Today has been a great day for me and it is great to be announced as one of the latest members of the SES Global Advisory Board as the UK representative. It is an honour to be joining some of search marketing big names as the UK representative of the board and I am looking forward to working with them starting with SES London 2010 in a few weeks.
Here is the official press release announcing it:
Search Engine Strategies Appoints U.K. and German Representatives to SES Advisory Board
Jon Myers and Thomas Bindl to Join Other Search Marketing Luminaries in Identifying Cutting-edge Content for SES Conferences
New York, NY (PRWEB) February 2, 2010 -- Search Engine Strategies (SES), the leading global search engine marketing (SEM) conference and expo series, announced today that they have appointed two new members to the SES Advisory Board. Jon Myers, Head of Search/Associate Director for MediaVest Group Ltd., has been appointed as the U.K. representative for SES London, and Thomas Bindl, Founder and CEO for Refined Labs GmbH, has been appointed as the Germany representative for SES Berlin.
Myers and Bindl will join 15 other SEM luminaries and SES staff in identifying resources to address the industry’s latest issues and trends and professional development resources – all with the goal to ensure SES conference attendees receive the latest industry information and training.
“With the addition of Jon and Thomas, we ensure that our EU attendees will be exposed to the most up-to-date industry content in each country we’re currently invited to present SES,” said Mike Grehan, Vice President and Global Content Director for Incisive Media’s Interactive Marketing Group. “The board will grow with international representatives in tune with our global expansion plans.”
Just been talking to Dennis for Yahoo Analytics and he has sent me his latest post on the new Yahoo Analytics Consultants Network. He has very kindly let me republish his post below. From my perspective I think this is a great idea. I have worked with and know Dennis for years from his Indextools days and now Yahoo and putting this in place is a really strong move for Yahoo. having a network of accredited consultants is a great thing for businesses in the UK to use. on top of this the Yahoo Analytics package is one of the best out there.
Well done the guys down at Yahoo and here is the official post on the new consultants net work in Dennis Words:
I don’t know about you, but I personally think this is beyond exciting, and I am thrilled to see us take this (almost) final step towards full integration into Yahoo!
What is YWACN?
This is a network of third party companies with expertise in deriving insight from Web Analytics AND deploying Yahoo! Web Analytics in particular. The purpose of this network is amongst other things to help our clients get the best out of the tool - and hopefully also help us spread the gospel of YWA. It might even alleviate the stress on my personal in-box!
You are more than welcome to compare this in idea to the GAAC network - there, I’ve said it! :-)
Who are the Consultants?
A lot of the consultants are legacy IndexTools partners - and thus a bunch of folks who have years and years of experience in the actual technology, from before we turned purple. They are… drum roll please:
We even added a few additional rock stars to that:
webanalyticsdemystified.com, semphonic.com, stratigent.com, sapient.com, purpleclick.com, thesedays.com, bitbang.it and insightr.com.
48 YWACN partners all in all - and you should be able to see (once the link is activated) a full list of YWACN partners on the YWA site. CALL them today, email them, tweet them .. heck, invite them out for dinner, they deserve it! (if you haven’t noticed, they are your new best friends)
Can I join?
Perhaps ;-) If you really excel in the field of web analytics and truly are one of those consultancies that help derive actionable insights from web analytics for your customers - we would love to hear from you. In return and as a Member of this exclusive, global professional network of Yahoo! Web Analytics consultants you will receive a number of benefits, this including:
* Yahoo! Web Analytics FREE account creation rights (This is sexy eh?) * Listing on Yahoo!’s Consultant Network web page * Potential client referrals from the Yahoo! Sales team * Exclusive “Yahoo! Web Analytics Consultant Network” icon for display on your website * Premium levels of technical support and access to a partner portal * Access to an exclusive YWACN forum to share ideas and technical tips with other top analysts worldwide * Unique opportunities to work with Yahoo! to provide trainings, books and speaking engagements
Go have a look at the criteria for becoming a member of the Yahoo! Web Analytics Consultant Network on the web site.
