Category Archives: search

SES San Jose – exhibitors are followers, not leaders

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Note to middle sized companies that have exhibit staff – you’d probably be surprised to see them in action. Although I’m usually impressed by the people from Google and Yahoo who are typically well informed, enthusiastic, and polite, many of the technology exhibit folks seem poorly informed about the marketplace and too focused on their own pitch and “sale”.

I’d guess that the return on investment is negative for all but a few exhibitors, though perhaps the leads they get at an event like SES San Jose – the world’s top Search related conference – are golden and therefore hugely valuable?

The good news for me is that I now understand *very* clearly that outsourcing any search optimization I want to do would probably be a waste. Some of these places don’t even keep up with the freshest SEO news from Matt , WMW , or even SES. There are some exceptions to this SEO ignorance by SEO companies. I’m always very impressed with Bruce Clay . His approaches reflect recent SEO information. Bruce is always very well informed and helpful even to non-clients. Another exception would be freelance guys like Aaron Wall of SEObook fame. However, I’d say there are only a few hundred people in the world who know enough about SEO to make their insight more valuable than, for example, a clever high schooler who spends a few days absorbing information from Matt Cutts, the Google Guidelines, and Danny Sullivan posts. I’m increasingly skeptical that time spent at WMW and SES forums does more than create noise and confusion. This idea was supported even at a conference party by comments from the real engineers at MSN and Google who post at WMW as “MSNdude” and “GoogleGuy”.

SES San Jose – it’s almost like I’m not … here.

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I’m sitting in my San Jose hotel room a few blocks from the Search Engine Strategies conference thinking how much better the information about the conference is … right here on my pc … than at the conference itself.   I’m not knocking SES (yet), just noting that a broadband connection and good website coverage means that even up in my little Oregon town I can “see” the emerging online world as well – in some ways much better – than hanging out in the middle of things here in Silicon Valley.  Microsoft’s MIX06 had more PCs all over the place where SES, like last year, has a long line to check mail unless you want to lug your own pc all over the place.   Also an inconvenience if you want to check up on blogs or conference updates.   The key point?  The virtual 24/7 conference online is rocking, and will only get better over time.

I shouldn’t knock the conference because I’m just an “exhibits only” attendee and SES clearly has emerged as the key search conference.   Also, Danny Sullivan is arguably the sharpest SEO observer in the world and based on comments by some presenters I know he treats his peeps well …

YET …  it sure seems they have the same tired “Our SEO is the best ever” exhibitors and perhaps as many as 60+% of the same presenters show after show, most pretending they are better at or more helpful with PPC and organic optimization results than … a smart high school kid … which is not supported by much evidence I can see, especially on the organic side of SEO.   I do hate to miss Matt Cutts comments and the Eric Schmidt interview but maybe I’ll bump into them at the party at Google tonight.

After going to 3 full Webmasterworld conferences, two SES as exhibits only, and one AD-TECH (where they more-nicely-than-SES allow exhibits people to attend the keynotes which are the best part of that conference), I think Webmasterworld offers the best insights and networking.  One presenter who appeared at both told the WMW crowd he had to dumb down the presentation for SES. Perhaps he says the opposite here, but I think SES, at three times the price, is not even as valuable as a WMW conference for all but a handful of niches such as Vendors, who’ll do better at this venue because they are selling things rather than dispensing quality information.   (Man there are a lot of SEO clueless salespeeps in SEO!)

Of course personal contacts are important, but I know I’ll find some people I know over at the Google Party later this evening.

Can the long tail wag the big internet dog?

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Obviously niches of human interests will be a very powerful force in the shaping of the online world, and it would seem the best way to serve niches, especially a small one, is more along the lines of medium or  small business rather than big biz.  However the mega sites seem to be increasing their share of the action, and are shaping the new access and community tools.

I’m wondering which of the following models, if any, will be most prevalent in the future.  How much will the long tail wag the internet dog ?
Big Corporate Website model:  Yahoo, Myspace, Google, MSN as giant info, tools, purchasing portals, community centers.
Medium Website model:  I see this as content aggregator sites like technorati that serve large niche markets and use Web 2.0 sensibilities to help users slice and dice the overwhelming amounts of online content.

Mom and Pop model:  Local or niche specific info-rich sites where users will spend most of their time researching/buying/socializing.

Obviously there will be all of this and more, but I think the trends are important and it *makes intuitive sense* to me that onliners, especially the next generation, will seek niche specific social interaction that is not handled well by anybody right now.   Big sites mostly lack enough of a human element and sites like Myspace that do have a powerful human element fail to deliver a high quality or info rich experience.

With that in mind I’m off to Silicon Valley to hear 1) pitches from the Search Engine Strategies vendors about how they can get me to the top of the search heap (thanks, but I’ll just take the T shirt for now).  2) Google Party!   Always fun to talk to the search and labs teams there.  They be clever folk.

Google Party at SES 2006

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Tuesday is the 5th annual Google Party in Mountain View at the GooglePlex, one of the biggest social events of the internet year. It’s held in conjunction with the Search Engine Strategies conference at the San Jose Convention Center. I was just down in Silicon Valley about 3 weeks ago for Mashup Camp 2, but I can’t miss the Google Party!

