RT @bgtheory: This is crazy; smallest & decent ($74) computer ever? http://t.co/cmRfZyTf #
Archive for August, 2008
Technical & Information Giants Keynote – SES San Jose 2008
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Ok, I’m fed and thirsty for more knowledge and this afternoons keynote promises to be a good one. Moderated once again by Kevin Ryan with Mike Grehan of Acronym Media and features Matt Cutts of Google, Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land, Tim Westergren of Pandora(ps RIAA please leave them alone), Robert Scoble of FastCompany.tv, Kristen Mangers of WebVisible and Rich LeFurgy of Archer Advisors.
WOW
Let me repeat that
WOW
The panel opens up with a video montage of clips from South Park to Knocked Up showing characters talking about Google, MySpace, texting and YouTube to name a few showing how our little world on the web has permeated into pop culture.
Scoble, of course, is up first talking about interruption of services and makes mention of Twitter’s unstableness. He states that it is hard to become a Google killer simply because of the shear size of Google. You have to chip away at the sides in order to make a difference
Matt Cutts, in a green t-shirt, is up next talking about the first days of Google. “I had a little trouble finding the office” he says about interviewing for Google back in the early days.
Matt says he came on board at Google stating that Google should be an advocate for their users. They tried to make as many decisions for their users in order to give them a great user experience.
Danny Sullivan is now addressing the threat of a Google Killer and the fact that he doesn’t see anyone or company being able to amass the amount of data. He points out that Microsoft is looked at as the company that could do it but they have been trying this for the past 5 years. Sullivan thinks the only entity that could hurt Google in anyway is the government. He goes onto to say that if you attack Google and you are good enough Google will buy you.
Scoble, talking about Google Analytics, says that Microsoft will have to woo webmasters to not use Analytics if they come out with their own web analyzer tools. He’s making the argument that Google is so ingrained in our day to day searching and analyzing that it is going to be hard to topple them.
Back to Cutts. He says that Google is still analyzing and reanalyzing search behaviours to further ensure a better user experience
Tim Westergren is up now talking about how hard it is for a musician to find their way through search. His Music Genome Project(again RIAA: leave them alone) breaks down songs by identifiable markers to help people find music
Scoble is touting the amazing tool that is FriendFeed. This tool which is accessible through APIs hasn’t quite reached the critical mass adoption, it is still in the early adopter phase.
Rich LeFurgy notes our acceptance of letting the world know where we are with GPS enabled phones. Telling people where you are and where you are going is getting more and more popular. Birghtkite is like that and to that I say – Ask yourself if people really care where you are. If you are always checking into BrightKite all the time with the same places marketers have a clear understanding of your habits in your city. Also if you travel a lot to the same places and always check in you are furthering fueling marketers desire to know all about you
Plus a constant check in to BrightKite could be annoying to people that follow you. I know I’m not a fan of it.
Scoble just name dropped GaryV! He is talking about Gary’s site Wine Library TV and the ability to keep a conversation going. Gary points out great wines and gets you excited about finding them and trying it. Don’t like it? Head over to his site and let him know.
Scoble just turned interviewer stealing the reigns from Ryan asking Westergren about current struggle with RIAA and the double of fees for songs. Yes DOUBLING the fees. BTW radio pays ZERO fees. Westergren, maybe because of the ongoing court case doesn’t give a clear answer on what Pandora’s next step is
Cutts touches on GPS and search or ‘discovery.’ He uses an example of being in LA and seeing in a paper while out walking around that a comedian he likes is playing that night near his hotel. He could have looked on Google to buy tickets if he had planned it before he came down but that would rely on him thinking about that before he left. He states that it would be great to get a notification, based on his spending habits(he bought the comedian’s CD on Amazon) and online calendar telling him that while he was in LA he could see this comedian.
That sounds a little scary but also very cool. As a marketer it will give us the ability to get the right message to the right person.
Matt also is talking about Cloud Computing and the fact that your data isn’t stuck on your machine.
All and all this was a great panel of some very huge icons on the web today. Bravo SES!
For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com
Measuring Success in a Web 2.0 World – SES San Jose 2008
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Second panel of the day is moderated by Richard Zwicky of Enquisite featuring Avinash Kaushik of Google, Jim Sterne of Web Analytics Association(a client!), Matthew Bailey of SiteLogic and Marshall Sponder of Monster.com
Kaushik, author of Web Analytics, An Hour a Day is first up talking about the thing that most defines him – his family. Awww.
He is talking about the three original channels of content – Creation->Distribution->Consumption. This isn’t the case anymore with Web 2.0. A user can comment on a site and Track Back can be linked to that content. If that site has RSS your content is then distributed on there as well. Finally web content is finally aping the that last W in the WWW – Web.
Kaushik is referring to multiplicity and the effect of RSS letting users push content around the web. This gives users a way to experience the web the way they want and using tools like Analytics we can measure their behaviours.
Next up its Jim Sterne of Web Analytics Association talking about Web metrics, search metrics and how they have grown up with the Web 2.0. We can now pinpoint users behaviours and likely hood to convert into a buyer.
Sterne makes the case for ridding your site and/or PPC campaign of keywords that do not sell anything. This is a key factor in what Google AdWords calls Quality Score.
