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Fun Photo Fridays - SEO Cop vs. Web Guerrilla at SMX West

By Li Evans

So before I head back east I wanted to get a Fun Friday Photo up for all of your enjoyment!  I've got about 200 photos to upload yet, and I won't get to them until tomorrow, so I figured I'd treat you all to one of the 200 I need to upload.

I've enjoyed a great time at SMX West, I got to meet a lot of new people and sat in on some great sessions.  I'll be writing a recap of my experiences over the weekend too, since I did not live blog this conference.  So for now, I hope you'll enjoy this rather funny photo of Gab and Greg.  Seems someone finally caught up to Boser and "arrested" him for ... well we all know!

If you like this photo feel free to comment or favorite the photo of Gab & Greg, feel free to comment and favorite it as that's how we'll be judging the photos at the end of the year! Check out the rest of the fun at SMX West 2008.  Keep an eye out, we'll be back next week with Fun Photo Fridays.

Fun Photo Fridays - Kristjan & Nick, Two Great New Friends

By Li Evans

Well it's Sunday and I'm posting the Fun Photo Fridays Photo.  Flying across the Atlantic Ocean back to Philadelphia sort of put a damper on the uploading of the photo for Friday.  I finally got them all uploaded and tagged in Flickr early this afternoon, so now I can share the Fun Photo for the week.

This week's Photo is of Kristjan Mar Hauksson of Nordic eMarketing  from Iceland, and Nick Wilsdon of E3Internet based in Russia.  Kristjan is quite a tall guy, as is Nick, but in this picture, Kristjan's playing around, certainly helping Nick to feel a lot taller!

If you like this photo feel free to comment or favorite the photo of Kristjan & Nick, feel free to comment and favorite it as that's how we'll be judging the photos at the end of the year! Check out the rest of the fun at SES London 2008.  Keep an eye out, we'll be back next week with Fun Photo Fridays.

SES London 2008: The Wrap Up

By Li Evans

After a day and a half of catching up on all the work that I cannot wave a magic wand at and make magically be done, and a day and a half of trying to decompress, and reflect on a really great conference, I wanted to do a wrap up post about SES London 2008.

I stated before, this was the best SES conference in a long time.  Not necessarily if you are a higher level SEO/SEM/PPC person but generally all around the quality of content, speakers and session seemed to be raised a notch of two.  I've met new colleagues, I met people I've secretly admired from afar, caught up with old friends, and I even found God at SES London 2007, a pretty amazing feet with all those sock puppets roaming around the conference, too!

There were old panels, spiced up with new presenters.  I have to say, not one panel I attended that I was at before had all the same information as last year.  That would be because our industry has changed so much in the last 8 months.  The openness and willingness to share among speakers to the audience was refreshing, and it didn't even matter that Google reps were sitting right there in the room.  Everyone knew Adam Lasnik was there and you know what, Adam openly came up and discussed things with people and speakers.

The keynote and round table keynotes were awesome.  Frederick Markini just hit point after point about this industry, and even seemed to disagree with Mike Grehan, but you know what, that's what made things interesting.  He didn't actually totally disagree with him, but had a different perspective.  Sometimes we all need to look at things from a different angle, and if anything, that's what this conference did for a lot of experts in the industry.

If you came there looking to be educated in something all new, being an experienced online marketer, you might have been disappointed.  The show is geared towards a more novice crowd.  However, that being said, being in this industry part time since '95 and full time since '01, I came away with more than just 1 "golden nugget".  I think the real knowledge for the more experienced marketers comes from going to dinner, and conversing at the bars with our fellow colleagues.  Let me tell you, the chance to converse with Fantomaster and Dirk was worth every minute.

Key Highlights: 

• Fantomaster's appearance (and he's not afraid of Google)
• Orion Panel on Web Analytics
• Frederick Marckini's Keynote
• Panel on Microsoft/Yahoo potential merger
• Sock Puppets
• Linking Strategies Panel
• Social Media Panel
• Local Search Panel
• LondonSEO.org Party

This year's event was one I'm very glad I got to attend.  If this is just a taste of what SES NYC is going to be, we are in for another great conference.  I just wish God would come to that conference too!

For those of you who saw me with my sheets of paper and book and writing down quotes.... don't worry that will be coming in the next day or so!  Fun Friday Photo, will be up next... then you all get to hear "outtakes" from SES London 2008.  Till then, check out over 300 pictures from SES London 2008.

SES London 2008: Linking Strategies

By SEOidiot

Moderator: Mike Grehan, Co-chair, SES London; CEO Searchvisible Limited

Speakers:
Dixon Jones: MD Receptional Limited
Ken McGaffin: Internet Marketing Consultant, LinkingMatters
Brian Turner: Director, Britecorp Limited
Matt Paines: MD, XSEO Limited

Dixon Jones
Proverb: "The bigger they are the harder they fall on you" - Google are huge and if they think you are trying to game them they will fall on you pretty hard.