Now I know Google Latitude has been around for a little while now but I was sat here and happened to watch this video which is a pretty cool way of showing what can be done with the technology.
Mind you I have to say, who is going to want to use it to find out where your friends are? Why not just give them a call and ask them to meet you as we always have done or send them an email or text? The only thing I can think of is it means you can sneak up on them where ever they are and scary them or you can secretley keep an eye on where someone is, its a bit like having a locater beacon on you! Technology is a great thing but is this to far?
It was good to be interviewed again by Byron Gordon from SEO PR this year at SES London. He asked me for my opinions after one of my Day 1 panels on "the state of search integration in the UK". Have a watch of the interview and I hope you agree with my thoughts on where the current Search Integration model is up to.
Well it is that time of year again and SES London is upon us! The show is looking like a great one again and I am looking forward to a busy 3 days and 7 panels so hoping to see and chat to lots of you at the event.
I have been asked once again to do a pre event Q & A by the guys down at SEO-PR (thanks Byron!) and this year I have been lucky to get to interview Michel Leconte from SEO Samba to get his views on SEO, future developments and the SEO Samba tool itself!
I have asked him a series of 5 questions so enjoy and hope you all consider the tool as a great option to use. On top of this Michel has kindly offered a free trial!! It covers one website, and a one month of free access from the publishing date for one lucky reader of this post and you will find it after the Q & A…thanks SEO Samba!
1. Search engine marketing is a constantly developing and evolving practice. Is SEO Samba prepared for this and how do you plan to stay on the forefront of technological advances?
SEO Samba maximizes website's performance with search engines and other "free-to-play" digital marketing channels. It enables SEM firms and SEO experts to manage an unlimited number of organic search clients, projects and web sites from a single interface, and change SEO best practices across them all with a single click. From a conceptual standpoint, we propose that web marketers and professionals deploy and enforce best practices from a single point rather than manually coding these evolving best practices into each of these sites while hoping that end-users will not gradually undo these practices. So, yes, practices are evolving and developing, but SEO Samba's role is to facilitate execution and maintain best practices' integrity while letting expert users adapt their best practices to changes in algorithms.
From a product development standpoint, our mission is supported by our software-as-a-service architecture, a zero footprint technology (this means that web sites built with SEO Samba are W3C HTML-compliant and do not place any call back to our servers once uploaded to their published location), and two major effort areas.
Our objective as an organic search platform is to enable and promote cooperative efforts from end-users and SEO experts without the latter fearing a loss of clients to competitors also using the platform. We needed SEO Samba to segregate end-user pools from each other and be a complete, private-label solution for SEM firms. Hence, we provided an interface that can be branded in less than a minute, along with DNS routing so that the software can be accessed and served from our partners' domain of choice in complete confidentiality.
Now, for cooperation to happen, we also needed to remove competing interests from the picture, and we are doing this by aggregating data and providing it back to users under the form of proven, albeit optional, best practices.
Obviously, the system is flexible enough to allow for experts to pick, fine-tune and add their own best practices prior to making them available to a select pool of their clients as they see fit. By large, on that end, we're pursuing the old adage that a total can be greater than the sum of its parts. And as long as the platform can accommodate the evolution of search algorithms, and we are confident that it will, web marketers and SEO experts will be able to try different things and adapt their strategies as required.
In addition, SEO Samba provides an optimized distribution framework for information along with automation and alignment rules to make it very cost effective to successfully market through these "free," but crowded channels. Our R&D work consists of seamlessly integrating new distribution channels into the existing platform and proposing a set of proven best practices that are ready out-of-the-box upon launch. Lots of prioritization, research, and development and testing time go into this area.
For example, our first universal search module (provided free of charge) is a news module that provides a Google News-ready structure, news articles that are search optimized according to your chosen best practices, search friendly scrollers, automated RSS feeds creation, integrates with email newsletter platforms such as Constant Contact, Vertical Response etc. You can publish news across all your sites with a single click then aggregate news items across web sites to create unique newsletters and market to a cross segment of your email list, and finally save these newsletters with one click to any of your web sites. Each of our upcoming modules will provide the same level of details to ensure websites' visibility, while expanding the least time possible from a user, content writer, marketer and SEO experts' perspective.
