“Welcome to the hotel California…”

Perhaps not the same hotel the Eagles sang about. But most certainly California. I have to say, I’m warming to my new second home very quickly. But I do miss my number one home and the wife, I believe, I have there. Well, she was there when I left, so I’m kind of hoping she’ll still be there when I get back.

The first thing I did was meet up with up with one of my oldest and closest friends…

And not only that, I managed to meet and corrupt a brand new friend (he was well on the way to corruption at his own speed, I should add) who just happened to be taking the Bruce Clay SEO Training Course. Yes, Redboot’s very own Simon Heseltine. Another Brit cultivating an American accent. But I could tell he was a Brit from the first minute. I think it was the way he said “hey up lad, hast thou got right time?”

Yep, very American in a Yorkshire, Lancashire, Virginia sort of way.

Simon… Get the beers in mate, it’s your round!

LSI, true or lie?

I’ve mentioned a number of times that, five years ago, in the second edition of my book I wrote about latent semantic indexing (LSI) and referred to some papers available at the time. Of course, Susan Dumais of Microsoft (just search for her) was the instigation of my research into the subject. However, the most important paper I read was by another well known researcher (now attached to Google) about LSI as applied to link anchor text.

Of course, if you take the whole notion of LSI and apply it on a document-by-document basis, it’s going to take a lot of processing time. But if you apply it to a separate corpus made entirely from link anchor text and a connectivity server, then, perhaps, you reduce the overhead. I’ll bow to Dr Edel Garcia to correct me here if wrong. But local ranking using link anchor text is something I believe all search engines rely on to reduce overhead anyway.

LSI has its place. PageRank has its place. On a page-by-page basis they would work. But neither has developed into a sub-zero second response, in my opinion. Does that mean search engines can’t use them? Not at all. There are elements of every known discipline in science that you can adapt and apply in different ways. I believe the co-occurrence theories of Dr Edel Garcia are much more applicable in an heterogeneous corpus such as the web and link anchor text. Whereas, I believe that in an homogenous environment such as a digital library or CD ROM, for instance, LSI is an ideal method (response time not critical) of not missing relevant documents simply because they didn’t have all of the query keywords included on the page.

Can you optimize in the SEO sense around LSI? Well, the first step is you’d need to know what it is. And I have no idea why SEOs who have no idea what it is resort to just adding it into their promotional blurb, or vanity posts and give the industry such a bad name at times.

If you know what it is and have a method of optimizing around it, step out now. Now is the time to prove you’re not just doing the usual thesaurus lookup. And if you don’t know what it is and you’re just talking about it… Then shut up!

My ClickZ column invites anyone to take part in a little survey about what is, and what isn’t LSI. What do you think?

Blood diamond… not…

Due to a slight problem with my flight booking… 🙂

I think I’ll stay in the UK.

Yes, I was looking forward to my first South Africa experience, but…

It means that, I’ll have to sorely suffer some time at my local pub. Yes, spend the whole Sunday afternoon there. What? What?

Look, my wonderful BlackBerry Pearl takes great shots of people, er, drinking and reading the Sunday papers…

Er, clients, in particular Jaron, I do have a print out of the OpCo reports hidden inside the Sunday Times. Well, you never know who’s looking, do you 😉

I love my pub… almost as much as my wife… OK , OK, My wife’s almost up there with my local pub, I mean 😉

Here’s my local – well, wouldn’t you just love it?

Johannesburg, South Africa.

I’ll be in Africa for my very first visit this coming week (July 8 -15). I’m there to support Bruce with some training he’s giving there.

So, if anyone from South Africa (in particular, Johannesburg) happens across this blog and would like to meet for a chat and a beer…Drop me a quick note at: [email protected]

Rod Stewart, Andrew Goodman and Jeff Eisenberg…

No they haven’t formed a band together, but they’re all superstars in their own right. Last week, on as rainy and windy a night as you’ll ever get, along with 20,000 other rain soaked folk I went to see the legendary Rod Stewart.

He was playing at Newcastle’s St James Park, football (as in soccer) stadium. Not only that, the show was opened by the great Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders. I’d almost forgotten how many hits Chrissie has written or covered.