Case Studies
Getting indexed was the easy bit, then its all about getting the users to the site.

Google has 90% market share because they understand more about the users intent and they understand the relationship between the two. The differential factor is the reputation of your site online in relation to the sites above and below for that query structure.

In the last 12 months links has gotten absurd due to things like the influence of social media and the change in the way that we use the internet.

Receptional do try to record and differentiate the quality of the links that they get for a client. Recording things like the number of gov or edu links to the site linking in as well as things like references within wikipedia etc.

Build techniques that give people the incentive to link to you rather than going and asking for them.

Some links give quality real people and traffic of value and many others will simply bring junk traffic.

Think up strategies that it will be hard for competitors to simply copy

Dixon showed us the example of when Maxim magazine got the Eva Longoria image on Google earth and how many people have linked to them from that piece of innovative marketing.
Stop dead links using .htaccess to send a 301 for commonly mistyped URLs that may have links pointing at them.
Cleaning your site needs a good understanding of 301 redirects and helps prevent duplicate content.

Use RSS to allow people to have live news etc from your site by building things like widgets to help your link building efforts.

Matt Paines
Matt showed us some of the old techniques that used to be used with his suggestion in brackets: -

Reciprocal (SOME)
Whilst this is a mainly dead practice now there is still some benefits in terms of strategic partnership. Where its a natural thing to do and adds value it can still have a valid reason to be there but its not a good thing to do if the engines can view it as inappropriate.

Blog (SOME)
Blog spam has killed this in many ways. Most blogging providers have exclusions on text links. Seek out blogs that don't exclude with nofollow and engage with the blogs content, don't pollute.

Guest Book (NO)
Now completely dead in Matts opinion

Directories (YES)
Google have developed their view on directories and only the major ones now have real value.

Forums (NO)
Very much like blogs many of these have now nofollowed the links, can also be dangerous from a reputation management point of view due to the nature of the conversations on forums.

Social Media (YES)
Whilst many of these sites don't pass link value they do pass traffic and conversation.

Link Baiting (YES)
Difficult to control the anchor text but a extremely valid way to build incentives to link.

Articles (YES)
Some of the big article sites like PRWeb have had their ability to pass page rank stripped but they do provide a good method for getting the word out about your site quickly.

Paid For (YES)
Valid but avoid networks. We have been paying for advertising on and off line for many years, Yahoo for example charge for the review and addition of your site to their directory.

Ken McGaffin (www.linkingmatters.com)
Ken came into link building through traditional marketing. After writing his report (Linkingmatters) he built sales for the report by getting links and yet even when he stopped asking the links still kept building.

Links without asking is what its about
You have to make content that people want to link to without having to ask them.

Make sure that your Marketing, PR and SEO/Link Building people meet together and develop a common strategy.

Link power
Majority comes into the home page and make sure you are using the link power to highlight the pages you need to.

Find out who links to you now (And who brings you traffic)

Get the most from the sites that link to you already.
When someone links to you it shows the start of a relationship with them.
Encourage deep links
Ask for keyword rich links
Explore relationships - business or otherwise
Consider joint publications

Look at market segments where you are weak
Carry out the keyword research
Find the authority sites
Test markets on and off site
Explore relationships, business or otherwise
Customize product offerings
Use public relations to establish position

Look for emerging markets (And establish your position early)
Microtrends by Mark J Penn is a good example of this technique.
Does the market exists and is it relevant

Plan initiatives for the year ahead

Link building isn't an SEO trick its a way of establishing your position in a market.

Brian Turner
Google is a links driven search engine, instead of looking at what the page said about itself they looked at what other sites said about it.

Link strategies

• Submitted
• Directories
• Articles
• Social media profiles
• Forum signatures

Forum signatures
Benefits
Easy to create and control
Time consuming
Hazards
Duplication
Low impact

Paid
Sitewide links
Footer links
Advertiser / Sponsor links

Benefits
Choice of anchor text
Wide inventory
Traffic potential

Hazards
Usually strong footprint and easy to spot
Budget dependent
Limited control of format

Editorial
Natural blog posts
Media editorials
Natural references
Presell pages (Hosted marketing pages)

Benefits
Keyword association through page
Potential authority / trust
Natural placement
Traffic potential
Linkable content

Hazards
Difficult to acquire
Most expensive form of link

Presell pages
Most powerful tactic
Write an information rich piece of content were perhaps you link to other useful resources within the content as well as to the paid link page, thereby pre-qualifying the traffic.

