In January, rumors surrounding Google's entry into the auto insurance space ramped up significantly. The company had provided auto insurance comparison shopping in the U.K. since 2012, so it was widely speculated that this service would eventually come to the U.S. In March, Google launched the service in California, with 14 carriers participating. The auto insurance industry is one of the search engine's most lucrative sources of income. How will it not kill the golden goose?

LeadTail recently analyzed 177,931 tweets from 482 leading US/Canadian search pros to determine what search marketers tweet about. The results - on first glance - struck me as rather banal, but upon closer examination, they may show a shift in the nature of search marketing itself.