As search algorithms evolve, so will the rules applied by the SEO experts using the platform and its associated modules. In the meantime, we'll be working in the background on behalf of SEM firms to make their clients more successful. Our team will focus on keeping existing and new SEO Samba modules functional from a search engine/technical requirement standpoint and increasingly leverage the community's knowledge and scale to the benefit of all.
2. What reactions have you had from clients using SEO Samba?
End-users are obviously ecstatic about their search engine rankings, but they do not usually fully grasp the extent of SEO Samba's capabilities until after they have been on the platform for a few months. On the other hand, SEO experts are usually convinced of the possibilities offered by the execution approach after seeing live demonstrations. Actually, the more questions, the more technical- and detail-oriented these questions are, the easier it is for us to explain our choices in building SEO Samba. When I had the chance to receive the visit from David Naylor at our U.S. launch at SES Chicago, he was understandably skeptical about our claims and had a barrage of both rather precise technical and conceptual questions ready for me. I was demonstrating the software and I only had to speak the first half of most answers for him to understand where I was going, and for him to shoot the next one at me. It was an enjoyable meeting for sure.
3. You say on your site that SEO Samba was created by search engine and search engine optimization veterans. What inspired you to create it?
I've provided SEO consulting services since 2001, from non-profits to Fortune companies, and I've observed a few things.SEO is sold by professionals as a process that requires an ongoing effort from web site owners. However, there's no life cycle management built into what SEO experts deliver. As a result, the execution is a hit-and-miss game that generates an awful lot of delays, frustration, and, ultimately, lost revenues for both client and experts. Furthermore, SEO is time consuming to research and test for experts, costly to execute by hand for end-users, and takes very little advantage from the scale of the SEO agency or its customer business size.
With an increasing number of applications built in the cloud, development of social networks, progressive deployment of custom and universal search, and a maturing SEO services marketplace, we thought the industry was ripe for a change towards higher value-added services, and that "smart SEOs," as Matt Cutts call them, would crave additional bandwidth to focus on strategy and business development, both for them and their clients. We invented the first organic search management platform to facilitate systemic execution of best practices, adoption of "free-to-play" marketing channels, and enable professionals to scale their practice through software instead of payroll.
4. What advice would you give to a small business planning on developing SEO activity from scratch?
You came to right place J. OK, seriously, the first step is to clarify what you are trying to sell and to whom. Make sure you get it right because everything else depends on it, and I have seen many small business owners enlightened by having to go through the SEO process. In fact, I think it should be very much part of the value proposition coming from SEO experts, as there's a chance that you're the closest thing to a marketing agency they have ever hired. An excellent resource for this that we feature in the SEO Bootcamp at SEO Samba is Pragmatic Marketing
5. Why should SEM or SEO firms considering using SEO Samba?
SEO firms need to adapt to the economic environment and differentiate their service offerings.A customer might not be able to tell which of two arcane SEO techniques is better, but most business people can make the difference between a method supported by an automated system that yields predictable results and a plain consulting engagement, even if backed with stellar experience. I think that's part of the reason why small businesses have reacted so well to the concept. Our direct SMB pricing is at $99/month/domain, so it is creating a new market of SEO-conscious businesses, a market where forward-looking SEM firms will be in prime position to grow in sophistication and profits.
On their side, SEM firms, through their branded interface of SEO Samba, complement their service mix with an offering that will win new business for them. Here, I'm talking about businesses with multiple site strategies, micro-sites, lead generation web sites, franchises, reputation management, and all sorts of small and medium businesses. Appropriately presented, we know already that an organic search management platform will tilt the balance in favor of one provider over another. In an increasingly competitive environment, I think this is welcome aid.Of course, SEO firms get a significant discount on the direct SMB pricing and are also free to bundle the platform with their own services and charge whatever they feel is appropriate through their private label interface.
Thanks for the Interview Michel and if you are interested to find out more visit www.seosamba.com or you can see Michel speak on his panel “Organic Listings Forum”at SES London 2009 on Feb 18th at 5.45pm.
