Watch the Keynote live at live.webpronews.com.

At SMX West in Santa Clara, the State of the Search Union keynote is taking place today. It's moderated by Chris Sherman, Executive Editor of Search Engine Land, and features SEL Contributing Editor Vanessa Fox, Google Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik, Yahoo Director of Search Marketing David Roth, and Misty Locke, President, Range Online Media and Chief Strategy Officer of iProspect. The official description for this keynote says:

We've just come through the most turbulent period in history for search marketers. Economic disruption, massive algorithm updates, the disappearance of a major player through consolidation with one of its former competitors… these events and others have reshaped the search landscape, creating both challenges and opportunities for search marketers. On this panel we’ve assembled some of the sharpest minds in search to discuss where things stand and where we’re going – you won’t want to miss the insights and recommendations from this group of super-savvy panelists.

I will liveblog the event below, when it starts 9:00am Pacific/12:00pm Eastern (please forgive typos):

Liveblogging starts:

12:00 EST: should be starting anytime now...

12:03 People are taking the stage...getting set up with audio...

12:04 Sherman: An interesting year in search. Often not a whole lot has happened, usually just Google, Google, Google. IN the past year, we've seen more radical change than in the past 15 years or so. no sign of change letting up...

12:05: A few questions: key question: when we were here last year, we were in the early stages of an economic meltdown...everybody uncertain....what's going to happen...search itself was still relatively young/ what was going to happen to industry? so now, how are we doing? 

Sound problems...dave says as a search marketer, it gave oppotunities to show stuff and shift strategies. support business goals/shipping landscape. maybe used to optimize for ROI now different metric...shift back to SEO. not just paid side.

Misty: ecommerce still did well in some areas. some clients due to search, record breaking months at times. even in downturn. some marketers utilizing different techniques, driving revenue, and reoccurring customer loyalty. combined search with other marketing channels...flexible companies saw growth.

12:09: Vanessa: Super bowl - with pepsi, they decided to spend their money on social. interesing that some companies think online is a better way to go... one thing from super bowl ads...so many large brands seem to only just now understand that search is important. across the board, it was better than last year as far as big brands in search during super bowl. a lot of work left though.

12:10 Avinash:  emboss your brand on somebody's brain (branding)..search can do this. at the end of the day. when people want to run a branding campaign.....what do you want out of it? one night stand? long term relationshiP? depending on what you want? search is a massively effective way to get to the right kind of people..

12:13: Microsoft/yahoo deal: Dave: since we got regulatory approval, the integration is on. huge project. lot of resources from both companies. proof will be in the pudding. advertisers start to migrate...i'm yahoo the advertiser. we're going to continue to innovate around the customer experinece around search. products tah live outside of the index....

12:14 Sherman: anomisity? integration with cultures? Dave: just beginning. large amoutn of resources at yahoo to be moved over and work with MS. will be a portion of yahoo that stays at yahoo. a lot remains to be seen. clearance still to new...people hard at work. everybody on the project understands that this is critical. it absoultely MUST work.

12:15: Misty: clients excited about deal. allows viable number 2. may not drastically change how they upload campaigns, but it does allow to shift focus stategy for bing....60/40 time split between google and bing...excited about volume...reach....

12:16: some changes in showing results will open up some new ways to utilize Bing to advertise. new customers...cashback is a big driver. marketers in geneal have been slow to adopt....

12:17: Sherman: 2 major players: shrinking? couple of giants? no 2 strong players. market growing. Avinash: competition is a good thing. gets everybody to innovate. important to realize...prudent to have portfolio strategy with acquistions. think about content network, youtube ,search, doubleclick. poeple get far too obsessed between microsoft, yahoo, and google. you should have already had a very effective strategy across all search engines.

12:18: Avinash says a blog post of his got way more traffic from bing for the word analytics than google.

12:19: You will find new customers and use dollars more effectively with the portfolio strategy.

12:19 Vanessa: waiting to see how things shake out with integration. searchmonkey? boss? waiting to see how it works out...yahoo did try to make a play for innovation. don't know how much they'll be motiviated.. it will be great if they do. reserving judgment.

12:20 Vanessa: hopefully we won't lose all the yahooness.

12:21: Caffeine: rolled out after holidays? no. still just one data center. sherman talking to vanessa: what impact is caffeine going to have on SEO? is Google going to continue in spirit it always has to provide tools/insight...Vanessa: changes - social, real-time,local, etc. things will ramp up more and more. caffeine specifically. i don't know it's going to impact seo that much. just back-end. on their side, a better way to crawl the web. their hope is just to do it better. that's a benefit for site owners. it's not a rankings impact, except in more of an indirect way. i don't think from an SEO perspective, there's much you need to do. I hoep they  keep reaching out. when i was there i loved being able to go out and see what people needed. don't see a reason why they would stop doing that. they have kept doing it. 

Avinash: if every googler woke up and for the entire day, they would answer questions for webmaster, it wouldn't answre all questions. how can we help people at scale? webmaster tools. a number of tools thag google puts out. just a few more releases for wm tools over the last six months. you'll continue to see google keep puting out tools that allow this kind of self help at scale. help you make better decisions with search data. orgasmic about amount of data google has put out there in terms of your ability to make better decisions. love access you have to google's organic search data....