The search industry seems to have been fairly dominated by two major topics this year: the introduction of universal/blended search results and Google’s heightened alert regarding the issue of buying links to artificially inflate PageRank.

Putting to one side the search-engine-optimization-isn’t-rocket-science debate, I had cause to ponder over just how broad and deep the SEO discipline is. The occasion: I took part in a two-day intensive workshop/training event with a large client.