Now for the prize code! Only the first person to capture it under their account's finance tab at www.seosamba.com will be able to take advantage of it and the activation code is 9bd30d97760273333a36565e396a0bcd.
Well it has been a while since I put anything on the blog apart form daily news feeds. But I wanted to PR the great work Matthew Wood has been doing with the A4UExpo and expanding it into Europe. To that degree he has formed a specialist speaker advisory board that will assist his team at a4uexpo with formulating the agenda for the a4uexpo Europe. An very kindly he has included me on it! (thanks Matt!)
You can see the official post here on a4uexpo but I have detailed it below as well. The board consists of thought leaders and experienced industry personalities who amongst them have many years of experience within the sector and experience and opinions on the challenges and opportunities that we face.
Recently, I was invited to interview Ross Caveille by the SEO PR Team. Ross has been instated into the role of Country Manager for ContextWeb Inc’s renowned product ADSDAQ(TM) Ad Exchange and has been challenged with selling UK inventory to advertisers, with the aim to assist in their attempt to reach exchange’s UK audience.
So who are ContextWeb?
ContextWeb Inc. is a leading contextual advertising company. Enjoying major success, one of their most celebrated products is the ADSDAQ™. Welcoming over 93 million monthly unique visitors in the US, the ADSDAQ Exchange represents over 50% of the domestic online population.
A few days later, I finally settled down to produce a few concise but hopefully revealing questions for Ross to gives us his views on…
Country Manager sounds like an interesting challenge, what are your initial objectives?
Personally the role represents a very interesting challenge and one that I am very excited to be involved with. We opened the UK office on the 17th of March this year with the aim to bring to the UK market the unique product that ADSDAQ by ContextWeb has to offer. Exposure and UK industry awareness of the ADSDAQ product and ContextWeb brand is the initial objective as up until we launched over here advertisers were not aware of the opportunities we could provide. In the US, we have around 5,000 publisher and 400 advertiser partners and have an established name within the online advertising marketplace, the aim now is to replicate this success over here in the UK (We’re already up to over 25% UK uniques according to ComScore in March 2008 - a good start.). In addition to establishing ourselves within the market the UK team will also be expanding and we plan to make additional hires in June this year.
Relating to these, do you see any major hurdles ahead and if so, how do you plan to jump them?
The UK marketplace is very competitive with regard to the number of vendors and options available to advertisers and agencies. Consolidation is happening within the marketplace, but as quickly as this happens new companies are born and so it is imperative that we differentiate ourselves and make sure our service levels are consistently high to match the standard of our product. This situation is mirrored with publishers in the way that there is growing demand for inventory both from advertisers and third party vendors. Fortunately, ADSDAQ offers opportunities to both advertisers and publishers alike on an equal scale as we operate an open exchange meaning publishers are able to name their price and advertisers are able to choose the brand-safe content and context in which they appear. There are a lot of opportunities for talented people within the market. We need to make sure we attract the right people in order to grow as a business and as this does represent a challenge we are prepared to take time in doing this if necessary.
ADSDAQ Exchange is well renowned over the water but how do you plan to build the status of and educate the UK audience about the system in the UK? Are you planning to or have you already established any partnerships?
The positive aspect of being established in the US is that our product is tried and tested and so we can be confident of delivering successful campaigns for clients within the UK. As eluded to above one of the main barriers is the lack of knowledge and understanding of the ADSDAQ Exchange so maximising exposure is a high priority. For example, UK advertisers are just beginning to learn about the brand safety offered by the ADSDAQ Exchange which is a result of the Exchange’s patent-pending, page-level contextual technology.
To date we have managed to secure press articles in NMA magazine as well as online with Reuters, Wall Street Journal and a number of additional publications. My role within the company is to make sure ADSDAQ is taken to market and as many agencies and advertisers as possible are allowed the opportunity to take advantage of the contextual targeting tool we have to offer. Since launching on March 17th we have run successful campaigns for clients through Havas, WPP and Profero and are now about to launch campaigns with a number of other leading UK agencies. The contextual tool that we offer can be adapted to a wide range of clients and as such we have already delivered campaigns using standard and rich media formats to UK, European and Global customers across film, music, finance, travel, business, theatre verticals. The next step now is to grow the number of advertisers and agencies in which we are in contact with and the number of campaigns we are running which is why we will be growing the UK team with new additions joining in June.
