Catch Up - Interesting Posts Recently

Danny Sullivan has a nice summary post this morning…always in his funny and light-hearted way. Danny is the glue that holds a fragmented community together.  

Google Blogoscoped linked to posted video of Danny Sullivan’s interview of Eric Schmidt at SES and Danny also posted full press conference transcript that Google posted - wish I would have known that this was out there - it would have been helpful to me and I’ve bookmarked the page - props to David Krane and his PR team Google for posting that including the retracted comment portion - in other words if you read this please read the whole thing! I would urge him to change the segmentation of this information however as this transcript was not sent out via the normal Google product promotion press release channels like email.

RustyBrick points out an article suggesting that Google has hit the “topping point“.  

Easton Ellsworth discusses a few of his favorite blogging promotion concepts.

This includes Andy Hagan’s and Aaron Wall’s recent 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity in 2006.

Steve Rubel is challenging marketers to think like Venture Capitalists.


SES San Jose Day 4 - Search Engine Q&A On Links

MSN – Ramez Naam

Links – What do they mean?

Discovery – How do you find it?

Reputation – How important is this page?

Annotation - What is this page about?

Key Principal of Links
Short and Readable
Descriptive
Useful and Navigating
In a Useful Location, Font, Color, etc.

Build good content and they will come!

Ask – Kaushal Kurapati

A link is a vote of authorization of the page being linked too.

Ask Approach –
Search the index to collect & calculate global information
Break the index into communities
Collect & calculate local subject-specific information
Apply all pertinent links

- Be cautious of reciprocal links
- Become an authority on a subject

Google – Adam Lasnik

We want links that are useful for humans?

Do your links make sense?

Yahoo! Rajat Mukherjee

Let’s try  to think beyond links.

Keywords, meta tags, links, new things are emerging

Ysearchblog.com

Answers.yahoo.com – social search is subjective opinions
Builder.search.yahoo.com – new search experiences

Myweb.yahoo.com

Siteexplorer.yahoo.com – look at your in links, meta data.

Help.yahoo.com/search

Search.yahoo.com – different signals will involve links


SES San Jose Day 4 - API (new session)

Rustybrick wrote an amazing post on the new SES API session - my PC was in dead battery mode and no plug available mode during this session. Please enjoy his post. He did mis Erynn B. Petersen’s of Microsoft because they accidently went to questions before she gave her speech, which was an awkward moment that she handled amazingly well. I had a nice chat with her afterwards, she is one of the people who really gets what this is all about and for that I appreciate her.

This is a great session that reminds me of how much search is like financial services, where there are a number of vendors that provide mission critical API’s - the fact that API’s are just starting to become transparent to the masses is a sign of how early in all of this we truly are.


SES San Jose Day 3 - Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, Press Conference

After Eric Schmidt was interviewed by Danny Sullivan, he held a press conference.

But first Eric stopped in the restroom and shook my hand shortly thereafter without washing his hands per reports of an SES attendee (it’s weird learning things like that 2 days later).

Learnings from this experience: Bring your business card, ask a specific and short question or risk having the tough parts missed.

The most surprising thing to me is that he only really holds press conferences about once a quarter. Think about that one of the busiest, hectic and arguably most controversial companies of our time that generates more news in a week than many companies used to generate in a year only has a press conference once a quarter. I wonder what Don Tapscott would think? Hmm, I just checked and actually Eric was quoted on the sleeve of Don’s 2003 book, the Naked Corporation! Think of how much the world has changed in those three years. Wow!

Below is my summary of the finer points of this rapid fire interaction (wish I could type faster) - minus the one area where he retracted a statement after continued pushback. It was very odd because in one way I felt sorry for him for being pounded on in a harsh way and in another way I felt he wasn’t being fully forthright and maybe even somewhat evil… I guess I’m trying to get across that the scene was very tense, terse and emotional.

Reporter: Can you say more on partnerships, Google as the affiliated partner, etc.

Eric: Dmarc is going to go well. Viacom/MTV suggested that taking content and putting video advertising at the beginning. Finding a way to monetize them is the hard part. We are doing well in search and content. Radio is coming out soon. The other two are starting now.

Reporter: Can you discuss the economics…

Eric: The forward commitments are much, much larger.

Reporter: Regarding the Kinderstart lawsuit.

Eric: It’s probably is best that I not comment on that.

Reporter: The AOL thing, how can it be impossible to happen at Google?

Eric: We have very specific plans about it. I’d rather not divulge them.  (awkward silence in the room)

Reporter: Many people, do not know the difference between paid and natural search. Could you do more?

