One of the benefits I enjoy as a columnist and as the president of a search engine-marketing firm is that I am invited to speak at a lot of conferences around the country each year. Some of these events are search-marketing specific, while others encompass a broader "interactive marketing" focus, and some even feature topics as diverse as traditional advertising channels and the latest in the interactive space. As those of you who regularly attend these types of events can attest, most are much the same in look, feel, and format. After a while, these shows and the venues …

We still have a couple more weeks of summer, but Labor Day is the government's way of making us get down to business a bit earlier than the seasons dictate. It's a good time to clean out the in-box and dig into the Search Insider mailbag to answer questions from you, the reader.

Get your ringside seats. The fight is about to begin. The flurry of announcements coming out of Google and Yahoo! recently show their preparations for the onslaught of MSN Search. And one of the most interesting was Google's announcement of another issue of 14.6 million shares, to give them an estimated $4 billion cash injection. First, let's look at the recent Google announcements. Google Talk, the new IM application, is in beta now, which probably explains the current lack of advertising; don't expect an ad-free zone for long. A few days before the IM report, Google announced the new …