As some of you may know, I am on the international board of directors of SEMPO, and recently we weighed in on the debate about SOPA and PIPA in the House and Senate respectively. We became aware of this issue going back several months, and we sent the association's position to key individuals in Congress. The good news is that Congress listened, as many direct responses were received with regards to our position. But the rest of this column involves some of my personal thoughts on what has transpired over the last few months with these bills.

Bing introduced a new ad campaign last night during the NFC Championship between the San Francisco 49ers and the New York Giants. The campaign tag -- "Bing is for doing" -- is very similar to a campaign rolled out last year by Lenovo ("For Those Who Do"). Both campaigns are focused on those who aren't just passive consumers of media or information, but who make it their mission to get something done.

Humans hate making mistakes. But the fact is, making mistakes is an essential part of being human. Somehow, we have to learn to live on the edge of this paradox. For digital marketers, our entire industry is balanced on this particular precarious precipice. There are a few rules of thumb to "screwing up" successfully:

In an effort to make tasks "easier" for us, software companies have been adding features to make even the smallest tasks "simple." Some of these changes, I believe, are misguided and often lead to user frustration -- or perhaps it's just me? Google is doing the same thing. For some time now, webmasters and SEOs alike have complained that Google actually has been editing the title link that appears in search results, not always using the title tag of the ranked page.

Google introduced Search Plus Your World last week -- and before the virtual ink was dry on the blog post announcing its new feature, the antitrust forces were gathering in the streets, pitchforks at the ready. If there's a crime in this newest twist to Google's search results page composition, it's the spectacularly bad branding for the new offering. ("Google Search plus Your World"? Seriously? Would it cost so much to hire a good product marketing person?)

The new year presents a blank slate, and there are plenty of opportunities for search and social marketers to start fresh and pursue new paths. These may not all be "new" paths, per se; some are likely best practices that have been around for a while but have been placed on the backburner for any number of reasons. Let's do a bit of reprioritization this year. Let's reset our approaches to program management. Let's take advantage of the promise of new beginnings.

Last week, I asked you to ponder what our memories might become now that Google puts vast heaps of information just one click away. And ponder you did.

As I write this column, the ink is not yet dry on the full edition of the Kenshoo 2011 Online Retail Shopping Report, but I've just finished up the last section with my colleague, Ari Rosenstein, outlining five predictions for 2012. The research is based on a dataset of 28 billion total SEM impressions, 350 million clicks, and 8 million online sales transactions across our index of retail paid search advertisers. Here's a preview for all the Search Insider pun-dits out there.

Smartphones drive search. Search drives shopping. And shopping drives… not as much in the way of sales as it should. Mobile commerce has a terrible problem with friction. From sites that aren’t optimized for mobile, to mobile apps that rely on nutty checkout processes, shoppers have to work too hard to buy online.  If only the buying experience could be as simple and fast as the search experiences that led to the desire to make a purchase in the first place. While nearly 56 million mobile users shopped online in the U.S. in 2011, only about 27 million actually completed …

"How old is Tony Bennett anyway?" We were sitting in a condo on a ski hill with friends, counting down to the new year, when the ageless Mr. Bennett appeared on TV. One of us wondered aloud about just how many new years he has personally ushered in. In days gone by, the question would have just hung there. It would probably have filled up a few minutes of conversation. If someone felt strongly about the topic, it might even have started an argument. But, at the end of it all, there would be no definitive answer -- just opinions.