Barry Diller likes long shots. He's built a career betting on the long shot. Today, Diller is stacking his chips for a run at the lucrative search market, and he's betting that history can repeat itself.

The gold rush of search engine marketing continues, making the big search companies wealthier while providing advertisers with the most measurable advertising tactic in history. But the cost of that excitement is that search often takes a back seat when it comes to longer-term, more strategic applications

Personalization services are often considered ways to engender customer loyalty. Yet, according to new research, subscribers to search engines' personalization services can be the most fickle. So what do you do, go after the loyal sheep or the aggressive wolves?

According to the Chinese, the Year of the Dog is auspicious for marriage. The same is true for M&A activity in 2006.

Search is rapidly turning from the darling of the Internet to a demon. The latest attack, brought about by search's phenomenal financial success, is that search is sucking all the value out of millions of Web sites by scraping content in bite-sized pieces and doling it out to searchers, at the same time monetizing traffic that's being driven by content created by the site owners, not the search engine.

As an online marketing manager, you might be able to relate to this scenario: It's the end of the week or the end of the month, and it's time for you to summarize the latest metrics to your executive staff. You think, "Why have I put this off until the last minute? I love this stuff. This is the reason I got into this field in the first place!"

If I offered you a chance to win prizes every week you read this column, would that make you more inclined to read it?

Break out the evening gowns, it's trade show season. With the Grammy awards wrapped up, and the Oscars on the horizon, our eyes will be on the red carpet of search next week in New York.

While participating on a panel at a recent search marketing conference, we fielded numerous questions related to finding the right person to fill the ever- expanding role of in-house search marketer. The most asked questions were, "What do we look for in a search marketer--and where do we find this elusive beast in the wilds of cyberspace?"

In my last article, I discussed the perceived negative aspects of search engine marketing from the traditional agency perspective. And as promised, I'm here today to remind traditional agencies why they should in fact LOVE search--no, scratch that-- ADORE search. (A very appropriate topic right after Valentine's Day.)