As a friend discovered this week, not all Google results are the same.

A search from Toronto and a search from New York will usually resulting in a different set of organic results appearing.

To be clear, using Google.com as your base search and not Google results from Google.ca or Google.ca Canadian specific results will show variations depending on where you search from.

To borrow from George Orwell’s Animal Farm; All searches are equal but some are more equal than others.

The difference of course is about server location, IP and all of that. I’ve long maintained that this is, while probably an algorithm oversight, nevertheless a shortcoming of the search engines.

In October 2005, when Martha Stewart had her own “The Apprentice”, contestant David Karandish didn’t win. He did however, mention that Martha’s site was nowhere to be found in the search engines for the specific term “recipes” and stated if he took over the Internet division, he would fix it.

Alas, David Karandish didn’t get the job.

And it shows. A search for “recipes” on Google and there it is… no MarthaStewart.com. It does show up on Yahoo but not on MSN. A search for “home decor” on Google and MarthaStewart.com results? Nada. Yahoo results? Zip. MSN results? Bupkis.

It’s Search Engine Strategies conference time in New York this week.

And on the heels of the three day search conference, Jupiter Research states that:

A full quarter of 26% of large advertisers in companies with annual revenues of $50 million or more plan to increase spending on search engine marketing by more than 25% this year.

according to Gavin O’Malley of Online Media Daily.

PS - If ever you want an interesting conversation about search and search spending and retail, have a chat with Patti Freeman Evans, a Jupiter Research analyst.

(of course substitute .com.au in Australia, co.uk in England, etc.)

Ahhh … a question we get often, and one without a standard answer. Rather, the answer is based on your particular situation. So, take a minute to consider the questions below, and voila, you’ll have an answer.

1)      Is your site on a well established domain?

While often overlooked by the masses, Google, MSN, and Yahoo all give Canadians different search options than Americans when searching the web. Each gives some sort of preference or boost to sites deemed to be Canadian within their Canadian search results, although offer no benefits obviously for ranking in the generic .com results. This means that Canadian companies need to be diligent about ensuring that they appear in the search results of the most used engines in their home country, especially since the advantages realized do not yet appear to be offset by poorer rankings in the generic .com engines.

A couple of weeks ago now, okay, a month ago now… The (SEP) Guy has been busy… Piper Jaffray released its Internet Media & Marketing Report.

One the more interesting findings was the opportunity that abounds and remains untapped in search. More specifically, in Local Search or to put it another way, Niche Search or to put it another way, Vertical Search. Greg Jarboe had an interesting perspective at SearchEngine Watch with Piper Jaffray Maps Out Where the Search Industry is Headed.

Search Engine People is extremely generous (my boss is standing behind me…). The extra mile is the usual distance we put in for our clients and more often than not a complete team is working on their project.

At a price.

And because Search Engine People is extremely successful at what it does that price is not the lowest in the industry. For the quality and dedication it certainly is the best price but still it might not be something you can fork over at this point.

There are places to go, of course. Forums. E-books. SEO software. Sites that charge extra to get to “premium” content.

Picli is the latest addition to the web’s social recommendation networks. Usual stuff: submit, vote up or down, become popular or not.

Nothing new, except for the fact that Picli is all about images.

I’ve been browsing around there a little bit, obviously with SEO in mind (or in our case Canadian SEO). A nice place which already gets some good activity and which clearly presents multiple ways in which it can be used to promote a web site.

I can’t help but think that a reason for Google offering Gmail is spam or rather to help them learn and test how to get rid of spam.

Yahoo had email, Microsoft had email. Google didn’t, now they do. And Google learned a lot about getting rid of spam in a short time.

My normal Gmail account received hardly any spam. An account which I’ve set up in order to be spammed receives 5000 spam messages per week. Over 90% of it gets caught in their spam filter.

The (SEP) Guy had to get a new car this week. Unexpected expense. Ouch.

Ergo, The (SEP) Guy had to get insurance for the new car. Context: I’m the perfect customer. Sign me up and I’m lazy. I barely open my mail, and check online to see that things have come out of my account as they should. Same goes for my insurance. Rate set, I’m good to go.

So, a call to my existing insurance company. Info, info, info. Wait. Wait. Wait. Mr. Guy, we’re pleased to be able to inform you your insurance will only being going up by 50%. (P.S. Dear insurance company: Dulcet tones, do not in fact make it any less impactful.) Aaaackkk.