Thirdly we have Matthew Bailey presenting on how Captain Kirk was the first pioneer of analytics. Kirk knew which space women were the better ones, the green or the blue. He knew by season two that they were running out of red shirts. Hehehe.
According to Startrek.org they had a five year mission with 54 deaths which breaks down to a 13.7% mortality rate. Bailey is calling the ‘Conversion Rate.’ Further reviewing the mortality rate 42.5% of the death of ‘red shirts’ took place on the ship. The other 57.5% took place after ‘beaming down.’ When Kirk meets an alien woman after beaming down only 16% or red shirts died.
What does this all mean? Oh sure it’s funny to drill down into the death of red shirted crew members of the Enterprise(that sounds funny to even type) but its this understanding of the segmentation, how to analyze it and then you will be able to make a calculated decision on where to go next.
Funny Stuff Bailey
Lastly we have Marshall Sponder also a board member of Web Analytics Association. He is talking about the Social Media factor in Web 2.0 analytics. Speaking on a study on Military.com he states that 50% of the traffic to their blog is from Social Media sites and applications such as Facebook and Twitter to name a few.
Sponder believes that the CMO of a company should be a good web analyst. I couldn’t agree more
For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com
Satya Nadella Tuesday Keynote – SES San Jose 2008
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
First up today is the opening keynote by Satya Nadella of Microsoft then after that the expo hall opens up. I wonder what interesting things I can grab to put on my desk that six months later will turn into the bane of my existence.
Nadella is the Senior Vice President of the Search, Portal & Advertising Platform group at Microsoft and I’m sure his insight into the future of the Microsoft will be an interesting one.
Nadella is being introduced by SES’s Kevin Ryan who begins by thanking California for making such great wine and also providing great access to Ibuprofen.
Nadella is now going through the history of SEO and search and how we got to where we are today. The end result from the start has always been how the end user reacts to the message. This is a key thing to anything in life but where marketing is concerned there is a price tag attached to it. The ROI. Search has been through a few phases and Keyword has been quite a crucial ingredient in not only how to build a search engine but also how to build a site. The Search Engines, namely Google with the PageRank system instituted rules to combat those that would keyword stuff their pages and/or hide the text so it was the same colour as the background of a page thereby turning the text invisible.
Nadella is breaking down a particular search where a user, who is a prime example of the Long Tail searcher that originally searched for a pair of Merrel shoes and ended up actually buying a pair Clarks. This session, which is close to an hour, of the user originally searching for a style of shoe and then adding more terms to their search as they go along. Near the end of the session they found out that they wanted Clarks and not Merrel’s. This could shy you away from Long Tail optimization but the point behind this example is to show the intelligence of the basic online shopper. Searchers that input very specific search terms are proven to convert better into buyers than someone who is looking for just ‘shoes.’
Microsoft, according to Nadella, relies on a ‘Great Search Experience.’ They are working towards an ‘Openness and Transparency’ which he alludes to some future innovation in the works. Xbox Live is noted to playing a key role in their future. He says they are looking to broaden their advertising portfolio and platform and if you have been following this blog or any other tech/seo blog this isn’t any big news.
They are also trying to simplify key tasks by understanding search patterns and fit results to cater to those needs. Innovation in business search is also coming down the pipe.
In terms of blended search Microsoft is providing not only keyword results but also ‘whole page’ results, which is another term for Semantic web which means understanding the content of web page and judging its relevance based on a search term. This ties into the recent acquisition of Powerset which is a true Semantic search engine.
Nadella is showing a demo of a new version of Live Search that will make a searchers experience a lot more robust. Results such as a analysis of airfare pricing over a certain time frame and letting a user know if what price they are getting is high or low. Other searches on merchandise spit back a sort of ‘Amazon’ type listing with bigger images and better descriptions.
Overall Microsoft Live is taking us into account when building their next platform because they finally realize that if we are happy about our experiences we will be more loyal and from a company that released Windows NT that makes me happy.
BTW, NT actually stands for Nice Try.
Sorry that was my very bad geek joke but trust me that joke kills in Cupertino California
For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com
Opening Keynote with Lee Seigel – SES San Jose 2008
Monday, August 18, 2008
Kevin Ryan is interviewing Lee Siegel author of Against the Machine.
Lee preceeds his answers that speaking badly about the internet here is much like being a givelte fish salesman in Damascus. Siegel, a sort of RahoDeb for the New Republic has come under fire for his positive comments about himself under an alias called ‘sprezzatura‘ The difference between him and RahoDeb is the simple audacity in the defense of Siegel. Sprezzatura made outlandish compliments about Siegel when someone would attack him online. Oh sure this is sort of the same thing as RahoDeb but publicly traded shares weren’t involved.
One of Siegel’s arguments is that too much information on the internet has made us more complacent or separated from actual news. Mass catastrophe gets as much attention as even the most mundane invention. This is true and I believe it is up to us to be more selective on what we focus on as human beings. This of course relies on the right morals being instilled as we grow up. Using that in a marketing perspective we need to fine tune our campaigns so we speak to a person not a group. Groups tend to be ineffective in its ability to make a decision. A single person can act and its that message we need to get out to people.
For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com