Link sources
Different Class C (/24) IP Ranges
Varied anchor text
On Topic if possible - but not required
Quality, not quantity
Geo-target - UK domains for UK searches
Treat as PPC
Co-Ordinate links

SES London 2008: Balancing Organic & Paid Listings

By SEOidiot

Moderator: Kevin Ryan VP Search Engine Watch
Speakers: Dixon Jones, MD Receptional Limited
Jay Bean: Founder CEO, Orange Soda Inc
Nathan Levi: Head of Search Campaign Marketing Avenue A | Razorfish
Richard Clark: Pureplay Marketing Manager, Dixons.co.uk

Paid and organic has been a debate for a long time and the panel discussed the ways to balance the two strategies for the best results.

Dixon Jones
Lots of peoples clients argue that organic is something that should replace the early spend for PPC. Dixon showed an example of someone who contacted him via the form on his site after clicking on Receptionals Adwords ad attempting to sell him SEO!

You should pay for ppc even when you have placement within the organic serps. Dixon showed a good example of how the organic and paid results are blurred now, the example illustrated how a search can return the one box results that gives news and stock info etc.

Many of the sites linked to within the one box carry advertising as a business model. So traditional organic listings do get pushed down the page, thats why you need a dual approach.

We then looked at an example of how changes in screen resolution / size can almost allow one company with indented results in the serps to dominate the above the fold results.

Dominance in any one serp cannot be achieved without a balanced approach to using both methods.

Affiliates can also provide a way of finding your site pushed from the visible to below the fold for a given vertical.

PPC is part of the mix, SEO is the sum of the mix. You need both tools to be able to ensure you have the ability to respond the changes in circumstances that come with any search engine.

Two listings on a page converts better than just one method and more listings help you dominate more of the space on the page from your competition.

Jay Bean
Smaller local advertisers have some real opportunities today as a growing percentage of searches feature a localization element.

Benefits for the balanced approach: -

• You can turn up and down the ppc spend dependent on business or seasonal factors.
• You don't have any guarantees that the organic wont change and without the paid listing you can find yourself exposed to changes in search engine preference.
• You get greater credibility from appearing both in the paid and organic results and this can benefit conversions significantly.

Where to start ?
Check the current ppc spend and analyze your keywords to give you an indication of terms that you might want to optimize for in natural search or by adding a local market segment.
Set a budget to allow you to allocate your spend between the paid and SEO efforts and in the early days whilst waiting for the seo efforts to kick in paid can take more of the resources.

The case study Jay showed highlighted the benefit of targeting specific terms for SEO and a far broader set for paid.

For the smaller or local companies it may be difficult to compete with the large corporations but there remains good opportunities to compete on the local level.

Nathan Levi
Why should I buy my branded keywords when i rank for the terms in the organic listings often at a high cost per click?
Nathan showed us some case studies to illustrate the effect of the dual strategy over the single.
Its important that you try to get the analytics in one place to allow you to make informed decisions.
You need to be able to drive enough traffic to be able to get robust statistics so keyword choice is key.
They did a test to see what effect turning the paid listings off one day and on the next would have.
When the paid listings were on it pulled traffic away from natural but the click through rate was greatly improved and the overall effect was that both listings benefited from each other.
Conversion rates were static across the test, whilst increasing the incremental cost of having paid listings the overall benefit from the increased conversions made it well worth it.

In conclusion there is a multiplier effect of holding both natural and paid.

Richard Clark
60% of searches now have 3 or more words and 90% have 2 or more.
Dixons.co.uk started by spending all their online budgets on paid listings targeting generic terms but have grown to use a more balanced approach.

Dependent on budgets you need to target the stage on the buying process that you can afford and that makes sense for you, for example if Dixon's target the term 'TV' they  are targeting people in the research phase of the buying cycle but you can also target people in the buying phase by targeting much more focused terms like 'Toshiba 32 inch  lcd TV'.

When trademark isn't protected you should always bid on the brand.
Over 20% uplift in revenue when bid on branded terms when you are also top of the organic.

Being top of ppc and organic increases brand awareness and recall.

Q & A Session:
Will buying paid listings affect your organic listings?
Nathan Levi - Throughout there many thousands of listings where they have organic and paid results they don't see any effect that would indicate the engines (MSN specifically in this case) do not alter any organic results based on paid ads for the same.

SES London 08: The Best SES in a Long Time

By Li Evans

There's still a full day of conference sessions to go to, but I have to say with the two that have past, this SES conference has been the best in a long time.  It's miles above SES London last year, and not just because of the location.

Mike Grehan has put together a spectacular show with Kevin Ryan.  The speakers are top notch, and I can actually say for the first time in a long time I've taken more than one "nugget" away.  I've met some really great search marketers this time out, as well as some great new people, passionate people and intelligent people. 

