People use the phrase Search Engine Wars so many times that it's a joke. I think wars are no laughing matter, but the excessive use of "search engine wars" is somewhat excessive and funny.

I feel leftout though, as I have not used the phrase "search engine wars" before this post. I figured that all battles have local fronts. Thus I am extending the "search engine wars" message to the local battle fields. Local search engine wars: "CitySearch's performance-based search advertising program added 24,000 local businesses in its first nine months, parent company InterActiveCorp said yesterday.
IAC said the Los Angeles-based local search service added 3,000 performance-based listings in the last three months of 2003, ending the year nearly halfway to IAC CEO Barry Diller's goal of 50,000 local search advertisers by the end of 2004. Pay-for-performance revenue at CitySearch rose 14 percent from the previous quarter. "
(source DMnews)

Some of the current top competitors in this market are CitySearch, SmartPages, SwitchBoard, and Verizon SuperPages. Big search players like Overture and Google are also going to eat up a lion share of this market. Kanoodle will also sneak into this market, as many of their employees were associated with the formerly highly targetable Sprinks product (which Google swallowed whole.)

More on the local search engine wars from a few months ago:
Search Engine Watch: Local Search Series

Much of the local search engine marketing news is also covered by the Kelsey Group.

Here is a totally random spam which shows how hard it is too trip a spam filter. Note the keyword density of this page for Keasley (and how tired I must have been to have my spelling that far off!)