Tatiana and I arrived a little early. Not because we were worried about our seat or standing in line. But because we went to Newcastle’s China town in the afternoon and had a slap up Chinese banquet and a lot of Pouilly Fuisse to go with it. So we were both completely pissed when we arrived at the stadium and wanted to avoid the line at the bar 🙂

I didn’t have my usual little camera with me, as cameras are not allowed at these gigs. But I had my brand new BlackBerry Pearl. I took a couple of shots with it and I was very surprised that the quality wasn’t so bad for a phone camera. I took this shot of T. Actually, I wasn’t quite sure if it was her. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her without shades on. Could possibly be somebody else’s wife!

Anyway, The Pretenders were great. But it was Rod who lifted the roof off the place. No less than 29 chart hits back-to-back. All the classics finishing with his rendition of Sam Cooke’s “Twistin’ the night away.” It was a sight I’ll never forget… 20,000 Geordies all doing the twist in the rain!

Yep, that little dot on the runway is Rod. Still, like I say, not a bad shot for a phone camera.

Roll on Bryan Adams at Doncaster stadium next month!

I did a couple of very interesting panels at SES, Toronto. The usual links thing and a meet the crawlers session which I moderated. A lot of good information from everyone on the panel. But, as usual, it was Adam Lasnik from Google who was swamped with questions.

This was the first show that Andrew had chaired. And I have to say, he got a very good balance in considering it’s a smaller show than some of the others. Andrew is a great friend of mine. We go back a while. In fact, a couple of summers back, Tatiana and I went to stay with Andrew in Canada at a lakeside place he and his wife Carolyn stay at for their summer vacation.

At that time, it was Tatiana’s birthday. So I whisked her to Niagara Falls for the weekend first, as she’d never been there. And I have to say, she took this stunning picture of the falls.

So, this year, Andrew and Carolyn decided to come and do some hiking on the Scottish borders and some serious hiking up in the Scottish highlands. But, of course, they had to come to Newcastle for a few days first. And what a great time we had. The first thing was to pay a visit to… Yes, you guessed, my local pub!

Andrew is the first search marketer I know on the circuit who has graced the hallowed ground of my local (apart from me, or course). Much drinking of beer… much telling of funny stories…

I took a shot of Andrew and Carolyn outside the pub. But the flash didn’t work so it’s a horrible picture of them. However, the pub looks very nice… Got to get my priorities right 🙂

Day one, we went on the castles and coast route. First stop being the gorgeous Bamburgh Castle and beach.

Both Andrew and Carolyn were stunned at just how beautiful the beach is at Bamburgh. Andrew looked like the perfect tourist as he poked around the castle grounds.

Then we moved on to the idyllic little island of Lindisfarne. Otherwise known as Holy Island. It’s such a pretty place.

And yes, up on the ridge it has its own castle too.

And to make it a great day for castles (we have a lot of castles on the borders) we paid a quick visit to Hogwarts School, er Alnwick Castle, that is.

I visited Alnwick last year with T. We went to the gardens which have been specially designed by the Duchess of Northumberland. There really is a touch of Versailles here. As both Andrew and Carolyn noticed.

Thursday night we ate at the very posh McCoy’s Restaurant atop the Baltic Tower on Newcastle’s famous Quayside. There are some wonderful views of the river and the bridges from the viewing lounge.

Friday morning we headed off to the ancient Durham cathedral in Durham City. This really is one of the finest examples of Byzantine architecture in Europe.

I got a great shot of Carolyn smiling and looking so happy to be at the Cathedral… while Andrew hadn’t noticed at all the girl with the very large breasts who just walked by 🙂

From their we moved back to the coast again, to one of my favourite places in our region, Tynemouth. It’s a place which has one of the longest and most beautiful beaches you’ll find anywhere in the UK. And not surprisingly, it’s called, Long Beach.

And then, we rounded off the day with a visit to a real Victorian lighthouse. Immediately followed by a large curry at my favourite Indian restaurant on the Quayside.

Andrew and Carolyn arrived in Newcastle on the same day that I arrived back from SES, Latino in Miami.

Once again my friend Nacho Hernandez pulled together a great show. There were some great sessions and good feedback to go with them. But the best feedback that everyone heard was about the food. In particular the absolutely delicious Paella (which was photographed more than the speakers!).

I sneaked my usual pic of the audience from the link building session.

I had a chance to catch up with my great pal Jeff Eisenberg. He really is one of the best marketing minds on the planet. He and brother Bryan are so often light years ahead when it comes to online marketing.

And I managed to catch up with my link building buddy Debra Mastaler, who, as you can see was hanging with Li Evans from Search marketing Gurus.

And on the subject of search marketing gurus, I also managed grab a beer with search superstar Daron Babin.