That's not to say that I never met them before at a conference, but there is just something different going on here.  It is nearly electric as you walk around and converse with people, maybe it's the potential of Yahoo-Microsoft, maybe it is people freely speaking about linking while Adam Lasnick is in the room, maybe it is the kick-ass keynotes, and maybe it is the enthusiasm of the attendees  - I honestly can't tell you what it is, but I'm actually sad that SES London 2008 ends today.

For those of you who've missed this great conference, there's a ton of coverage and photos, and I plan on doing a more in depth post about my experiences here in London.  I don't agree with one of the reviews that was mentioned to me, there wasn't a sales pitch in any of the sessions I was in (and trust me, if there is I let Stewart know).  I just really wanted to convey that the quality of this show has really ratcheted up,  Mike Grehan has put together one awesome show.

SES London 08: Video & Podcast SEO

By Li Evans

Speakers:

• Amanda Watlington, Owner, Searching for Profit
• Onil Gunawardana, Vice President / General Manager Advertising, blinkx
• Tim Gibbon, Account Director, Elemental Communications
• Joseph Morin, Partner, Boost Search Marketing and CEO, Storybids, Inc.

Moderator:  Anne Kennedy

Amanda Watlington
Adding video and audio is compelling for brand marketers.  Helps to create engagements, loyalities.  Search marketers are challenged to create results with this medium.  This creates a direct medium to connect and communicate with the audience.  You can convey emotional content that you cannot do otherwise.  An approachable means to relating the approachableness of the company.

Video presents challenges.  Most users don't know where to look for it.  YouTube grabs the most attention.  Professional competes with consumer generated video. 

Tips:  offer in multiple formats, use tags, individual landing pages, user rss to distribute.  Create video with branding in it.  Avoid pop up players.

Podcasting:  success is based on planning.   is it a scheduled weekly show.  are you a full out entertainment site or just a blog?  Before you set out, name your show and research it.  Distinguish the show from the episode name.  Transcribe or abstract - transcript is better for SEO.

Come up with a keyword list before the show.  Build your infrastructure in advance.  Download and test tag editorers in advance.

Distribution is the SEO.  It's a 4 step process.  Optimising the sound (ID3 Tags).  Optimising the page.  Validate RSS Feeds.  Track and Monitor Submissions  Promote the podcasts!

Optimising Tag:  Album Name is the Show Name, Artist, Year, Episode #, Genre, Comments.
Make sure the file name is unique but makes sense, use words that make sense.

Optimising the Page:  Have a page for the show and then a page for each episode for each the episode.  Provide information on how to subscribe.  Include a player for people to listen online.

Onil Gunawandana of Blinkx
Blinkx has over 18 million hours of video.  Started in the UK but headquartered out of LA.  Public company.  They power the video player and video search of Ask.  They've had 50 million uniques world wide and 12 million uniques from UK in the past year.

When it comes to video, users expect be able to find a video easily and be able to watch it on the same page.  Goals for Video SEO
Advertising
    In-Video - Preroll or Invideo
    Out-Video - Banners, text ads like adwords
Traffic to site
Distribution for Promotional Video

They take the meta data, then speech recognition to convert the audio to text. 
SEO Tactics
    Metadata use it - sometimes it is often lost during conversion, metadata cleaning
    Key elements:  title and description.  filename.  category.  tags. 
    Sitemap / MRSS File
    Format - in format meta data
    Where to Submit - user generated video sites (YouTube MetaCafe), Video Search Engines (blinx)

Tim Gibbon:
Video is important as a marketing tool, engages with your audience, encourages interactivity.
Attracting users to your site:  make sure its RSS enable, title and keywords with each page.  Offer multiple download forms.  Allow users to embed the video on their own sites and blogs.  Have only one video per page, ensure your URL's are friendly.

Uploading to sites.  Descriptive and attention grabbing.  If the video allows you to select a still frame, ensure that it is one that captures attention.  Tags used are vital, ideally between 5-10.

Sites to use:  Blinkx, Fooooo and Truveo.  There are niche sites out there that we call gems look to find those.

You can input meta-data into the video itself.  Search Engines read the properties for video, word, pdf.  Some services allow embedded urls.  Can search on the content of the video rath than just the keywords associated with it.  Allow you to tweak keywords.

Dos/Don'ts - name properly, create video sitemaps, have only one video per page, rss enabled.  Don't stuff title, tag and descriptions.  Post poor quality and irrelevant, post pur commercials, cloak and flame your own content to boost hits, make content a one way dialogue.

Joe Morin of Boost
Video strategy - what is it?  Video optimization is SEO too.  It's necessary to have some kind of strategy.
Google has 51% of the market with YouTube.  Comscore stated the December was the heaviest video consumption month ever.  Convergence of Online & Offline advertising.

