I found my way to San Jose this morning to attend Search Engine Strategies. My flight departed early so I had to get up at 4:30am…so yeah, I’m kind of in a bad mood.

So far I’ve only attended one session. It was regarding Universal/Blended Search.
Moderator:

• Chris Sherman, Co-Chair, SES San Jose

Speakers:
• Greg Jarboe, President and Co-Founder, SEO-PR
• Sherwood Stranieri, Search Marketing Director, Catalyst online
• Bill Slawski, Director of Search Marketing, Commerce360

Q&A Speakers:

• Erik Collier, Director of Product Management, Ask.com
• David Bailey, Engineer, Google
• Tim Mayer, Vice President of Product Management, Yahoo! Search

Mostly, the various search engines discussed how they see the future of blended search evolving. Obviously the engines want to include more and more content (video, images, etc) to keep users in front of their ads.

Some stuff to look for:
• Google News currently only provides text and images. Video should be available soon.
• Google Universal search will begin to shuffle features in the SERPs. For example, (as of 8/20/2007) a search for “Alex McArthur” returns 3 pictures of the actor and 10 standard web results. If a video or blog post about Alex McArthur became popular in the future, then a Google Onebox result may be added to the first SERP page.
• Third party videos showing up in blended search results.

Erik Collier, from Ask.com, reported a 30% drop of searchers going to second page as a result of blended search. Also, a 15% drop on searchers performing more than 1 query. According to Erik this means that people are finding what they want quicker.
*2nd page just won’t cut it any more. ;-)

Share This

I’m a fan of the Daily Searchcast with Danny Sullivan, but I have a gripe. IT’S NOT DAILY!

Oh, and while I’m in the mood to complain please prohibit Bruce Clay from advertising more than once a year on the podcast. Their ads nearly explode my speakers.

Share This

Check out these 10 steps to becoming an SEO. Hilarious.

Share This

For those of you into SEO you are all to familiar with the various perspectives on the subject. I’ve decided to start building a trusted list of SEO resources and would appreciate other takes.

• seomoz - This site is my personal favorite. These guys take a refreshing approach to the industry.
• Cre8asiteForums - A longtime favorite among many SEOs.
• SearchEngineWatch
• added 4/20/2006 - Matt Cutts - Whether planned or not, Matt has become an authority in the search industry. He was one of the first google employees and has a knack for “leaking” information on updates.

Each comment will be reviewed and potentially added to the list.

Share This

I picked up Web Analytics Demystified by Eric Peterson the other day. This book came highly recommended and although I have not yet completed it, I strongly advise it to anyone interested in the field. I believe web analytics is a field that is mistakenly overlooked by small and mid-sized companies. Many businesses pay big bucks for search engine marketing. However, they have no plan once a visitor has entered the site. MidScape has recenly added web analytics services and can improve your ROI success.

*More to come on web analytics as I come across topics of interest.

Share This