If you're looking for the one key takeaway from MediaPost's Search Insider Summit in Keystone, Colo. last week, you're out of luck; you're getting 20. Here's a rapid-fire roundup of the most interesting, pressing, and memorable issues, questions, and controversies that arose during the event.

I think that the search industry needs to start distinguishing between search engine marketing--which is more branding-focused--and search engine sales, which is about the final conversion. The two concepts are different.

So you are looking for that perfect someone--someone who understands you. Someone you can trust and depend on. I think you can see where I'm going with this. Much of the criteria you would use in selecting a life partner also apply to selecting a professional services firm--a search engine marketing firm in particular.

Once again, I find myself up to my earlobes in eye-tracking data. I have no one to blame, as I got myself into this mess when I made the well-intentioned but poorly thought out promise to have the first draft of a study done by the time I head out on vacation at the end of the month....

In my natural and paid search campaign management experience over the past several years, I have often heard a common misperception about holistic search, mostly from clients who were new to the medium. It goes like this: "If we're ranking in natural (or paid), then we don't need the other one."

Imagine you're a major computer brand. Your once-sterling reputation for customer service has eroded, and an A-list blogger made it to the A+ list by chronicling his frustrations with you. Then, one day, your product spontaneously combusts at a Japanese conference, the photos of which circulate widely online. What do you do? Dude, you're getting a blog.

I have one word to say about why auctions work. That word is "scarcity." Scarcity's the only reason anyone would enter an auction, and scarcity's the only thing that keeps people in auctions, even after bid prices keep moving up. And scarcity explains why Google Publication ads--its auction-based print ad network--hasn't worked; and why its entrée into radio advertising will be a hit.

Last month I went to my 25th high school reunion. It's fascinating to me that with very few exceptions, people don't change a whole lot. The "cool" people were still cool, and the nerdy ones had pursued a consistent path as well. And my ultra-cool classmates were still so hip that they didn't even show up.

In the 1600s, Samuel Pepys became history's most famous diarist. From 1660 to 1669, this English Member of Parliament kept a detailed diary, which was published posthumously. In it, we gain a fascinating eyewitness account of the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London. Most passages were not so monumental, however....

A white paper was recently released by Slack Barshinger and Search Channel touting the emergence and merits of vertical (or specialized) search engines. The authors' basic assertions are on point. Vertical engines are a great source of targeted information for niche categories or situations in which the general results of the Big 4 (Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask) are not customized to the intent or profile of the searcher.