Just having the video isn't enough.  Distribution and Syndication of your video will draw so much more traffic and brand awareness.  Make sure social media channels are in place as well.  There's video crawlers optimization and uploaded optimization.

Don't use a stand alone player that loads up in a popup.  Make use of social media tags, comments & ratings.  For best results use metadeata during encoding.

Posted - use video overlays for branding.  Many hosted sites transcode the video so metadata may be stripped ou but encode anyway this may change over time.  Use the word "video" in the title.

TubeMogul - you can upload to 13 video aggregators with one upload.  Analytics can track views, ratings and comments.
VisibleMeasures - video measures.  views, pauses and rewinds.
Ooyala - Ex-Googlers that publishing and analytics.

Video Monetization
PreRoll, PostRoll, Pay per download, Contextual, In-Video advertising
   

SES London 08: News Search Optimisation

By Li Evans

Ann Kennedy introduces the panel of Tim Gibbon, Greg Jarboe and Lee Odden for the News Search Optimization Session.

Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR:
Last year's SES London, he told you somethings about press release optimization.  Everything has since been turned upside down.  This is bigger than a bread box and impacts all of us.

On 2/1/08 queries for Microsoft Yahoo spiked.  Google's Hot trends will show you the top 100 trends over the last 24 hours.  This is where hot keywords can surface.  This is where "the fish" are.  Brand new term "microsoft yahoo", somewhere around 7 a.m. in the morning.  Something happened.

If you went to Google and typed in that new term, what comes up first, it's news results not the typical blue link.  Shows Microsoft has bid on Yahoo!  If you had scanned down the results, you find "blog posts" at the bottom of the page.  Those blogs listed there were not on MS's blog relations list.  But it was hard to find what triggered this, but the end was a press release and letter from MS, he had to work hard to find "Microsoft Yahoo".  But this story triggered over 10k stories.

Everything you knew a year ago is wrong.  Press Release optimization is a tactic in a long strategy.  But everyone is doing it now, you need to take it to the next level.  Where you want to take it next is into a new realm, new relations - blogger relations.  You can focus on media relation.  The news sources for Google don't include the usual suspects. Google news is important, in December 3 million in the UK.

Focus on BBC News, Google UK News, Times Online, Google, Reuters UK, Guardian Unlimited, Google UK Image Search, Press Association.  Press Association was not part of Google News until Aug of last year.  Their content is now hosted in Google News.

90% of journalist say that visuals are important to their stories.  41% surveyed visuals could dictate content.  A release e-mailed with a jpg or tif file has a much better chance of making it into our newspaper. 

In many industries, blogs have become the new trade press.  Blog post generated 30 times more visitors than identical news articles. Articles and posts referred 34.4 times more visitors than releases.  Google is filtering press releases, they don't appear in the results.  The art of schmooze has turned news search SEO upside down.  If you think beyond the press release there is a world of benefit.

NewsKnife.com can give you a listing of all the news sources used by Google.  News sources also seem to take the "hard leads" first.

Lee Odden of TopRank Blog:
Intersection of SEO and PR - Pull PR.  Push being outreach, this is turning the news optimization world upside down.  Pull PR - standard search, news search, blog search, media search. Pull PR = SEO.

Why Optimize News?  Make sure whoever your intended audience is it's easily available to them in the formats they prefer.  Ranking on search engines brings credibility not unlike media coverage.  PR tactics used to improve search rankings.  Optimizing press releases and newsrooms are good tactics.

64% of journalists report they use the either Google or Yahoo! news at least once a week.  85% visit at least once a month.  Optimizing news makes it easy for users (journalists to find).  You are creating a wider footprint on the web.

PR content to Optimize - new releases, op-eds, media kits, corporate PR content, blogs, white papers, reports, webinars and demos, email newsletters, interviews, podcasts.  Optimize both onsite and offsite content.  Onsite - press releases, etc.  Offsite - social media profiles.  Inventory your digital assets and identify the appropriate channels of promotion.  Start with the outcome in mind, do keyword research.  Publish on your version first on your site and link back to it using "originally posted at" or "source of release".

Tim Gibbon of Elemental  Communications:
More people are using search to find what they need.  We need to communicate and challenge the way we meet media and bloggers.

Services like aggregators, news wires, news sites, portals. Each site offers different services and reach different audiences.  Evaluate them - who are they, how credible are they, where will your news appear, how did other releases do on their site, who are they affiliated with?

Manage your content, take control of it, optimise it, build quality content on your site, manage it.  Submit to generic and niche resources and sustain your efforts.  Fundamental SEO tactics should be applied to press releases.

Tim then shows some successful PR initiatives with clients.  Do's and Don'ts... Do's - implement measurements before you begin, prepare variations of the release, time releases for off and online communications, reach out to vendors and ask questions.  Don't - overload press releases with key words and phrases, expect online PR and social media to be a silver bullet, ignore offline media.

