A fellow member of the LinkedIn Social Media Marketing group posed a great question which he in turn took from Tom Raftery’s blog. Tom’s question was:
 
“Looking back at Social Media, we have had a significant advance (a ‘this year’s big thing’) every year since 2004. 

In 2004 – blogs started to really take off 

In 2005 – [...]

 
 
The middle web is that new playground between highly limited mobile phone internet use and full blown computer internet use via high speed access; and is made possible by a range of new hand held facilitators including the iPhone. Not that new admittedly, but in terms of time in the US 2 years is not [...]

I realize that spying on the competition may not seem to be of great importance when taken as a stand-alone SEO concept without understanding what you can actually glean from doing so, or knowing what insights the available tools can offer.
 
This post will try to demystify the issue.
 
Why Spying on the Online Competition Can Benefit [...]

Google apparently started blocking ranking software like WebCEO and WPB a few days ago. The subsequent horrified outcry followed by hard-line rebuttals of ‘sooo old hat’ and worse was really interesting to watch and read.
 
At the risk of putting myself in the firing line, I’m going to try to put my point across in defense of [...]

This year has already resulted in numerous shifts in the search marketing space as we know it:
Trends From an Investors Perspective

Microsoft bid for Yahoo!, then withdrew the offer and Yahoo!’s shares dropped nearly 20%
Google and Yahoo! are still skirting around a search advertising partnership
Ask withdrew from main stream search to focus on women searchers
Google’s search [...]