouds, identifying broken links, and filtering and sorting.

Social media isn't considered a search engine marketing tactic, but social signals are being recognized by search engines to rank Webs sites and pages. So, Taylor Pratt provides tips on creating what he calls the perfect Facebook experience. He suggests starting out with a strategy. Seems simple enough, but many marketers head into Facebook, Twitter and other social sites without strategy tied to search.

Advertisers and marketers will finally realize this year that data is king, especially when it comes to search. Identify needs through content, how people search, peak dates, and where site visitors originate. It's all part of mining the data on your company Web site to determine what prospective and existing customers need, according to Julie Joyce.

Aaron Wall attempts to prove his claim that SEO traffic is the most valuable and cleanest online. As advertisers continue to increase budgets, Wall points to the value of SEO clicks and how to get the most from campaigns. He writes that "search engines are pushing to eat the organic results as well, but for anyone who has a strong organic traffic stream it is easy to under-appreciate the value" until marketers realize the rarity of pure and clean search traffic.