SES London 08: The Changing World of Search, Keynote Roundtable

By Li Evans

Moderator: Kevin Ryan,  Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch

            

Introduction by: Nick Carr, Author of The Big Switch, Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google

 

Speakers:

• Mike Grehan, SES London Co-Chair and Founder and CEO, Searchvisible Ltd.
• Steven Kaufman, SVP Media Director, Digitas
• Bryan Eisenberg, Co-Founder, Future Now Inc.
• Erica Schmidt, Global Director of Search, Isobar
• Paul Doleman, CTO & Head of PPC, iCrossing and SEMPO UK & Europe

Nick actually isn't here, but recorded a video for the audience.  Nick fell and broke his ribs and has a collapsed lung and was advised not to fly.

Kevin is showing a couple of headlines - "Microsoft vs. Google".  "Google weighs in against Microsoft".  "Microsoft to Target Yahoo! Investors".  "News Corp Joins the Yahoo! Battle".  "Yahoo Tells Shareholders They are Better Off With Current Managers".

Video from Nick Carr: 
It is a very important time in computing and history of communication.  Everyone in Search Marketing is playing a crucial role in this change.  He thinks one of the clearest indications something is going on is MS's bid to purchase Yahoo!

On one hand MS's motivation is tactical because of its lack of success in Search, and Yahoo! offers a quick fix.  Bigger story though is the change in the way computing and content is being delivered to our homes.  It use to be decentralized mode of supply, where we produced ourselves to centralized where there's a central place its made and supplied from. 

Up until the end of the 19th century, if you wanted to run a machine, you had to build your own electricity generator.  As soon as the electric grid was made, suddenly we had a new option, efficient supply at great distances.  We are seeing a similar thing happening in computing.  The world wide web is turning into the world wide computer. 

We are seeing this change quite quickly in the home and small business area.  Young people are running most of their software online, they aren't buying their own software in the store and installing it on their computers.  They are going to sites like Wikipedia, Flickr, MySpace - everything is happening online.

The software industry is starting to look like the media.  They don't make money from directly selling the software, they make it indirectly.  They have to figure out how to act like media companies, by supplying advertising to support the software development. 

On the business side, things move more slowly because of the investment into the data centers.  Also no one knows if this data model will work there or not.  However we will likely see it rise on a subscription model rather than what happens on home side.

Microsoft is still making money on the "old" side, however they are seeing this switch happening and if it wants to keep making money, they have to move to this new model.  Yahoo! gives to MS the ability to support this model.  It doesn't say it's going to happen (the merger), it says MS sees this and recognizes this and it's a world that Google is dominating this arena.

This is going to change a great deal about economics and society.  We've seen the rise of effecient companies such as Craig's List, Skype - these employ a small work forces, but serve more people than big companies that aren't on the web right now such as British Telecom. 

Search Marketers play a crucial role in privacy.  As more and more comes online by people and their personal data, the danger comes from data mining and SEO techniques.  It will eventually bring about the ability to monitor people and what they are doing online.  The challenge to Search Marketers is to figure out the standards and the ethics of what we offer up information wise while still giving people all the information they need. 

Panel Discussion:
Kevin points out Google is the clear leader, Microsoft is clearly behind.  Yahoo! dominates email and news.  Now asks the panel to introduce themselves.

Paul: He's spent 8 years at MS, 20 years in technology management.  He's currently CTO of iCrossing.  When he first heard the news he thought "at last", he doesn't think its competition for Google.  When Yahoo! and Microsoft work together, amazing things happen, he points to Flickr.  Its a small incremental growth, nothing of significance.

Erica: Global Director of Search for Isobar.  Her first reaction was "excellent". In the US its a "search game"  MS has not been able to get their game together on search.  Yahoo! has missed out too.  These two can align and maybe give Google a run for their money.  Who knows if they can actually merge these two distinct companies together.  As consumers it's good as well.

Bryan:  Co-Founder of Future Now, Inc.  His view is different.  MS has come to the realization of duality.  They know they are loosing it to Yahoo!, with Yahoo! they could be a solid "2" instead of "3".  It will be fun to watch if they can come together

Steve:  His first reaction was "wow".  How is this going to affect the search world.  Much bigger deal than search.  There's a lot of moving pieces to what each brings to the table.  It's not an easy thing to make this happen if it does because both companies are about culture.

Mike:  He thinks it would be best for humanity if he ran search so he's going to buy them both - crowd laughs.  What does it mean to the consume.  Google's like a utility, they are a technology company that can provide this easily.  Yahoo! and MS are more like media company.  If you think about Yahoo went on a spending spreee bought AltaVista,etc.  Pulling these two together culture wise is tough, but if its about search, its easy they did it before.