In turn, how do you think ADSDAQ will infiltrate itself to sit beside technology already available in the UK?
The great thing about the ADSDAQ Exchange is the technology we use and the way we work is that we are able to compliment many existing technologies or at least work in conjunction with them. Many publishers use the ADSDAQ exchange along with a network or Google Adsense, for example, as we only serve an advert to a page if that page contains specific content relevant to one of our advertisers campaigns. Similarly, we are able to work with all third party ad-serving technologies so there are no barriers for advertisers. With regard to competitor technologies our contextual targeting tool is able to not only understand keywords and content but also the context in which they are in so we can guarantee a relevant and brand safe environment every time. This is of key significance to contextual tools that are keyword based only as adverts often appear out of context.
This is a great piece of software to have, especially completely free, do you have any plans to introduce a subscription fee?
In short, no. The ADSDAQ Exchange is an open exchange and so allows both publishers and advertisers to fulfil their objectives and the more partners we can attract the more liquid the exchange becomes giving both parties more options and routes to success.
And what makes the system different? Could you tell us your three defining USPs?
There are three key USPs to what we offer the market. Our contextual technology serves adverts based on the context of the entire webpage, not just a handful of keywords, and so we are able to serve adverts within a brand safe relevant environment every time. As well as ensuring brand safety for all our advertisers this also allows us to extend reach and acquire additional unique users without compromising targeting. For example, a laptop supplier will want to run adverts within a computer website which is relevant but there will also be relevant pages of content available within non-endemic websites e.g. technology section of a news site. As every advert we serve is at the page-level we are able to pick out only the page that is relevant to the advertiser effectively eradicating waste while facilitating extended targeted reach. A recent study by OTX Research found that serving adverts to relevant content within a non-endemic website increase brand recognition by a further 19% over showing the advert in an endemic site. In addition, each advert we serve is in display format, including rich media, which doesn’t restrict advertisers to using just textlinks and means we can effectively transfer a search campaign online in a more impactful format. The third USP is the way we work with publishers, many behavioural or contextual tools require publishers to add tags or code to each page of their website this is not the case with ADSDAQ. By using just one Java script tag we are able to access every page of a publishers website meaning we can access more pages gaining additional reach for advertisers and work with the publishers that do not facilitate third party tags being added to their web pages.
Thanks for taking the time Ross to give me and SEO PR your views and best of luck in the new role going forward.
As a lot of us are probably aware now Google’s trademark policy launched 5th May this year, these changes are already having a significant impact on the search aspect of some campaigns and subsequently, it has come to light that there may be questions relating to the legality of this change in policy.
Following this uncertainty, some large scale advertisers have stepped forward and expressed their willingness to challenge the overwhelming power that is one of the world’s largest sellers of advertising space: Google.
The Background
For almost 9 years, marketers and agencies have benefited from Google’s policy on Trademark terms. Enforcing a policy which stipulated no other advertiser could bid against a registered trademark, Google offered a welcome defence against the competitor and left advertisers safe in the knowledge that their brand and trademarks were well protected…
However, accounting for 80% of the UK’s market share, this change in policy sees Google open up keyword bidding on all keyword terms, including trademarks. Effectively, more than one advertiser can now bid on and appear in sponsored links after a user has typed in a search query using a trademarked term. Ultimately, trademarks are no longer protected against competitors and affiliates.
Lastminute.com speak up…
It has been reported by Channel 4 News that the chief executive of Lastminute.com, Ian McCaig, has stated that Google's proposals will “cost them millions”, could breach trademark law and that they are prepared to sue if Google do go ahead with this change.
Lastminute argue: "Google's policy change is a big problem and we object to it. We are investigating with vigour the legal position and if that investigation concludes positively then we will absolutely pursue a legal case, no question." (Channel 4 News)
Fundamentally, a high proportion of some of the UK’s biggest brands use Google to facilitate a major proportion of their Search advertising spend.