I think we’ve been threatening to have a drink for a number of years now. So, the night before the shot above was taken, I got together in the hotel bar with him and we were joined by my buddy from down-under, Steve Riley. Steve and I enjoy the odd glass of wine together. I mentioned this to Daron when I met at the poolside bar. “make that four bottles of Merlot between the two of you…” he said.

Ahem! Perhaps we did overdo it just a little. In fact, judging from the photo that Li Evans took of Steve… it could have been more than just a little 😉

Another day… another country.

And yes, that’s the view from my hotel window, the road to Ventura. I remember once, I was on a train from Los Angeles going to Santa Barbara. I was listening to the radio and just as we were passing Ventura beach on the left, the DJ played an old song By America called… Ventura Highway.

I’ve been in search a long time, but I have to say, even I think it is so cool that now, with Google rolling out universal, and all other search engines following in line, if you do a search for – ventura highway – at Google, right there, in the middle of the results, you get a video of them performing it live.

I’m very excited about Universal. I’m very excited about the future of the industry. I’m very pissed off that last night some assholes invaded my private in-box suggesting that, perhaps, it would be better if I was dead, not SEO, as I’d written in my ClickZ column.

Unfortunately, I took the bait and posted here. This morning, I deleted the post. I think it is the most abhorrent thing ever, when, having just suffered the death of two of my most treasured and loved family, someone is evil enough to write to me and suggest that I follow them.

But enough of that. There are sick people everywhere, even in search, it appears.

So, the most exciting thing that happened yesterday is… I was reunited with my iPod and camera. I left them in my car when I started this leg of my current tour. My wife sent them to London for me, but, I had left on a plane to Canada. The hotel in London forwarded them to the hotel in Toronto. But by the time they arrived, I was on my way to LA.

The hotel in Toronto then forwarded them to my hotel in LA. You see… even my iPod and camera are independent international travellers. By the time they got here, with all of the overnight courier charges… I could have just bought new ones 🙂

Of course, I was in Toronto for SES. This is the first show chaired by my great friend Andrew Goodman. And what a great show it was. And yes, I just *loved* the keynote by Seth Godin. Fantastic!

Andrew and his wife, Carolyn, are coming to my city (Newcastle) for a few days next week. It will be so great to have a pint with him in my local pub (and Carolyn, of course).

So, I left Toronto and headed to LA to spend a couple of days in the office getting to know my new colleagues better and… er… doing work. Which is what you do in an office. I thought I should pop through and see the wonderful Lisa Barone to say hi. Turns out, I got there as she’d just finished reading my ClickZ column 🙂

Okay, back on the road. Miami next for SES, Latino. See you there.

Sullivan pulls it off big style.

Nobody doubted for a second that Danny and Chris’ first show (SMX Advanced, Seattle) would be a success. But boy, what a winner it was!

Congratulations Danny, Chris (the other Chris) and most of all, well done Karen Deweese. Where would those guys be without you? 😉

It was my first time in Seattle. So the first thing I did, as usual, was find a watering hole. The Sunday before the show was glorious, so a waterside bar was just the thing. This is the Fisherman’s… er… bar, or something. Anyway, Bruce, Robert and I had the most wonderful lunch there as we were seven hours early for the show set up (well, it felt like that).

Robert, by the way, is my spiritual guide to the way of all things Bruce. He has learned a lot himself from his Bruceness… But more importantly for me… he knows everybody’s name at HQ and I can hardly remember my own sometimes. He’s worth his weight in gold just for that. And speaking of Robert, here he is.

And yes… You never thought you’d see it, but here am I all Bruced up and very proud of it.

I spotted this large metal guy swinging a hammer and looking very evil outside the art museum in Seattle. Not at all sure what the heck that was about.

I have more pics but I’m sitting in the Air Canada lounge at Heathrow and my camera (and my iPod, boo-hoo!) are in the glove compartment of my car, as I just remembered. At some point I’ll post some of the other pics. But in between, as I’m planning my annual trip to Mother Russia, here’s a pic I took of the Red Square in Moscow. What’s it got to do with anything? Nothing at all. But It’s very unusual to se a pic which has the Mausoleum, St Basil’s Cathedral and the Kremlin all in the same shot.

I’m looking forward to Moscow, again. It’s simply one of the most happening cities in the world.

Having said that, I promised myself again that this year I’d do less travelling. Between now and the middle of next week I’ll find myself in Toronto, Los Angeles, Miami and New York. Sure, that’s pulling back a bit!

