Recently it crossed my mind to start asking prospective clients why they think their particular Web site deserves to be No. 1 on Google or even in the top ten. I feel the answers could be very telling. Everybody seems to think that they deserve to rank at the top of Google for the products and services that they sell -- but the reality is that most often they don't. Let's face it. There are only 10 spots on the front page, and hundreds or even thousands of Web sites that sell the same product for roughly the same price.

Rob Griffin's thought-provoking column on "The Death of Search" started by poking fun at my summertime nostalgia, likening it to Bryan Adam's lyrics. But here's the thing. Rob and others talk about search as an industry, a channel, a technology. All these things are way too limiting: search is a verb. Search is something we do. And, as such, it reaches past technology and channels and even Google.

The company I work for recently completed a detailed test and analysis of the impact of online display ads for both paid and natural search metrics, and concluded that search traffic does indeed increase through the brand awareness, brand recognition, and brand preference aspects of display campaigns.

I remember once reading that of all the challenges humans encounter throughout a lifetime, change of any sort is among the most anxiety-producing. Last week, two events in San Francisco, one by the SEMPO Bay Area Working Group and the other by the local chapter of the American Marketing Association, highlighted the degree to which those of us working in the field confront change each and every day. From the sound of things, it isn't always pretty.

My columns lately have focused on the fundamental shifts going on within the world of search. It's hard to get the pulse of these changes and so I find myself focused on one major change: the death of search. The dog days of summer may have brought this on, but the string of sentimental search columns as of late solidified my thinking. Why all this nostalgia? For me it serves as a harbinger of doom for search as we know it. To fully understand the challenges we face as an industry, all jokes aside, we need to step back and …

The elevator speech. It's one of the prerequisites of business development. In the time you can spend with someone on a 30-second ride, how do you describe your business? For established brands, the elevator speech is not so much a speech but a word. For brands like Google, Microsoft, and Apple, you can quickly get from brand name to association in a word. Let's play the game together, in your head or on paper. Google? Microsoft? Apple? Got your word?

This summer, we had fires in the town I live in. I was sitting on the back deck, watching the progress of the fire through binoculars and monitoring Twitter on my laptop. My wife was inside the house, listening on the radio and watching on TV. Because I had an eyewitness perspective, I was able to judge the timeliness of our news channels and gained a new appreciation for the speed of social networks.

Last month I shared what search taught me about running a business. Today, I'd like to list 10 lessons Google taught me -- and the rest of the world, for that matter -- about marketing.

After watching the much-anticipated season opener of AMC's "Mad Men" last week, I found myself at work each day wondering if the stuff of search advertising and marketing would warrant a critically acclaimed TV show in 45 years' time.

Google recently gave the world a preview of what it calls its "next-generation infrastructure," code-named Caffeine. Over the past few days, I've A/B tested Caffeine vs. Google's current production engine. Here are some findings, some commentary on what I think Google's trying to achieve with its latest changes, and some tactical tips for webmasters seeking to maximize visibility on the new system.