London SES 2008

As a lot of you are probably aware there was a little show last week in London called SES, over the 3 days over 2000 people attended and I was very busy speaking on 5 sessions. Overall the event was a great success with a lot of positive vibes around the attendees that I spoke to before and after sessions. The content was great across the board with strong speakers and my fellow Geordie Mike Grehan at the helm as Chair of the London SES event.

There has been a lot of good session coverage over the last few days and it has been nice to receive some for the sessions I took part in. On Day 1 I had one of my usual SES sessions on Click Fraud, it was my 4th year doing this panel and it has amazed me how much Auditing has evolved. It was good to be on the panel with Shuman G from Google again and Mal Watlington wrote a great coverage of the session here

On Day 2 I had two sessions one as a speaker and one as moderator. First up was "Landing Page Testing and Tuning" which turned out to be a great session with good attendance and great Q+A. There was some blog coverage here to give you an idea of the session content. I also came across a really nice arty picture of the panel in action posted by Greg Jaboe on Search Engine Watch see if you can spot me!



In the afternoon I moderated the "Searcher Behaviour Research Update" this was reference prior to the SES event as one of the "7 Reasons to attend London SES" and the attendance did not disappoint the room was full. Thanks to the panelists Erica, Rob, John and Piers for some great insight and content.

On Day 3 again I had one speaking and one moderating, first up was "Search Advertising Clinic" this was a Q+A where for 60 minutes we invite the audience to give us problems with there campaigns to review online and give advice. I always like these types of session and it was great to do the panel with Christine Churchill, President, KeyRelevance

For my final one of the conference I moderated the 'Local Search Marketing' panel with Simon and Patricia Hursh. This again was a great content session, Simon has posted a good blog about the content of the session here

It was nice to be able to site down and down some video interviews with Dr Ralph Wilson for his internet viewers back in the US. Ralph has a website I have read and received his email news letter for about 8 years now so nice to contribute. And also the SES official coverage with Greg Jaboe on the Day 2 round up in my last post

It was a great but busy 3 days all in all and I am looking forward to getting the customary SES session scores back from the attendee surveys.

SES London 2008

I have been down at Search Engine Strategies London 2008 this week speaking and moderating on some panels, and I was going to write a quick blog to some up the days so far but thanks to Greg down at SEO PR there are some great daily wrap up videos available.

Day 1



Day 2



There are some great tips and insight into what has been a great SES London 2008.

Day 3 to follow.....

Google Street View.....New Beta Test Option?

I was shown at work today a great YouTube video of how you could take Google Street View a step to far. Interesting to see people are already thinking about the connotations of privacy and how far it could actually go. Will Google ever get to the point (trying not to spoil the vid!) portrayed in this YouTube spoof? Only time will tell....Enjoy!

Microsoft bids $44.6 billion for Yahoo!!!

Well last Friday started like any other Friday, until I read my RSS feeds at about 11.45am and you hear rumours of Microsoft bidding to buy Yahoo. At first you can of think 'Yeah Right!' but the reality is that the bid has been tabled at $44.6 Billion. (How much!!)

The question then has to be asked as to will the deal actually happen? It looks like Yahoo will entertain it but I can imagine it will take some time to go through. But I bet the Yahoo share holders are hoping it does when it values the shares at just over 62% more than what they currently are. It is getting a lot of mixed opinions on the business side with the Fox business teams saying it is a really bad deal for Microsoft share holders and they are paying to much.



Business aside I have to bring this back to one area, if they combined how will this affect their search market share?? In the US Google will still be 56% and the combined Yahoo and Microsoft will only be 31.5%. This is in the US which is the market where they are at the closest as well. Imagine the UK it will be Google 79% and Yahoo-Microsoft combined still only around 14%. As a joint force can they grow the share or will they focus to areas of Technology or Mobile Search?

The only other area to consider is the name....will it be YaSoft? or Microhoo? Time will tell and I am sure there will be a lot more news and discussion about the deal next week.