Farewell uncle Peter.

On Friday we said farewell to Peter. A packed church followed him into the church yard, through the trees in the beautiful, golden sunlight, where he was buried a few yards away from his brother (my father).

Peter, you were a gentleman, a quiet man and a giving man. In my whole life I never met a kinder more giving man. I learned so much from you. So much.

Thanks you for those wise words and lessons in life. Now go and poke my father in the eye and tell him off for being such a bully to you sometimes! (Oh and say hi to Paul for me. Tell him I think about all three of you each day).

Yesterday, my uncle died.

On a day when I was 5,000 miles away from him, my uncle and lifelong, dearest friend, Peter, chose to leave his pain and suffering behind.

My late father’s youngest brother has always been there for me. And since my father died, eleven years ago, we’ve been there for each other.

It was a long weekend in the UK last week. So I got to spend some extra time with Peter. I was talking about my new and exciting opportunity with Bruce Clay. He told me to go for it and wouldn’t hear a word about me not travelling until he was well again. Of course, both he and I knew, he was never going to get well again.

I loved you all my life uncle Peter for being such a great friend and counsellor. And I should have checked my diary. You knew I would be away on the eleventh anniversary of my father, your brother, dying. The exact day you chose to go and be with him again.

Wow. How lonely a hotel room can be when you are so far from home and alone with your grief.

Tony Bennett, the Queen and William Wallace.

Earlier this year (February, I think) I spotted that the legendary singer, Tony Bennett was playing Glasgow. Now, Tony doesn’t know this, but he’s been a breakfast guest of mine on many Sunday mornings in my living room while I read the Sunday paper. Fresh coffee, orange juice (up until recently, the odd slice of bacon) and Tony Bennett. Or some Sundays, Dino or even ole blue eyes himself. Sunday mornings are usually polite jazz or cool jazz, for me.

Now, Bennett is in his eighties. And I kind of figured, this may be his last tour (not wishing anything bad at all, just he’s getting on a bit). Anyway, he came on stage at the concert hall in Glasgow and blew the roof off the place. And when he sang It’s A Good Life, everyone in the building sang it with him – me included.

But wait for this. At 81 years old, he asked the sound engineer to switch off all the microphones. And then, just totally naked voice, Tony Bennett sang a note prefect version of Fly Me To The Moon. I’d like to see someone current try that!

So, as I was in Scotland. And living so close to Scotland, it’s very close to my heart, I decided my wife and I should hit the highlands. At first, the idea was to head for Loch Ness. My youngest son, Joe asked me if I was going looking for the monster. But I told him no, I’m taking her with me 🙂

Anyway, Loch Ness never happened. Because as it was a long drive, I looked for a nice hotel between Glasgow and Loch Ness and found the Dalmunzie Hotel. And yes, there is a heaven after all.

I stay I lots of hotels. But few could beat this one. Set in a huge estate of its own (complete with golf course) Dalmunzie is a 200 year old mansion. And it’s superb. So I took the “lairds” (that’s Lord in England) room (that’s a suite, actually). Wow!

Now this is not cheap at about 500 bucks a night. But, I guarantee it’s worth every penny.

And, it being another day, another country, I thought a window shot was in order.

Of course, I realized that, at Glenshee (the skiing resort where the hotel is), we were virtually next door to the Queen. Well, her highland castle, that is. And so we hit the highland roads. And in the highlands… you really can own the road!

And so, there we were at the gate to Balmoral Castle on a beautiful sunny day. So quite why the fuck I look so miserable, I’ll never know. Maybe I just always look miserable and haven’t noticed over the past fifty years or so 🙂

I did manage to get such a wonderful pic of Tatiana, under a tree on the front lawn of Balmoral. We sat there together for a while as it was just so peaceful and relaxing.

But my most favourite pic I took standing in the river Dee, just behind the castle in the Queen’s back yard. Somehow, it just captured the moment. And at this time is the wallpaper on my desktop.

When we got back to the hotel, I spotted a nice paining of Dalmunzie in the library. So I took a shot of it.

On the way back south to Newcastle, T and I decided to stop in Stirling. The famous battle place of William (Braveheart) Wallace. It’s not a big (or pretty, for that matter) place. But there is a a national monument to Wallace.

Having said that. When you visit the monument (a very steep walk to the top) you’ll find that the Wallace statue is half way up the outside of the monument! And he looked nowt like Mel Gibson!