The 4 fundamentals of SEO still remain as relevant as ever: 

1. Make web-pages accessible
   
   
2. Target with keywords that searchers employ
   
   
3. Build content that users will find useful and of value
   
   
4. Earn editorial links from good sources

Google's quest to improve the real function of a search-engine, namely to "provide the best relevant results to an expressed need" make this four step process as logical and important as ever.

Learning, evolving and investigating every tactic that might give your website an edge is important but always have this four step process in the forefront of your mind and don't go overboard
chasing fads in SEO.

Following Google recommendations and guidelines as ever is highly recommended!

It will be interesting to see what 2009 brings and what SEO implications there will be for us all.

OK. In reality we were the top fastest racers in the (GAAC) Google Accredited Analytics Consultants, (WOAC) Google Website Optimiser Accredited Consultants Go-Karting race in Burlingame, California. The early heat was pretty easy and I got a really fast time, but boy was it tough and competitive in the finals, I still have bruises. In the end Urchin/Google employee Paul Botto took the lead.

(qualifiers)

As you would expect everyone scrutinised their times looking for opportunities to optimise their driving skills in the next round and rank higher on the score board. The time printout was also pretty cool with lots of graphs and information although we came to the conclusion that the lap-times graph was the wrong way up because it made it look like you were getting slower not faster.

(Brian Clifton and Justin Cutroni analysing their times - thankfully I beat Brian by a few places :-) )

To make an interesting point about metrics along the same lines as Matt does in his "A word about metrics" series of posts, are we "The top Google Analytics and Website Optimisers", by one metric (speed) definitely yes but by another that might be slightly more applicable to you or your business (proximity, language) maybe not? That's why you shouldn't take metrics results on pure face value without understanding the detail around how the results were actually measured which is something that Matt feels justifiably passionate about.

Then again if you are looking for the fastest analytics nerds on the track...

We live in an information age, and it's great to have lots information, but working with massive (practically unimaginable) amounts of information is incredibly hard, even Vint Cerf couldn't estimate how much information there is in the world. In my opinion that's the paradox, the problem, the challenge if you want to call it that Google engineers are really good at dealing with, taking a process that in itself isn't hugely complex on a small scale and then scaling it to work with Petabytes or more of information. Amazing.