Our very own Matt McGee has posted the 2008 Search Quiz for the search community to take. The quiz basically tests your knowledge of events in the search industry, including news, events and community related topics. You can take the quiz over here, but once you click on the link, it should start.

There are 21 multiple-choice questions, and if you get one wrong, you lose. The test is being timed, and the person who answers all the questions correctly in the shortest amount of time, wins. You can win a $50 Amazon.com or iTunes (U.S.), or $50 via Paypal.

I personally took the quiz and made it through the whole test without a mistake, I believe. I just don’t think I did it fast enough, because I got a phone call while taking it. I did find the questions enjoyable and some to be challenging, but overall it was fun.

Want a free ticket to our upcoming SMX West search marketing conference this Feb. 10-12, complete with hotel and airfare? Marin Software’s got a package for you to win, if you’re geek enough. Biggest Search Geek enough, that is.

The SMX Biggest Search Geek Contest by Marin Software tests you with 20 questions about search marketing. I’ve contributed a few of them on the organic search side, and there’s a good dose from the paid search side of the house.

To win, you’ve got to answer the most questions correctly in the least amount of time. Winners get round-trip airfare, hotel accommodations and a full conference pass to SMX West. I’ll also be presenting the winner with an award on stage at the show. The top 10 percent answering correctly will also get a recognition award on Marin’s site.

Off you go — see if you’re the biggest search geek out there!

Beu sent me a link to the Search Engine Rap Battle. Basically rappers go out it, mocking each other, as if they are Google, Yahoo and MSN. Google vs. MSN, MSN vs. Yahoo and Yahoo vs. Google. You can check out the videos and vote for the winner at searchenginerapbattle.com.

As many of you exhibitors knew, Danny Sullivan sent me on a mission to find the best schwag ever at SMX West because I am a schwag addict. In the end, you all had a lot of great schwag, and it’s super hard to choose the “best” piece. Therefore, I’m going to categorize my favorites.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll feature all this schwag on my Schwag Addict site. Until then, here are the contenders for best schwag of SMX West 2008. By the way, only exhibitors with schwag available to all conference-goers were considered for these awards (unfortunately, that means that the eVisibility shirts, which totally rocked, were not valid for entry).

Without further ado, here are the best shirts of SMX West ‘08:

The SureHits shirt is stylish and cool. I saw one person wear it at the airport, and my husband wore it out to lunch yesterday. In other words, people aren’t embarrassed to take it with them, and you can’t blame them. This shirt is hot.

SEOmoz has shirts! And I saw another guy at the airport wearing one!

The RankSense shirts were clever.

While I think supplies were limited, MatchCraft had an awesome colored shirt.

You can never have too many pens. However, one pen stood out in creativity above the rest:

At first glance, the WideMile pen looks like nothing but a pen with a lot of plastic. But in the dark, it becomes a pen that lights up blue!

And other winners of obvious prizes include:

SmartSearch Marketing wins the award for “Most Edible” Schwag with the M&Ms inside this little case. DoubleClick comes in a close 2nd with their mints.

Idearc ties for the “most useful” schwag award with this cool LED keychain.

Tied for “most useful” is the WebTrends MarketingLab magnets, which are extremely powerful fridge magnets. I like.

LookSmart wins the “most colorful” award with this sweet set of highlighters.

ABCSearch wins the “most fun” (or “most annoying,” however way you look at it) award for the coolest magnets that you can play with. These things click and make a ton of noise, but they’re super addictive.

Another “most fun” award goes to Bruce Clay for the colorful tanglers. You can’t go wrong with these toys.

Finally, in honor of my friend Curtis at Superb Hosting, this is his choice of “most fun” schwag (and I’d be inclined to agree if I didn’t actually spend 10 minutes with those little darts on my fingers. Beware; they actually do stop circulation!).

Last but not least, the Sphinn and Search Engine Land stickers rocked. That’s my laptop you’re looking at, and there’s room for other stickers. (I like stickers.)

Thanks for playing and hope to see you at SMX Advanced in Seattle this coming June!

Tamar Weinberg is a social media enthusiast who blogs about Digg and other social news sites and services on Techipedia. She is also a huge schwag addict.

Global ad agency WPP, which paid almost $650 million for 24/7 Real Media last year, will be bringing together all its search agencies under the Outrider brand and under the GroupM media division. That includes the search group at 24/7, Catalyst, Quisma, and Outrider, which won Yahoo’s Searchlight Award in New York last night for its Smirnoff campaign.

This consolidation creates a global search agency with offices on multiple continents.

As Yahoo was apparently laying off its promised 1,000 workers today, I was at the Time-Life Building in New York as a panelist for the third Yahoo Searchlight Awards. I’ve had the honor to be a part of this event since its inception in 2005 and think it’s a terrific opportunity for ad agencies to showcase and share best practices about search, display, and integrated ad campaigns.

In the three years of Searchlight the campaigns have become dramatically more sophisticated and inventive. The four finalists (out of a total of 40 entries) were the following agencies and their clients:

– Carat – Reebok Run Easy – Outrider – Diageo Smirnoff Ice and Smirnoff Raw Tea Summer – Resolution Media – FEDEX SuperBowl 2007 – Digitas – The Members Project (American Express)

The winner was Outrider for Smirnoff. At the center of the campaign was a humorous mock-rap video featuring East Coast preppies. The search aspect of the campaign cleverly negotiated the problem of avoiding exposure to under-age users and Google’s ban on alcohol advertising.