One of the highlights last year was a chance to talk to several of the Google Search Engineers. Here I am pestering Kekoa – I think about 302 vs 301 redirection and ranking items:

Kekoa at Google Party

Matt Cutts is generally in *high demand* at conferences as well as here at the 2005 Google Party webmaster talks, which are held away from the really big crowd outside. In fact in Boston at Webmasterworld he told me he hardly got anything to eat at this 2005 Google bash because he was constantly mobbed.  Thanks to my good friend John for shooting these pix.   He’ll be joining me again this year at the Party.

Matt Cutts at Google Dance 2005

Ringtone Scams and PPC Fraud – why so little outrage?

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One of my most read and commented blog posts relates to Ringtone Scams, a scandalous scourge of the internet, with collusion of most of the major phone companies. I’m confident these ringtone scams will soon be making more mainstream headlines.

Along with Pay Per Click fraud, ringtone scams, unlike some other online frauds and deceptions like phishing, have not quite made the big radar screens because they are harder to understand than traditional deceptive business practices such as bait and switch at a store or salespeople lying. In those “storefront” cases you can often confront the scamming salesperson or store directly, a powerful tool lacking in the online world.

What frustrates me is the level of tolerance for these practices, especially in the online community. Very questionable in scope and scale was the recent slap on the wrist of Google for failing to catch what appears to be massive PPC fraud – perhaps as much as a billion dollars per year. Contrary to the claims of all the PPC players much of the fraud could be eliminated with more careful screening and identification of contracted parties in the online transaction. This would eat into profits and therefore has been a low priority, but when as much as 25% of online advertising revenue may be obtained through fraud it’s time to stop expecting advertisers, often unwitting ones, to paying the price. This means the PPC outlets, especially Google who reaps the lions share of PPC profit (and therefore PPC ill gotten gains), should be paying a LOT more attention.

Google Books = Good Google. Adding UC Books = Great!

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What I really like about Tim O’Reilly is that he’s almost always …. right.   More importantly he does a fine job of seeing where things are going in our increasingly frantic and complex digital maelstrom.

As a publisher Tim’s insights into the Google scanning controversies are very relevant and over at his blog he’s making a lot of great points about why Google should be cut loose to spread the digital word.

O’Reilly suggests that “Google’s initiative is innovative, useful, and a real boost to an industry that has yet to make significant headway with electronic books….”

Right on O’Reilly.

Must be Good to be Google

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Just in from my “biting the hand that is going to feed me at next week’s Google Party” department:

It must be great to go unchallenged in your sector, especially in the hyper-competitive big money internet extravanza.

Over at WebMasterworld people are doing their usual fawning over the greatness of Google search, this despite the fact that Yahoo and MSN are close in quality according to most objective analyses, that history suggests dominance is often short lived, and that search dominance really does not bode well for anybody except Google.  I posted the following comment over there:

———–
I still use mostly Google out of habit but I predict that Yahoo’s recent move to bring social network and tagging information into the results will be successful and may even land them on top until Google relaxes it’s “no human ranking” approaches.

This thread surprises me as most objective measures indicate that Google  is the best, but not by much and certainly not always best if compared to good vertical search tools.  Habit is driving SE choice, not careful analysis of result sets.

Also, I think there will be legal battles when Vista launches over default search in future versions of IE browsers, MS will win most of them, and Google market share will go down with new users.

Search dominance is not healthy for users or webmasters – this community should recognize that more than most.
——————-

Smart move by Yahoo?

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Yahoo appears to be expanding their approach to search using humanized contextual information. This may trump Google’s search quality if Google remains as stubborn as it’s been with regard to human interventions.  However I’d guess Google will soon be forced to use a lot more human input as search quality may soon demand this.

One should remain very bullish on computer intelligence, but it seems for at least the next decade or so it’s not realistic to think that search results can be ranked by machine better than by humans.  Machines are much, much faster rankers than a human mind, but lack even many basic filters that allow a human to discard irrelevant or spurious information.    The hybridized search using computer algorithmic results combined with data from all relevant human sources should prevail in the near future.

Yoo-hoo, YHOO?

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Hopefully you did not take my ealier “advice” and buy YHOO. I remain bullish on their prospects as well as IACI and MSFT as Google’s huge share of total PPC based search revenue dematerializes over the coming years, but hey, I also traded my Apple for WCOM so don’t listen to me.

Reuters says things will likely get worse for Yahoo as delays in their “project panama” contextual advertising routine continue to hurt their prospects of nabbing more of the PPC cash buffet.

Google is still going strong according to CEO Eric Schmidt, which is good because now they can afford the big party they’ll throw in a couple weeks – Google Dance 2006. See you there?

Gadgets – the desktop revolution begins

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One of the best sessions at Mashup Camp 2  was Adam Sah’s “Google Gadgets” which outlined how rapidly gadgets are sweeping onto the desktop.   These were formerly called Google Widgets but Adam told me they have been renamed to avoid confusion.  Yahoo “confabulator” concept has a nice ring….but….perhaps some term standardization is called for here.    Apple can keep the widget idea because… they are Apple.
Gadgets are sweeping onto the desktop.    At MIX06 the MS Live team was also very bullish on the concept and has been developing a desktop and OS environment that will rely heavily on people populating their desktop with gadgets.     Although many of these are “whimsical” in nature, the number of functional gadgets is growing very fast.  I think this is the coming “battleground” – or at least a coming very fertile ground – for those vying for eyeballs.    In the meantime it’s a great way to customize the desktop easily.