Search Engine Optimization has been a topic of debate since the concept was developed in the mid 1990’s.

I’ll start by saying Thank you Google, for the web history and personalized search idea – which is great in theory, but plain sucks in practice! At least for this searcher.

The SEM Industry is rapidly changing, this includes the search engines (their SERP algorithms and spiders), SEO Tactics, and SEM Strategies. Off the top of my head I have come up with 5 things that WILL NOT matter in SEM in the future and 5 things that marketers should stay on top of.

"Around the SEM World" is a new monthly series I am starting in which I will ask professionals around the SEM Industry their thoughts on the hottest topics during the given month.

In a recent update, Google has added a new feature to its personalized homepage that might signal a focused effort to snatch another one of Yahoo’s strongholds away. By allowing users to give their Google homepage a more artistic look and feel, the company is sending a clear message that it wants to become the primary portal for everyone’s Internet experience.

Some updates have hit Google’s Personalized Homepage (unfortunately a shorter/catchier name was not among them), including one that makes the tabs a little more interesting.

For those people who blog daily or semi daily is there an optimal post length that keeps people reading regularly without feeling overwhelmed?

I fully admit to being a member of the short attention span generation. My life is busy enough I don’t need long introductions, set ups, or window dressing, just give me the goods and let me move on. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve watched a YouTube video and yelled to myself or out loud “get on with it already!”.

Wouldn’t it be neat if Google offered developers a way to write scripts to extend the functionality of Google Writely, Google Spreadsheets, Gmail and so on?

Below is the full transcript of the interview with Marissa Mayer on personalization of search results. For commentary, see the Just Behave column on Searchengineland.

Gord: It’s a little more than two weeks ago since Google made the announcement that personalization would become more of a default standard for more users on Google.  Why did you move towards making that call?

Earlier this month, I wrote about the increasing number of subscribers to this blog’s RSS feed with numbers exceeding 1,000 for the first time.

Since blogging has become popular there are far more people writing than their are good ideas to spread. This means that if you can create a good idea marketed at publishers looking for a scoop, and format the idea to spread you can probably get enough link authority to get a natural PageRank 6 in just about any market.