Let me give you some sense of the magnitude of the Chinese Internet market, the second largest in the world, only a whisker behind the U.S.: 150 million users to the U.S.' 154 million. But the U.S has 68% penetration. That 150 million represents only about 10% of the Chinese market. At full saturation, the Chinese market will be almost seven times as large as that of the U.S.

In my last column, I covered the top buzzwords dropped at the Search Insider Summit earlier this month. Today, I'll relay some of the best quotes from SIS to help those that weren't there get their fingers on the pulse of the conversation and allow those that did attend to reminisce over some of the highlights.

Want proof that you can optimize anything? What about devising a strategy to optimize search results around the name of your unborn offspring?

We now know that the planning of a site's navigation structure is crucial to search engines and users navigating through your site. This, however, can all be in vain -- as certain technology can keep search engines from crawling your Web site, or not allow users to fully access your navigation.

The walls are coming crashing down at Google. They're in the middle of tearing down silos and aggregating content. But that aggregation will likely come with a very unique viewpoint some day: yours.

With only 10 days before the opening of SMX Advanced in Seattle, Danny Sullivan sat down to discuss his new endeavor.

Google just got more honest. That's the main premise behind its universal search announcement last week. Honesty has a way of making a lot of people worried, but the immediate implications for marketers are minimal. It does, however, provide marketers with the impetus to institute a long-term holistic optimization strategy.

Microsoft may have lost the bidding war on DoubleClick, but it's clearly shown no aversion to paying up to grow its new-media empire. On Friday, the giant from Redmond promised $6B in cash for aQuantive, Inc. -- nearly double the $3.1B that Google will shell out for DoubleClick. Message to Google: don't rule Microsoft out.

It looks like 2007 will be the year when localized and personalized search really take off. Analysts are forecasting billions of dollars in ad spending growth and new players like BooRah and Oodle are striking lucrative deals and securing funding. But what are the implications for online marketers? Organizations have finally started getting a handle on search engine marketing -- only to have it change on them. The fact is, localized and personalized search are a danger to SEM campaigns.

In a study on b-to-b buying, one thing became clear: Online influences have gained a tremendous amount of ground over traditional influences. In fact, they've even caught up with the traditional off-line winner, word-of-mouth. The vendor's own Web site was listed as the most important influence, together with word-of-mouth from a colleague or peer. Close behind were search engines, distributor Web sites and word-of-mouth from a friend.