Kevin:  Do you think that Yahoo!'s has conceded Defeat?
Bryan:  Defeat no, that they ever will regain dominance, yes.  Their focus is on everything else but search.
Steve:  I agree, and Jerry came and spoke to us when we were there.  Yahoo! has the largest display advertising server on the planet. 
Bryan:  They are a media company not a search company
Mike:  If you take a look at Yahoo! land they are focising on social media and media, its not just about search.

Kevin:  Analyst are so ill informed.  As we look at search, Yahoo! should just outsouce search and call it a day do you agree?
Paul:  No, they should focus on giving the consumer the best experience they can.  Things can grow and form very quickly.  They can't really do it with search, maybe more with social, "web 3.0"
Erica:  Google doesn't have this ability.  If Yahoo! and MS can come together on this, they can give Google a run for their money
Bryan:  There's never been a business that has the scale like Yahoo!  There's been other leaders in the past that have come and gone.   What we're going to see in search in the future is getting on the phone and "saying" i want this and getting it.  That's an open ball game no one has captured yet.

Quetions from Audience:
Yahoo! seems like the unwilling prom date.  What about the other potential partners?
Paul:  The Fox move is interesting.  Appears to be a good fit.  But I get nervous about Murdoch.  But it's a very good fit between them
Bryan:  Interesting, but a so-so combination.  They are talking about swapping Myspace - that's a waste.
Kevin: Why?
Bryan:  Its like the old Geocities, its dying a slow death.

Erica:  Privacy issues that Nick pointed out in the video, people are hesitant to give to Google, but Yahoo! is more trusting.  People are bashing Google for privacy.
Mike:  But Google isn't evil - I saw it on their homepage!   Google can crawl a lot of different types of documents types.  Do a search for "business plan" find type .xls.  We're feeding all of this to Google.
Steve:  There's a lot of education that needs to take place.  Data isn't being used for "evil" it is fore relevancy
Bryan:  At the end of the day people just want good content
Paul:  I want to control my information, and be able to release it to the right people.  My medical records, my personal information, my shopping behavior etc.  Yahoo! has been looking at this.
Bryan:  Its all about transparency.  Lets not just focus on search, old media is looking at this too. Its across everything that touches you every day.

Greg Jarboe:  Stock market has weighed in.  MS's shareprice when down.  If MS would have taken that money and bought different companies rather than all their eggs in the Yahoo basket, what would you ahve advised?

Bryan:  Market is very reactive.  As far as buying 44 different companies you still have that culture issue of combining.  But investing it into the companies, yes.
Kevin:  Erica you are integrating companies very well.  Do you think these companies will have the wear with all to put a series of teams in place to orchestrate a change like this.
Erica:  Could they do it?  MS is the dinasour when compared to Yahoo!, AOL, they are very young companies.  My concern there's a culture class.  Management style - Balmer vs. Yang - completely opposite.  Yang is "one of the guys" they are pioneers of the web.  MS is an old company when you compare it to Google and Yahoo!.  They seem to try, but just can't "get" it.  They respond it's a 10 year game, but they aren't moving quickly enough and that's the issue.  That's the nice thing about Google, they buy companies and integrate them quite rapidly.  MS & Yahoo! trememdous amount of issues to get their.
Mike:  Neither one is a stranger to acquisition.  Depends on what you want to integrate first.  But going back to Greg's question, that would be a good idea.

Kevin:  Google is delving into media acquisitions.  What happens when the ad exchanges are open.  How much of the money for advertising is going to Google?
Steve:  I think the offline media doesn't have a lot of scale yet.  Its a tough sell to our clients. You get some early market learning.  No scale, but it will continue to grow.  Advertisers want to know where their brands are going to show up.  Clients aren't willing to put ads and logos where they don't have control.

Does the panel have any thoughts on if the deal went through, what would happen over the next year, would the engines remain separte?
Mike:  One of the strongest points of the deal.  Yahoo! has the bigger subscriber data - Google has users base that is higher.  Yahoo! and MS could do a good job of integrating
Paul:  MS and Yahoo! are doing it alrady with the messenger clients.

Can Search be Too Personal?
Paul:  I'm with you.  I like to search and discover new things.  But why should just one company own that shopping data?  Why can't I own it and give it to who I want too.
Bryan:  If you think there is such a thing as privacy, think again.  Credit bureaus know everything.  There are disadvantages.  They'll sacrifice convenience to not give up some privacy.  Its all about a balance.