Rob Norman, CEO of GroupM Interaction Worldwide, gave the opening keynote and thanked Yahoo for its pioneering work in online advertising. He made some eloquent and insightful remarks about the Internet as an ad medium and gave a good talk overall. But he also expressed the desire that this event not be the last Yahoo Searchlight Award and named the issue on everyone’s mind: the apparently impending acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft.

Through research, agency outreach, and events like Searchlight, Yahoo has done considerable “heavy lifting” in educating marketers and ad agencies about the importance of search and, more broadly, integrated campaigns. Google, and to a lesser degree, Microsoft, are now reaping the benefits of some of that work.

If Microsoft does acquire Yahoo, it would be wise to preserve the event (the brainchild of Yahoo Search Marketing Executive Ron Belanger) and the industry forum it has created.

There are three surveys underway right now for the search engine marketing industry looking for participation. SEMPO and SEOmoz are both running surveys to collect data on the search marketing industry, while the SEMMYS are a more fun look at search marketing articles up for awards.

SEMPO’s 2007 State of the Market Survey is open and taking your responses up until February 1st. SEMPO’s surveys are used throughout the industry and beyond by analysts, editors, internally by SEM companies, and more. You can win an iPhone and free tickets to an SES event if you complete the survey. Please make an effort to take the survey by clicking here.

SEOmoz is also holding an SEO Industry Survey. I personally filled this survey out yesterday, and the questions were not that redundant to the SEMPO survey. This survey combined with the SEMPO survey can really give our industry some great insight into how we work as an aggregate. If you complete this survey, you can also win an iPhone or a $400 gift certificate to Amazon.com. Take the survey by clicking here. You have about two weeks to complete the 51-questions and the results will be published by March 11, 2008.

Finally, today is the last day to vote for the SEMMYS. Head over to the SEMMYS and vote for your favorite search related articles of 2007.

The SEMMYS Finalists Are Ready, finally! Matt McGee has announced that we can now go over to The SEMMYS and vote for our favorite posts of the year.

The voting starts at 12:00 pm ET (9:00 am PT) today. The finalists are listed over here for all 15 categories. Those that vote are expected to review each finalist and then click on the “VOTE NOW IN THIS CATEGORY” link under each of the 15 categories. A new window will open up, where you can place your vote for your favorite article/post of the year. You can vote until the end-of-day (PT) on January 30th.

Eight Search Engine Land articles have been selected in the categories of SEO, Google, Local Search, Small Business, Social Media, and Rants. Head over to The SEMMYS and place your vote.

For years, a conference idea banging around has been a trivia quiz involving the search engines. For our SMX West search marketing conference this Feb. 26-28 in California, we’ve got it happening! SMX Search Bowl will have teams from Ask, Google, and Microsoft competing against each other to test their knowledge of search and search marketing. I’m pretty sure Yahoo will be stepping up to take part, as well. The fifth team is being assembled right now. We’re taking nominations for search marketers to be on that team to take on the search engines, so please help out!

Rand and his team at SEOmoz kindly stepped up to take on the challenge of compiling the nominations. It’s pretty easy. Just go to his post about the process here and leave the name of someone you’d like to see as part of the team. Sure, you can nominate yourself. No, don’t nominate me, as I get to have fun as the quizmaster. Leave off nominating employees of the search companies or those from Search Engine Land or SEOmoz.

If a person gets two nominations, they’ll be on the short list for the voting process. Yes, you can second yourself! Two people will be selected to form a team. These will be for people who are agreeing to go to the show, of course. If they don’t already have a ticket (having purchased one or because they are a speaker), they’ll get one of our networking passes that give anyone access to SMX Search Bowl, as well as the "Tailgate Party" beforehand, lunches, and other networking activities.

You’ve got through January 28th to nominate people, so get moving. As for SMX West, check out some of the past posts and information below for more about it:

• SMX West 2008 Agenda Up: 3 Days, More Than 50 Sessions!
• Search 3.0: The Blended & Vertical Search Revolution
• First Networking/Extracurricular Activities Announced For SMX West
• SMX West Keynotes Focus On "Future of Search"
• Complete Conference Agenda
• Conference Pass Types (Expo, Networking, Full Access)
• Conference Guarantee
• Bonus Offers
• The SMX Difference / What To Expect
• Registration Info

The Yahoo Search Marketing Blog announced the 3rd Annual Yahoo Searchlight Awards. The awards will be taking place on February 12th in New York City.

At the awards, Rob Norman, CEO of Group M Interaction, will be giving a keynote address. One of the four panelists is our very own Greg Sterling. Here is the complete list of panelists:

• Abbey Klaassen – Digital Editor, Advertising Age
• Kevin Ryan – Global Content Director, Search Engine Strategies
• Greg Sterling – Founding Principal, Sterling Market Intelligence
• Brian Morrissey – Senior Reporter, Adweek

If you have an outstanding Yahoo Search Marketing campaign that you think can win the award at the Yahoo Searchlight Awards, go ahead and submit it!

Postscript from Greg: This is a great event that showcases the relationship between search and other media (online and off). I’ve been lucky to attend this event for the past couple of years and have seen the winning campaigns grow in terms of creativity and overall sophistication. The event is dedicated to the idea that search isn’t a silo and that online (or traditional) ad campaigns that don’t include search are not going to be as effective.