Eric: Yes certainly we could although I think most people know. (I’d like to hear more elaboration on this issue as would the reporter that asked it) 

Reporter: Can you update us on Adsense policy?

Eric: Sites sometimes don’t follow the guidelines due to third parties. We have been tightening our guidelines.

Reporter: Update on Microsoft…

Eric: General Counsel made some claims. We’ll see where it happens. Google is more efficient, more scientific, etc. We will get more - $12 Billion of a $500 Million industry.

Reporter: Can you discuss video pricing model and cultural trends.

Eric: We will use an Adwords model. Development of social networks as lifetime models eventually. Myspace, it’s of the scale of instant messaging.


SES Day 3 San Jose - VP’s of Search Engine Marketing

Abhilash Patel

Who needs a VP Search?
- Anyone with offline media budgets
- If you separate Sales and Marketing – you need a VP Search

How big should a company be that deserves a VP?
How big is the SEM budget?
Are you prepared to go after 70-80% of search traffic.

What does the VP do?
Progress on a daily basis: Constant Execution.
Harmony with web-technical teams.
Independent growth stats?

The argument for in-house SEM/SEO & Vendor Outsourcing.
Greater control

Marshall Simmonds, Chief Search Strategist, The New York Times
CEO – Define Search Strategies

If you are not integrating – you are left behind.

Selling Search to NYT
- “Pope Dies” not people converge on Vatican
- Communication

Optimize articles, not front page

Develop metrics – important to quantifying success later

Got rid of registration wall. (it was a big deal)

Sean Smith - Citibank

We are marketing in a more targeted way. Internet acquisition has passed mail.

90% of my job is communicating why I’m here. You are educating and driving strategy.

Search is not a volume driver for us. It’s about getting the right users to obtain cards and get them.


SES San Jose Day 3 - Eric Schmidt Interview

Danny Sullivan conducted a rather lively and interesting interview session at Search Engine Strategies San Jose the morning after the Google Dance.   

Danny: AOL controversy, privacy, etc?

It’s obviously a terrible thing. Speaking for Google, the trust of our end users. It’s funny that we talk about the company being more transparent. We had a case where the government gave use an overbroad subpoena. A judge ruled for us.

Danny: Google saves the data. Should you destroy the data?

We are reasonably satisfied, it’s not and accidental error. We’ve dbated what you suggest.

Danny: Does a search engine need to filter more of this data?

In California, information on DMV was public. It would be nice if there was a systemic way to list it. It is illegal to

Danny: Should you take a site like that down.

We’ve discussed it.

Danny: The debate about click fraud?

The advertisers show a click fraud rate now. Why are trying to give advertisers information about how it’s working.

Danny: How much money is going into search?

We have chosen not to release the underlying economics… We are working to give people the ability to target where their ads go.

Danny: Google ads are now on radio, image, etc…

Much of the world’s video will be repurposed to the web. Using video ads can enable that.

Danny: Whatever you do, it’s going to be measurable…

Measurable ads start now. You hear ads that ae a waste of your time today. You should end up with fewer ads with more purpose. That is going to benefit everyone.

Danny: Standards – why is this happening now?

Click fraud, link fraud, standardized formats. Tim Armstrong is working with the IAB on this for us.

Danny: Adsense is a power for good. Should the problem areas be clamped on?

Overall, it’s a great outcome. We have people that abuse it. We are getting better at detecting the areas of attack.

Danny: Boring, search can boring, search is still working on a box.

Many people are happy with this one box. But, we are starting igoogle, a series of gadgets.  

Danny: Links…

We want to provide the best technical result. How do we use information that is very proprietary. Even I don’t know the algorithm.

Danny: Book search…

Google has to be careful, we want to avoid issues. There is a fair use issue. The law is not that clear.

Danny: Google we are everywhere you want to be…I surrender. Give me the implant.

Would you like to be a test case? (laughs) Primary goal is to make their lives better. We’ve talked about the limits of our growth. People are one click

Danny: How often do you search?

50-100 times a day…A politician, came in and knew there was more outhouses than Tivo? A year later is wasn’t true. Google is not a perfect truth filter.

Danny: When was the last time you clicked on an ad?

All the time, I search, Google search cause I do a lot of online shopping and I want to know how things work.

Audience: Transparency, do you see plans – momentarily will I be able to monentize my search.

I hadn’t thought of that fully, that is clever. There are elements right now. 

Audience: Ebay question…

We want to integrate Paypal so that people have choice.