Lastminute.com do not stand alone in this view. Tesco“have consulted their legal team”, while some companies, including Auto Trader have stated they would “consider joining with other brands in a group legal challenge to Google.”
Google defends its decision…
Unsurprisingly, Google stand by their decision to change the policy and state this amendment will improve the user experience by offering competing choices, allowing consumers to make more informed decisions.
Google also have the advantage of experience, as it is not the first time the search engine giant has enforced this controversial change in policy.
In 2004, Google introduced the same change in policy to the US and Canadian markets. Some sectors, including; travel, finance and retail, saw large movements in market costing as competitor bidding initially became a battle field. However, after a few months, the market found its natural position and the cost acquisition consolidated down after rivals began to understand how much revenue and sales could be driven from competitor brand terms.
The MediaVest View
Only days into a policy which is unlike anything the UK market has experienced during its search marketing history, the conclusion of this debate and possible legal battle, is unclear.
In their Legal Guidance Notes, The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) point out that the law is very uncertain and untested in this arena. Their view is that, bidding on keywords of competitors may be an infringement of trademark.
“Clearly Google has taken the advice that it is not and for obvious financial and costs reasons, and due to its dominant position in the search market, Google is prepared to take the risk. Until an advertiser in the UK is prepared to bring a legal test case we shall not be sure of the way the courts will interpret trade mark law in this new media scenario.”
It will be interesting to see how this one unfolds in the coming weeks. Now that big brands such as Lastminute.com, Autotrader and Tesco have voiced their initial opinion to the media.
Well by the date of my last blog as you can see it has been a while since I posted as I have been really busy. But I could not let this one go past that one of my staff James emailed to me this morning.
I think the title of the Blog and the picture below will say it all!
You can just imagine Steve B's face as he turns up to his fully branded Microsoft conference to discover that for the next 30 minutes he has to use a Silver and Black Fruit based laptop from his good friend Mr Steve Jobs.
And on top of this know that all the PR pictures taken like the one above will have that lovely logo in it.....classic!!
Well it has been a while since I have wrote a blog but I have just got back from speaking at the Search Marketing World Conference again this year in Dublin and I have to say it was a great success so well done Martin and Aisling of Interactive Return and I look forward to the next one.
The conference this year was bigger than last year so no 'Church of Search' as per my blog on last years event but the venue was really good. It is great to see the interest in the event with around 270 attendees I believe and a hunger to learn about Search and the Media Industry. The conference had some good pre event coverage and I got the chance to be part of a piece in the Irish Independent...even if they spelt my Name and Company wrong!
Martin again managed to assemble a great speaker line up and it was good for me to catch up with the usual conference speaker crew/friends like Mel Carson, Li Evans, Chris Sherman, Teddie Cowell, Sara Anderson, Brian Clifton, Mikkel deMibSvendsen, Bill Hunt, Rob Kerry, Andrew Girdwood, Mike Grehan (geordies!!) and Dave Naylor. But also to get to know better some of Irelands good search marketers at the event such as Dave Davis, Rob Pryce, Chad Gilmer, Jonathan Forrest.
The event went well and if anything was very fast paced with so much content for 1 day. I was lucky enough to be doing 3 panels and the first of the day was Social Search Marketing which we had alot of good content in and were able to ask interactive voting polls of the audience. (The guy on the left is not asleep he was writing some notes!)
One of the results of the pole questions that I asked still sticks in my head, it was the fact that around 60% of the audience only went into their social media account once a week. This was very difficult for someone like me who spends everyday with social media!
After this panel it flowed straight into the next one with no break so I was seen physically running to another room from the stage to moderate the Advance Search Engine Friendly Design Panel with Mikkel, Brian Marin and Teddie. The session content was really good and even let it run for a bit longer as the guys were getting alot of questions asked.
