Every online marketer does it. Buying keywords like crazy. But that is just about how much you hear when you try to focus on this area of internet marketing. It's a wild goose chase and it's unlikely a method will materialize in any recognizable form until dust has settled. If it ever will.

The keyword business is about most competitive business transacted over web, so -as with most of information on web related business- it's unlikely you will come across any lengthy piece with a comprehensive overview of what's going on where.

It's somewhat ironic that it's live and learn because in theory, marketing community should be in its walhalla with arrival of internet. Hasn't it been marketing dream for centuries to get to stage where a potential customer takes an action? At end of a marketing ploy, in offline terms it's called hit, transaction, sale, closing deal.

The specifics of keyword buying may be intransparent, but slowly more information is being gathered about process of online buying. It is striking that this is not exactly a reversal, from offline process, but slightly. From beginning onward, marketer can count on a lot more commitment from his potential customer simply because targeting is so much more specific if process kicks off with customer's action.

Keyword marketing is much more powerful compared to offline marketing techniques, simply because it is customer's actions that set off spiral.

To forego keyword search as a marketer means you miss out one vital element in communication cycle your client goes through before purchasing a product. Inefficient marketing was mainly issue leading to demise of dotcom sector earlier on and, having learnt their lesson hard way, marketers are now finding out more about what customers really want before launching campaigns. From customer's own words. Sounds great in theory. In practice, landscape is bewildering to say least.

Having rights to certain keywords means you are dominating results that search engines will present to people who type in those words. What is so great about this is that unlike in real world, online marketers have way more insight into what makes people buy. Because they have access to what actions customers take even before they would be onto them had they been in offline world.

Mountains of gold on horizon. But sector is still showing a lot of vulnerability and online marketing is in dire need of improvement simply because phenomenon is so new. The big advantage to customers is that people can find what they are looking for faster and more efficiently than on any other medium. But still gap between what customers are specifically looking on web for and what they are offered is considerable.

If web were to appoint godfathers, Michael Saavedra Cervantes, Don Quixote's inventor, would be a very appropriate candidate. Already founding father of European literature, his one and only book's structure is not too dissimilar to myriad of modern cyber texts.

For starters, you often don't know where Quixote and his squire Sancho end one adventure or where they begin another. Also, Don Quixote offers an abundance of contradiction, imagination beyond what is ordinary, subplots here there and everywhere. And this is not where comparison ends. There's even interaction between author and characters without it seeming to be a violation of characters or of story itself.

It's a bit ironic that despite high technology and 500 years or so that have gone by since book was published haven't made us invent a clearer concept of interactivity. Today, people interacting with their search engines are having a hard time actually finding efficiently what they are looking for. At same time, companies run huge financial risk if their websites fail to secure high rankings in search engines. Where's interactivity that actually connects efficiently all time?

To stand out from crowd in cyber space, you need a well-thought out concept. But where to begin? Researching status quo of internet marketing is a good starting point because marketing guys are there to bridge gap between companies and customers.

The main theme of marketing studies at moment is customer research. A lot more money gets spent on consumer behavior than before deflation of dotcom sector. The trend is driven by companies turning to quantitative analysts to find hard and decisive numbers about their actual consumer markets.

Here goes, more you can fragment a market, better one's chances (of controling it). Nothing new. What is new is way marketers are devouring data, dissecting it like biologists would owl droppings. Hopefully, interpretations of findings are not exactly stomach turning but contributing to better interactive patterns.

So this is where we are - at beginning of an understanding-based approach of customers. The trend has been termed 'new marketing' or 'behavioral marketing'. Wonder how companies are dealing with this? If you may believe experts, companies are aiming to gradually reach higher click/sales conversion rates from their marketing campaigns, rather than going for quick sales. Apparently, focus is more long term and on an increased understanding of what brings buyers to their decision.

Marketers say it's back to drawing board throughout bank. The very beginnings of buying funnel are now researched in greater depth. This is good to keep in mind when you are getting to grips with cyber culture. Search behavior is focus of a lot of market research, if only because so much information that comes out of this has yet to be capitalised on.

But marketers have a hard nut to crack here. Our search behavior is very difficult to describe in words, let alone pour data on it in models and derive a sensible meaning from it. "Searching has become such an intuitive function, we tend not to give actual search process much thought", writes Gord Hotchkiss from Enquiro, a US firm that specialises in people's search behaviour.