SES Day 2 - Auditing Paid Listings & Click Fraud Issues Session

Basic legal update was presented – you can read this elsewhere.

Edelman – new suit against Yahoo! Alleges spyware in publishing network causing clicks.

Special claims process. Claims process being overseen by a federal judge. What deos click fraud mean. Plaintiff’s lawyer said we are giving up positive praise. Yahoo will have customer panels. John Slade is pleased that these things are settling as it allows the freedom to start talking.

Shuman made a very short statement that shared John’s sentiment.

Paul Vallez (Ask) – they have been trying to learn from Yahoo! and Google.

How big is click fraud? Tom Cuthbert says 14.1% is the figure he sees overall. He did not discuss variability.

Shuman published study that shows fictitious clicks. 17 pages – Shuman says page loads are causing these.

Reports submitted to Google there are Yahoo ads included. Shuman claims some people have reported over 100% percent.

Lori Weiman reprimanded Shuman for not sharing the report with the panel in advance because it made it impossible to respond to Shuman’s points.
 
Tom Cuthbert – reasonableisnotenough.com

Media rating council. IAB is a publisher network and is not the right panel.

Jessie commented on John’s positive contributions. Then pointed to Shuman for issues with

Shuman stated a number of invalid click efforts ongoing from Google.

Jessie then challenged for Shuman to agree that data both sides was necessary. Shuman agreed.

There was a lively and choppy question and answer session (as always).

Analysis: Yahoo! is clearly collaborating with customers to work to solve the issues. Google is clearly trying to move from defense to offense – but I’m uncertain what this accomplishes in the long term. Can’t wait for next time.


SES Day 2- New Yahoo Search Marketing PPC Platform…

Marketing Focused

Managing Objectives

Multiple Segment Focused

Quality Thorough Technology & Rewards

Multiple pathing

Keywords are now “Targets”

Georegions ability – California (the example shown) has many regions

Automatic keyword/target suggestion tool

Alert ability for campaigns (got applause)

New term – Assists – giving credit to contributing keywords

John Slade then spoke…

Consumers will ignore advertising that is irrelevant

John is an architecture buff – people need to see what is relevant to them.

Advertiser with a high quality ad will perform better.

You will be rewarded for having a well targeted ad.

What will migration look like, and how can I get in? Measured upgrade – same ads will be served – then you can adjust.

What features will I have and when do they take effect?

The new features will begin at your upgrade time.

When will the new ranking model begin?

2007 Q1 (planned)

Can I still use my agency/tool provider.?

Yes.

Audience Questions:

Is day parting available?

You can customize your day time. Still being worked on. This is a 1.0 platform. That will be in a future release.

PPC, relevance, sounds like EPC?

Variables will be changing.

Will there be changes to the minimum bid?

No, not at this time.

Ad groups and structure?

Keyword bid can override an ad group.

Search in being used for other means other than shopping, we need to assist that.

Platform is global, multiple platforms. 


SES Day 2 Blog & Feed Search SEO

Amanda Wallington: Customize template, use plugins, tweak your keyword lists, your copy needs theme, pay attention to titlesSteps to keyword rich content

- Write post, focusing on message

- Review your keyword list

- Include a keyword intense and concise phrasing

Tips:

- Flattery of other blogs

- Ekstreme.com/socializer

- Turn pinging on, claim your feed.

UtilizeThese Products:

- Feedburner

- FeedCraft

- Nooked

- Measuremap

- Sitemeter

- Technorati

Rick Klau:

IE7 about to launch

-  Integrated feed reader – large implications for RSS distribution

- Auto-discovery must be well-configured

TechMeme shows a trend in “meme” tracking

- Favors full text feeds

Style Sheets Helping Feed Usability

- Raw code is going away!

Johnzeratsky.com – web services 


Podpress 6.7 Upgrade

I’ve upgraded to Podpress 6.7, They’ve been quite busy lately as the last verison I installed in May, 2006. Keep up the great work, Podpress rocks!

Podpress Wishlist:

1. Official Realplayer support - this would solve alot of band with issues for many people.

2. More complete documentation of all these great features. I know there are some great features in this plugin that I’m not even using because I do not know about them!


Gmail - Right Now

“We’re experiencing technical difficulties that may prevent your chats from being sent.”

This message appears all too frequently.


Goolge Maps Now Enables Local Coupons

This has the potential to be extremely useful to small businesses and disruptive to existing coupon outfits.


Today’s Events in the News - Al-Qaida

Having lock de-icer in my in my bag in August suddenly makes me feel so unpatriotic.