Last but not least for me was the Integrating Search into the Media Plan panel which for me was alot of fun because it is not often I talk about the concept of the integration of TV and Search but more and more now we have to consider the effects and I certainly am for my clients. We can see a direct correlation between TV advertising and how this drive people to online. Some stats I used explained the concept of 67% of offline media advertising will generate traffic to online.
More and more people now surf the Internet while watching TV (I am doing while I am writing this blog!!) the last stat is 57% do. And with the ability now to run hourly reports on your Google campaigns you can see the direct comparison between TV and Search as well as the potential lag factors by industry.
This makes for very powerful marketing data and the ability to refine and drive your campaigns harder with conversion in mind at the right times. It is important after this that you then understand as all good search marketers should how the traffic interacts with your website and the route to conversion including time lag in order to maximise ROI.
All in all the event was a great success and all I heard on the day was positive feedback for the content and organisation of the event.
Will there be one in 2009?? I think there will and I will definitely look to be there.
It was nice to be asked the other day by the guys down at SEO PR and SES to write a pre event blog about the up and coming SES New York Conference. So thinking about what I could write it on,I felt it was only right to pick my Top 5 sessions next week that involve my fellow UK and European speakers.
This year sees a selection of some top UK speakers flying in to give you some great insight it how search is done the European way. So if you want to pop in to some sessions to hear speakers with different accents here are my top tips of the sessions you need to attend next week in New York.
Top Session 1
It would be only right to start at the beginning and on Day 1 session set one we see a couple of the UK’s top SEO’s in Mike Grehan and Dave Naylor at 9.30am on the:
Organic Listings Forum Pose questions to our panel of experts about free "organic" listing issues, plus participate in this session that allows the audience to share tips, tools and techniques. There's no set agenda, so this is an ideal session to discuss any major recent changes with organic listings.
Top Session 2
Sticking with Day 1 we see probably the most UK and European orientated session of the conference at 2pm called:
Search Around the World - Part 2: The UK & Europe Eastern and Western companies are rushing to get a piece of the action internationally, but does anyone really understand the marketplace. In this session, attendees will learn how to separate hype from actionable activity. Leading experts with "feet on the street" in UK and the rest of Europe discuss the marketplace and the impact it's having on the world.
Well on to Day 2 now and at 1.30 we have for me what should be one of the best panels of the conference on one of the ‘hot’ topics of the minute. From the UK Mike Grehan and Lyndsay Menzies are involved:
Orion Panel: Universal Search Search result multiplicity is not a new phenomenon, but recent advancements will guarantee the world of search and marketing will be changing forever. Before you attend this week's optimization and best practices sessions, hear from industry gurus about how search, marketing and information seeking is changing the industry that follows the search. Our ongoing series on universal search will include research data available only at SES.
Top Session 4
For this slot I am going with a session involving another UK speaker who lives in WashingtonDC now but is still English through and through Simon Heseltine who is speaking on Day 3 at 5.30pm on:
Social Search: The Next Step Social media networking is changing the way people integrate the Web into their lives. Still, this seems one small step for searchers, but a giant change for search media. What do media such as Eurekster, Wikia, Google, Yahoo, ZoomInfo, Jookster, have in store? As Google and Yahoo move into this space will they retain share? What will the evolution of social media mean to marketing as customer behavior becomes nearly impossible to manipulate?
Top Session 5
Well for the last one I am going to pick a panel on Day 2 at 5.45 that I am moderating. The Local Search Marketing Tactics panel is always a good panel in the US and I have two great speakers with some brilliant content shaping up. As well as this we are going to shake up the format a bit to make it very interactive.
Local Search Marketing Tactics This session looks at ways search marketers are tapping into an audience using local search engines, online yellow pages and other local search methods.
All in all there of some of the best UK and European speakers in New York next week for the conference, which is shaping up to be a great event. See you there next week and feel free to stop any of us for a chat we always appreciate it!
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 Grehanat 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 withChristine 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 customarySES session scores back from the attendee surveys.
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.
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!
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.
I have always been one for trying a new beta but this is one that is worth a go. SpaceTime has launched with everything from 3D Search, 3D Ebay, 3D Image Search and 3D Tabbed Browsing. The strap line for the new concept is:
"I think I've found a product that makes the Google interface look like it was designed by Apple."
