To wrap up 2008, Bruce, Susan and Virginia look back at the big stories of the year. The recession of the past year forced out jobs and shifted marketing budgets. Yahoo almost merged with Microsoft but ended up struggling solo. Google released a mobile platform, Android, as well as a mobile AdWords program for the iPhone and Android devices. Social media also reached a new level of popularity this year and the search was on for a way to monetize social networks.

Barry Schwartz, editor of Search Engine Roundtable, news editor of Search Engine Land and CEO of RustyBrick, is today’s guest on the show. He talks to Virginia about the developments of 2008, including his favorite conferences, the ongoing black hat/white hat debate, link buying and engagement. Barry has reported on the search industry for more than five years and stands as an expert in the history and developments of search.

Bruce, Susan and Virginia finish off the show with Bruce’s industry predictions for 2009. During his PubCon interview with Mike McDonald of WebProNews, Bruce explained his theory of how personal, behavioral and intent-based search will cause a devaluation of rankings as an SEO metric. In his follow-up interview with WPN’s Abby Johnson during SES Chicago, Bruce stood behind his earlier statements and explained how the right tools can help in the changing search landscape.

Bruce, Susan and Virginia start off the show by taking a look at a recent FCC ruling to open the unused frequencies between television channels for use as a national broadband network. The fight to open the unused frequencies, known as “white space”, was championed by companies including Microsoft, Dell, Motorola and Google. The ability to extend broadband penetration to under-served areas of the company could help bring U.S. Internet users up to speed. In 2007, the U.S. was ranked fifth in the world as far as high speed Internet access.

Jon Kelly, president of SureHits, then talks to Virginia about managing PPC bids and the challenges faced by large companies. SureHits manages ad accounts within publisher networks as well as on search engines. He shares a number of recommendations, including those from his PubCon 2008 panel Large Scale Bid Management. He says that keyword buckets are not a good method of management because they don’t allow for the necessary level of granularity. He also talks about the three actions that should be part of any PPC campaign: calculate the click value, reward the user’s choice, and watch the campaign data.

Wrapping up the show, Michael joins Susan and Virginia to review industry news. The big news of the week was that Jerry Yang stepped down from the position of Yahoo CEO and will be returning to the position of chief Yahoo. Baidu was in the spotlight for including unlicensed pharmaceutical companies in results and possibly accepting money in return for boosted rankings. And in a popular move Gmail rolled out themes.

Hosts Susan Esparza, Michael Terry and Virginia Nussey open the show with a look at some of the recent search industry news. A major spam ring, thought to have at one time produced as much as one-third of email spam, was shut down last week. While Yahoo’s revenues came in flat for the third quarter, causing the company to announce it will layoff 10 percent of its staff, Google’s revenues beat expectations. The redesign of iGoogle got mixed reviews, but the addition of a broken backlinks tool in Webmaster Tools and the upgrade to Google Analytics were well received.

Then Mike Moran, co-author of Search Engine Marketing, Inc.: Driving Search Traffic to Your Company’s Web Site, talks to Virginia about the new edition of the book and the changing online marketing space. Mike discusses many of the business aspects of implementing search marketing, such as making search marketing operational and getting buy-in. He also talks about one of the major changes in the search space that has happened since the publication of the first edition — a new opportunity for communication — social media.

Susan, Michael and Virginia discuss business strategy of search marketing. Choosing the marketing mix, having clear objectives, reporting metrics, dividing-up tasks and having a strong central team are all important to search marketing strategy.

Google has released its open-source browser, Chrome, to public beta. The quick and streamlined browser got a lot of attention and also raised concerns about privacy and search engine bias. Bruce and Susan take a look at how browsers’ default settings and history storing can impact searcher behavior and affect marketers’ SEO efforts.

Then Virginia talks to Vanessa Fox, best known for her role in developing Google Webmaster Central and expanding the Google Webmaster Guidelines. Vanessa is also author of the blog Vanessa Fox. Nude. and is part of the team behind Jane and Robot. At Jane and Robot, Vanessa writes about the intersection of Web developer issues and SEO. She talks to Virginia about what developers need to remember about Google’s new Flash crawling ability, as well as her thoughts about redirecting the black hat/white hat debate. She also explains what she’s doing to help coordinate developer sessions at SMX East.

Susan and Virginia then discuss the various search engines’ webmaster guidelines in more detail. Along with the search engines’ published guidelines, search engine official blogs, forums and conference coverage also provide excellent sources which clarify and provide further explanation of the intentions and recommendations. Another helpful resource is Feed the Bot, for its straightforward break-down of Google’s guidelines, complete with definitions and examples that shed light on any jargon.

The Bruce Clay team has been attending a number of conferences recently. In our latest newsletter, Lisa Barone and Susan Esparza debated the benefits of attending both large and small conferences. With marketers facing the continuously evolving online space, attending training and conferences are vital investments. Along with staying up to date on trends, tools and methods, conferences and training are also great opportunities to network and increase brand awareness.

Then, the Bruce Clay IT Manager Aaron Landerkin sits down with Robert to talk about the role of IT at an SEO/SEM company and the unique challenges IT must meet in the marketing industry. As IT Manager, Aaron’s tasks include updating and managing tools and programming projects, checking the status of internal networks and servers, and creating custom tools and reports for analysts and clients. Aaron’s experience as an SEO has been helpful, but not required.

Finally the hosts discuss industry news. According to a Hitwise report on the most searched for brands of last year, it appears that Google is overcoming the address bar as far as navigation is concerned. One of the most searched for brands is YouTube, which has racked up 73 percent of the online video market. Requiring such a high amount of bandwidth, it makes our hosts wonder if YouTube is partly causing global warming… just kidding!

Following the ad:tech conference in San Francisco, Susan gives us a rundown of the sessions she attended and the hot discussion points of the week. For session by session coverage of ad:tech, visit the Bruce Clay blog. Susan covered sessions on branding, online video, local and mobile search, multicultural marketing, acquisition and retention strategies, and much more.

Bruce will also be speaking to Jim Sterne, founding president of the Web Analytics Association and the host of the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit, coming up in San Francisco in May. Jim gives listeners a basic understanding of how Web Analytics can help your site, the metrics tools available to webmasters, and of course, what to look forward to at eMetrics.

With Web Analytics on the mind, the hosts discuss some of the latest Analytics headlines. The new Google Analytics benchmarking feature allows users to compare their site’s data to others in their industry or other industries. But it also raises concerns about data privacy and the integrity of the opt-in data sharing policy. Yahoo!’s acquisition of IndexTools stands out for the way it might allow the search engine to compete with Google in providing high-quality free or low-cost Analytics.

Hosts Bruce Clay, Robert Esparza and Susan Esparza introduce you to the brand new WebmasterRadio show SEM Synergy. For some time now, Bruce Clay, Inc. has wanted to launch a show that discusses how SEO, PPC, branding, design and analytics are all parts of a much larger whole. In our experience, a multi-faceted Internet marketing campaign will be exponentially more successful than a campaign that employs only one aspect. In adding to the conversation, we look forward to expert guests coming on the show to give their insight on a variety of Internet marketing aspects.

At ad:tech San Francisco, many of these aspects are sure to gain attention, such as online video, local and mobile search, and branding in advertising. Susan will be liveblogging a number of sessions, so be sure to check out the Bruce Clay blog for all the highlights.

Finally, our hosts will spend some time covering the latest industry headlines. Google has been dominating the news with the dancing SERPs of the Dewey update, its intent to sell off the Performics search marketing company, and its whopping share of the online advertising market through the DoubleClick acquisition.