On another note on airplane/airport terrorism and terrorist attacks, does it bother anyone else that they tighten security after the arrests and never before?  Yes, some might argue the tip off factor, but couldn’t you do this quietly as a change in procedure? Just thinking out loud here.


Google Video Migrates to the Google Home Page

In this post on July 20th, I predicted that Google Video would appear on the homepage soon. However, I guessed wrong on it replacing Images. At first, I’m surprised that Froggle was what was removed. After thinking about it more I shouldn’t be, Google Checkout migrates to the back end of process what Froggle did upfront. If there is enough penetration of Checkout, it now makes sense to me that Froggle would be unnecessary.

Maybe they are starting to run the company off of my blog sugggestions now… ;)


SES Day 1 - Social Search - Up Close With Yahoo!

Tim Mayer opens the session - reviews items from previous session.

Yumio – Yahoo Answers!
Quantifying human knowledge. Yahoo! Answers is a collective site. Better knowledge through people. Y! answers compliments web search, giving results that a user may not think about. Provide content and material that. Culture of sharing. People like to share. Remote connectivity. Impressive growth 12x UU & 25x page views. Audience is segmented by topics/categories. Brand-Specific Channel and Expert Sponsor panel.  Showed examples of how Answers functions as a traffic driver from other search engines as pages are indexed.

Del.icio.us - Joshua Schachter – Director
Remember, Share, Discover
Brief overview – nothing new

Flickr – Yumio - her speech was great - but I had to leave the room for a minute.
Talks mainly about social phenomenon of Flikr.
New partnership with Nokia

Trip Planner – Ashish Baldua
Monetization – sponsorship – commoditization - etc

Time – 2.6 words average length, this is lengthening over time

How do you prevent a product from being spammed in Yahoo! Answers?
There are community guidelines. Inappropriate posts are deleted. 24/7 moderation.

Myweb – 3 results from the community. Overlay, this result was saved by Joe Smith – number of saves. Integrating Answers recently into the organic results. People are finding the tests to be additive to their search experience. Chris Sherman followed onto my question by asking about the one box experience versus the additive content. Time indicated this will come with time, but it is something where they need to proceed slowly with caution.

Tim Mayer and his team clearly outdid his peer on this day in terms of communicating a clear vision for social search.


SES Day 1 - Social Search Overview

Chris Sherman made introduction speech I cant stress enough that he did a really *amazing* job of planning the session and laying out the issues. Major props.

Social Search goes back to the first days of the Internet.

W3.org – first directory.

Directories were the first forms of social media. Spammers destroyed the first directories with spam.

Future – people will be getting these things right

Talent pool is volunteer and free. The scaling is happening due to people participating.

Types – Shared bookmarks (del.icio.us), tag engines (blogs and RSS) and collaborative directories (Wikipedia).

Types of social search – Personalized verticals and collaborative harvesters.

Popurls.com – combines all news sites like dig, reddit, etc in one place.

Scale and scope will be major, tagging, ambiguity of language, human laziness, lack of controlled vocabulary, and of course…idiots!!!

Spammers – new systems create new opportunities.

Chris Sherman is optimistic about social search but is concerned about some issues. Trust networks, increased personalization, etc are great opportunities

Grant Ryan , Eurester speaks:
Flew in from New Zealand and is tired!

Anyone can create their own search engine with Eurester.

Power to the people – socialization of the search technology. Spidering, Directories, Link Analysis, Swickis

Search engines have done everything to avoid

We are a printing press not a publisher. We can decide how it looks and how to make money. We have created 20,000 search engines.

Monetize the printing press the way you want to – chose what is best for your community.

Swikinomics – How can you create vertical search engines. You can own your own Swicki. Property rights are key to motivate people in any economic system.

Anyone can create a valuable asset based on their knowledge

Existing communities and brands can extend into web search to create valuable services

Anyone can organize information on the Internet and get paid for it.

Tim Mayer, Yahoo!

Launching a search builder today - builder.yahoosearch.com

Search breakthroughs come from untapped authorities and rich new sources of metadata.

Yahoo’s mission – “Enrich peoples’ lives by enabling them to find, use, share and expand all human knowledge.”

Obtain a critical mass or high-quality user generated experience.

Nils Pohlmann, Lead Program Manager, Windows Live Search

Live spaces – new release

Ideas.live.com beta release Windows Live Q&A

Windows Live Local – Maps with tags

Windows Live QnA – sign up as qna.live.com

Questions:
Are the demographics different than in a bookmarking versus answers?