Which I can see where they are coming from as it is very like Apples new Phone and IPod navigation. Will it be another piece of clever technology that doesn't catch on? Only time will tell but I would say download it and have a go, it is well worth it, the screen grab above does not do it justice and if anything it consolidates all the results together.
After the fast paced developments in 2007 for the online search arena a lot of people are wondering what Google will be looking to achieve in 2008 to keep the momentum up. I was reading a post on the 'Google Operating System' which is an unofficial blog and has been going now for a few years giving some great opinions on the search giant.
They posted a great blog on their thoughts of what will Google do it 2008. And I thought I would throw up a quick post as their are alot of interesting views and scenarios within the 15 or so areas they think Google will develop in 2008. And as we are 1 day away from 2008 the timing seemed right.
As they say "Some of these items are obvious, others are mostly wishful thinking." but all in all I think they make for some interesting reading:-
1. Google will try to unify its application and transform them into a big social network. The Maka-Maka project (or Google's activity stream) will enhance the already existing profiles. If Google doesn't understand that your Gmail contacts aren't necessarily your friends, we'll see a huge privacy backslash.
2. Google should finally go beyond indexing text and start to use image analysis and speech recognition in Google Image Search and Google Video. The NevenVision acquisition should produce visible results in the image search engine and we could see better results for famous people or the option to find similar images.
3. Google won't give up on universal search, but we'll see a different interface that separates standard search results from OneBoxes and other additions. Google's snippets will become smarter and they could include information about authors, locations, concepts.
4. Gmail will add another batch of new features, one of the most important being task management, and will finally go out of beta. Gmail will launch a Google Labs-like site with experimental features that could be added by those who are curious to see the next features before they are officially launched.
5. The first Android phones will be a disappointment, but developers will create a lot of interesting applications that could compensate for the poor designs.
6. Most Google applications will work offline using Google Gears, even if the functionality will be limited. Google Gears will also work on mobile phones and could become a part of Firefox.
7. Google Maps will be redesigned and could include more space for user-generated content. We'll start to see user's locations, important events from our area, recommendations from friends. Google Maps will become more personal.
8. OpenSocial won't work as well as expected and Google will focus on its own social network(s). iGoogle gadgets are about to become social and aggregate data from your contacts.
9. Google will launch a people search engine that gathers data from the web, especially from social networks.
10. Google Books will be more present in search results and Google will start to sell access to the full content of some of the books.
11. One word: sync. At the end of the year, Outlook and most mobile phones will be able to synchronize with Google Calendar and Gmail's contacts. Google Docs will have plug-ins that let you edit documents in Microsoft Office or OpenOffice and save the changes online. Google Toolbar will integrate Browser Sync and start to synchronize your bookmarks, cookies, passwords and your browser's history.
12. Multi-faceted search, searching from different points of view (objective information vs positive/negative opinions, official information vs comments from blogs, forums).
13. Google will differentiate commercial search results by integrating data from Google Base. Google will continue to try to promote Checkout, this time by showing small badges next to the search results from sites that accept Google Checkout.
14. Google Talk will move completely online: the embeddable gadget will let you create custom chat rooms, talk with other people and maybe even see them if they have webcams.
15. Picasa Web Albums will add some of the photo editing features from Picasa and will increase the free storage.
16. GDrive will finally launch, but it won't offer infinite storage or advanced features. It will let you access the files stored in different Google applications and upload new files from a single interface. Storage: 20 GB.
We have all probably seen the facility on the likes of the iPhone to manipulate Google maps via touch and the ability to 'Pinch' in and out. The Youtube video below I just came across that has been uploaded today shows how much more you can manipulate this. The demo of 'touchEarth' application shows how you can control Google Earth via multitouch gestures on a much larger scale.
It really is getting to the stages of the film Minority Reports a few years ago and for me starts to show how the Internet can start to move towards an integrated media centre option in the house bringing Internet and the likes of TV closer together. Microsoft have also been looking at these options as well with their 'Surface' table technology for a while now.
