Razorfish is pleased to announce fellow ‘fish Lindsay Blankenship has been accepted to SEMPO’s 2012 – 2014 Board of Directors. Lindsay was one of thirteen Board seats selected from thirty-seven extremely qualified candidates.

“I would like to thank all our nominees for their commitment and willingness to serve the organization” said, SEMPO Chairman Jeff Pruitt. “We are impressed by the enthusiasm you have for SEMPO – and we urge you all to stay engaged within the organization. We have lots to accomplish and we cannot succeed without you.”

The Chairman also said the organization received an impressive number of votes across all 37 candidates, representing the commitment of the members to the organization.

The following new Board of Directors will take office on March 22:

• Lindsay Blankenship – Director, Search Marketing Razorfish
• Chris Boggs – Director Search Media and Thought Leadership Rosetta
• Bruce Clay – President Bruce Clay, Inc.
• Mike Corak – EVP, Strategy ethology
• Rob Garner – Vice President, Strategy iCrossing
• Mike Grehan – Global VP, Content incisivemedia
• Michael Gullaksen – SVP, Managing Director Covario
• Brian Kaminski – COO iProspect
• Frank Lee – Head of Sales DataPop
• Ian Lurie – CEO Portent, Inc.
• Kristjan Mar Hauksson – Founder/Director Nordic e-Marketing
• John Nicoletti – Director, Agency Development Google, Inc.
• Michael Xu – SVP Beijing Gridsum Technology

Feel free to follow Lindsay on Twitter at @lcblankenship.

We spent a good minute scratching the ol’ noggin over these two charts from SEMPO’s 2010 “State of Search Engine Marketing” report. They show that this year, 47% of surveyed businesses said they handle search in-house. Last year, no one said they handle search in house. A careful read reveals a note stating that “in house” wasn’t an option last year. Since none of the other answers are appropriate for respondents running search in-house, and we don’t have one of those handy “n=” captions tipping us off as to whether in-house search marketers skipped the question or entered a misleading answer last year, we can’t actually compare results year-over-year. So why even publish the 2009 chart?

Focusing on 2010 hardly clarifies the issue. We’re very curious about search provider choices, but this categorization is confusing. How would Razorfish Search’s clients respond? With 96 full-time search people and an average tenure over three years, we undoubtedly qualify as a “paid search specialist” and a “SEO specialist.” Though search is only one of many digital services Razorfish provides, some clients perceive us as a “search agency” because help with search is what they originally came to us for. “Digital Marketing Agency” might seem to be the best fit, unless our client considers that Razorfish is a leader in experience design, site creative and technology — projects that don’t fit neatly under the “Marketing Agency” header. At least we can rule out “PR agency”!

One question for our friend Sara Holoubek of the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization: Did you outsource your search survey to a “survey expert” or a “search expert”?