Tim - Del.icio.us is tech influencers. Tails of the tags are more mainstream. Myweb are early adopters. The demographic is younger overall.

Subscribers for a tag, Answers, is about contribute valuable knowledge.

There was a question about paying for bookmarking actions and the panel was in agreement that they are leery of going this route.

Regarding Yahoo! - Tim - Builder.search.yahoo.com – create customized web search. Create customized search experience. Reputation and trust are important!


SES Day 1 - Social Search : Up Close With Google

I never did catch the speakers name….sorry!

Google Co-op – Subscribe links. This is new types of content and new types of information.

Building socialized search. Example of subscribed links flight stats: Instyle Magazine, Search Engine Watch and Digg are good examples.
You have control over how they work.
Fresh content is important.
Target precisely so the experience is better.
Make sure it is actionable.
Make the content pleasing to read.

Query formulation is hard for some users. Google Topic Value Proposition – Refinements allow users to start with simple queries and refine using labels.

Lack of content, users don’t know what they are looking for. Labels suggest ways to look for information.

Users don’t understand how to bring that relationship.

It was surprising to see Google only send one person with a 10 minute speech for this. They were leaving the room in droves even before he finished. When I saw it was going to be an hour and fifteen minutes of random questions, I bailed to the branding session.


Biscoff - Offline Marketing Driving Online Sales


That second U.S. Air flight had Biscoff cookies distributed. This tasty treat was joined with an incentive to visit them on the web. When you search for cookies in Google - there are no Biscoff ads. There is one for branding when you search on Biscoff.

The more I learn about online marketing the more I see the strong correlation between many of the best executions involving offline elements. This first came to my attention at the ACCM conference which focuses on catalogs. Then a few weeks later at the Geo Domain Conference, I saw to geo domain owners comparing hotel booking stats. The one with the city that was one quarter the size had three times the hotel bookings. Why? The owner had a direct marketing background and had several offline campaigns to drive traffic to the site. These campaigns were swaps that were win-win. Which brings us to the most successful site always partner!

Consider matching your offline efforts with the online one next time you are planning a campaign. Thanks again for the tasty treat and the reminder of good marketing practices.


US Air / America West

I had a great experience with them today overall. Flights were on time, people were friendly, etc. The flight from Phoenix to San Jose is especially beautiful in terms of scenery.

The only thing I didn’t like was the boarding procedure. It’s very unnatural with the window, middle, then aisle. Many people ignored it and the gate agent didn’t object to people doing so. So if something doesn’t work - why don’t they change it?


Introducing nextgoogleceo.com 3.0

Lately, Google has been showing that is it participating in customer listening. This is good! I hope it continues.

Since I’ve started studying search engine marketing these past full months full time, I’ve been applying to Google - even with employee referrals of former co-workers and people I’ve met at Search Engine Strategies, etc. with out the applications executed in a way I consider appropriate - that is the politest way I can say it. I’d like to see that change, I’m presently seeking post-MBA level leadership roles within your Search Services/ Syndication, Advertising Sales, Marketing or other leading areas driving customer satisfaction and impacting revenue as you grow new product lines. Ideally I’d love to work within local, dMarc or mobile. I resubmitted (again) today for numerous post-MBA leadership positions.

So I launched nextgoogleceo.com which is a cute take of HR microsites (and discusses how next Microsoft is obsolete now that google is a common verb in our language), except that I’ve changed the wording a bit to demonstrate my increasingly dynamic understanding of both search and viral marketing and the future thereof. As soon as I hit send, I’m leaving for Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2006 and look forward to meeting your wonderful business unit leaders speak once again.

I would of course invite aspiring competitors or “next google’s” to come up and talk to me about their ideas as well. I look forward to learning and adding to my large and growing list of amazing people that are making the Internet a special place.

I look forward to seeing all of my fabulous friends at SES San Jose. It’s going to be both great fun and great learning. It’s the 3rd or 4th time I’ll be seeing some of you and I feel like I’m going on a trip to visit family…that is because that is exactly what it is! I look forward to meeting many new folks to and learning many new and great things. Thank you and please travel safely. See you in San Jose!

I leave you with this parting thought: In the book, Creating Customer Evangelists, the chapters on Mark Cuban stand out in regards to the hiring of Matt Fitzgerald as Chief Marketing Maverick: “Instead of selecting a marketing person from the NBA or the sports industry, Mark consciously made a decision to hire someone from outside the industry,” Fitzgerald says. “He believed the NBA marketing community was too in-bred so [Cuban] was looking for a marketing person with a fresh perspective and ideas.”


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