I found it's not always cut and dried. We've had two clients in similar industries but didn't compete on the same products or keywords. Then suddenly one client ventured into the space of another. Without an exclusivity in place for either client we had to make a decision. Ultimately we let the clients decide. We told the one that we have another client in that space and will need to talk with them before optimizing for their new product offerings. The transparency allowed us to be loyal to both clients and they both appreciated that we were. We ended up not optimizing for the client that expanded their product base, but by standing by our other client, they both know how we handle such situations.

As far as taking on new clients when you already have one that is a direct competitor, I would weigh the situation and then likely go to the current client for permission.

I never thought the gov had a case against Microsoft, but I'm not so sure about Google. I don't know about the anti-competitive behavior, that just seems to be good business, but I do have concerns about the monopoly issue. While any company can legitimately get a monopoly, there are reasons why we don't want them to keep it, because it prevents legitimate competition from getting a foothold. I think Google is just too big, has too much information and is (or at least can be) too dangerous. I'd love to see them split up.

From a usability perspective, I'm not a fan. I spent way too much time reading the 12-pack only to realize that the information I was looking for wasn't listed. I clicked on the main listing and used the navigation to quickly find what I wanted. I guess this is good if Google happens to show what someone ultimately wants, but it sure takes a lot of visual time to look at each of those. Maybe it's just the format, but for now, I'd rather go to the site to find the page I want.

Aside from rankings not being an accurate reflection of what anyone sees, and most ranking reports being innacurate anyway, clients still take comfort in them. We stopped providing ranking reports enmass, but do often highlight certain pages/keywords in their analytics reports and consider ranking factors, among many other things, when determining where there are wins and losses and understanding why.

My oldest is 13, youngest are 7 and 5. The 13 year old is on facebook but barely uses it. I have not pushed what I do on them in any way, and probably never will. If they don't have an interest or a knack for it then there is no reason to try to try and create interest that just isn't there.

My youngest kids seem more interested in who my boss is than anything related to what I do.

I'm not a big fan of seeing the same tweet over and over, but that doesn't make automation bad. I'm not one that gets to spend a lot of time on twitter so if I tweeted everything live I'd be blowing up the streams and then silent. Some automation allows you to be effective at putting out info, and even conversation, but in a more balanced way.

Somehow I don't buy the part about "Google’s algorithms had started to work." If I had to guess it was probably 99% manual action that kicked in and killed their rankings.