If not Yahoo! who?
Mike:  It's just another change the industry is just evolving
Steve:  Google's not conceding any time soon
Bryan:  Who know what will be in 10 years, we don't know, roll with the punches today.
Erica:  Baidu.  We need to keep their eyes on Baidu.  They can move quickly and cheaply.
Paul:  Obama, Hillary or ... everyone just laughs now.  :)

SES London 08: Impact of Universal Search, Orion Panel

By Li Evans

Kevin Ryan opens up the panel showing how universal search is affecting the way the world searches.  Value propositions of search improving, re-trained on how to view search.  All of us on the web search at least 1 time during a month but most on average search 74 times.

From a marketers perspective universal search is doing some pretty interesting things.  Users are now clicking on the ads more in universal search.  Search results pages as destinations how do you measure success.  More creative options in search marketing, more view-thru value to search marketing, today's engines raising barriers to entry.  Consumers are warming up to universal search.

Mike Grehan showing how maps were integrated with a search for "Seattle airport".  Local results are being blended in.  Then show "dove beauty workshop", shows the video and how everything else is also commercial.  If there's video, and other interesting things, less click the paid.  Now shows Bourne ultimatum videos.  This is a really exciting time for us as marketers.

Jeff Revoy from Yahoo, Mike Grehan, Andrew Goodman from Page Zero, and Adam Lasnik from Google are on this panel. 

Kevin asks Adam what a search evangelist does.  His focus is on webmaster communications.  He takes what he learns from all of us back to the engineers.

Kevin:  Where are we headed with universal search?

Mike:  Ten blue links have to go, there's so much more you can do.  The world of web 2.0 the broadband era, there's so much more going on.  You can produce richer content.  There is all this interactivity going on.

Adam:    How do we decide what videos to show and from what sites.  It's primarily a technical consideration.  We can trust YouTube because we own it.  They chose MetaCafe because they know they could support it.  It's got to work so the experience is good for the user.

Jeff:  First off we know our own properties can handle it and its a starting point.  We're trying put relevant results out there for the user.

Mike:  More people are paying attention that they can provide this interactive material for their customers.

Andrew:  You are lucky if you find a company who already have this content readily available.  But most of the sites are still broken.  The challenge is to be visible in search.  There's 8 or 10 places now, not just 1 or 2.

Kevin:What percentage of results are universal/blended?

Adam:  All queries are going through universal.  It's still a small percentage that are showing universal, and it depends.  Esoteric concepts are much less likely to show universal results.

Jeff:  Yahoo is trying to understand intent.  They want to get where there destination is.  Giving users the information they need/want, and varies with query class.

Kevin:  What are the top considerations when it comes to considering what countries this should be rolled out to?

Adam:  It has been rolled out over globally.  One good rule of thumb to keep in mind is that as the indexes for each country get larger, more universal search results will appear.

Mike:  I see a lot more of it in the U.S.

Jeff:  Search assist is global.  Varies by market and language but it is all about relevance, markets & experience.

Kevin:  Mike what do you expect to see by 2010?

Mike:  If your listed in the results as just a "blue link" and your competitor is listed with rich media, everyone is going to want the rich media.

Andrew:  Advertisers want rich media results

Adam:  I can imagine the folks who work on adwords want to make their results to be most relevant.  Just as the natural search folks want theirs to be relevant, so these efforts will definitely remain separate.  Also, for clarification, no one pays for google local listing (natural ones that appear in the top 5 or 10 listed next to a map)

Jeff:  No doubt advertisers want it.  It comes down to relevance for the user.

Kevin:  Lets talk about social components and how they affect search?

Mike:  Has created a new breed of spam.  However, these social components are now becoming more relevant.

Andrew:  How do you measure converstaion? It can be taken to far, but it needs to be managed.  Its discounted until you can find a measurement.  It's fuzz but companies need to be on top of it, especially to respond to issues.

Kevin:  How do you filter out the garbage?

Jeff:  Social search adds tremendous value.  Yahoo! uses FUSE (Fine, Use, Share, Expand) to help w/ filtering out the garbage.

Adam:  When you give people the opportunity to contribute you get a lot of junk.  However, you also get diamonds and nuggets of gold.  There's a lot to be said about the wisdom of crowds, what are they most interested in?   Google will use any means necessary to protect the quality of search results.  They also send out experiments to understand what users say is "good".

Jeff:  There's no secret sauce, but they put a lot of value on the "reputation" of the user.

Kevin:  Still a lot of testing going on, what do you see with the next generation of how to filter these results?

Mike:  Search Engines have to provide the most relevant results.  Google and Yahoo! will need to support showing results that use multiple platforms.

Andrew:  I hope they don't become too internal (i.e. Google only displaying Google Video and YouTube videos)

Adam:  We are going to do what we can to keep the results relevant, however they want to be open to multiple platforms.

Jeff:  Yahoo! is all about openness.

The session then opened up to questions from the audience.  Overall this was a great discussion hearing from both sides of the industry, people doing the work and the search engines.