Search Engine Strategies (SES) London. A quick word from Mike…

I thought I’d post something about SES, London 19-21 February. Literally just a quick overview of some of the highlights of the show.

See you in London!

“Noo Yawk, Noo Yaaaawwwwkkkk…”

I spent most of last week hanging around 5th Avenue. Which was great. I was hanging out with a big-business industry friend of mine. We had the most wonderful dinner in Chelsea on Saturday night at a restaurant called Gascogne. If you’re looking for traditional French cooking in a rustic atmosphere then this is the place. And the food and service are both superb. We also got a chance to talk a lot of business. More about that in an upcoming post.

It was beautiful on Sunday in Central Park, so I went for a stroll before lunch.

I strolled past the Dakota building where John Lennon lived. Yoko saw me and shouted out the window for me to come join her for a cup of tea and a primal scream session. But I told her I was busy and that my throat was still a little sore from last time.

Something else I *always* look forward to is my special Sunday lunch gathering at the wonderful Cafe Des Artistes off Central Park. It’s kind of a traditional thing that started with me and my huge buddy Rebecca Lieb deciding a number of years ago that, we should get together for a quiet Sunday lunch. I don’t think there’s ever been less than six people at these quite Sunday lunch events!

Of course, it wouldn’t be the same without my great pal Larry Chase. He and I go way back and have corrected the world and all that is wrong with it over many a Martini in many a Manhattan haunt. At the table above are (from the right) the lovely Kendall Allen from Incognito. Next is Larry Chase and then yours truly. Next to me, the one and only Rebecca Lieb and her new guy, Steve. And joining us for the first time, my pal from way back when in the UK, Chrysi Philalithes from Miva who now lives in New York.

So who was taking the photograph? Well, it was the suave and debonair Matt McGowan of Incisive Media. And when the other suave and debonair guy arrived… Kevin Ryan that is… Not only could we get a pic of them… We could also order lunch!

It’s always nice to have someone new join the old gang. And this was the first time that Kendal had met Larry and they seemed to have a lot to talk about. That often means a contribution to Larry’s Web Digest for Marketers (let’s wait and see!).

Apart from the fact that, I was as sick as a dog last Thursday (and the Patriots lost) it was a splendid hop across the pond to set up what is likely to be a sensational start to the new year for me.

Watch this space. Cheers!

Missed wedding anniversary…

I’m currently in New York. Last Wednesday night, I woke in the middle of the night feeling as though I was about to explode… And then I did!

All day Thursday I lay on my own, in the dark in a hotel bed on 5th Avenue as sick as a dog. I felt awful. I simply couldn’t muster the strength to get out of bed.

Fortunately, after a similar kind of bout last year in China, my dear friend Inway Ni, administered some Chinese herbal remedy for just such an ailment. It worked like magic. At the bottom of my toiletry bag I had kept two of these magic (if foul tasting) pills. And sure enough, even that one small dose gave some small relief.

The kind people at the hotel sent out to Duane Reade just across the street where they were told that dozens of people had been in with the same symptoms. And no, they hadn’t heard of the Chinese Lee Man Shan pill. So, it was the Imodium plus, Pepto-Bismol Max diet for the next 24 hours.

Inway, you must send me a new supply!

Of course, during this period, when I spent hours shouting for Huey and Duey down the big white telephone in the hotel bathroom, I forgot to order the gift I wanted to send to Tatiana for our ninth wedding anniversary the next day.

So, for the first time in nine years, no gift for my wife. I felt so bad about it. But, of course, Tatiana was happy to forgive as she knew I had been so ill the day before. So, T, here’s a belated happy anniversary and I’ll make it all up to you next weekend.

And here’s a little reminder of us as two lovey-dovey-birds just after we got married nine years back!

Local/Universal creeping into Google paid results.

Last year, Google started beta testing including the plus box and maps in paid results. I saw one example, but didn’t see any more. That is until last weekend when I was searching for a specific brand.

B&Q in the UK is pretty much like Lowe’s in the US. I wanted to order something from the local warehouse. So, lazy as I am, I just typed b&q at Google to click on store finder in the site links.

Interestingly, even though I was searching from my home in Newcastle, I spotted a paid result at the top of the page with a local result and plus box combined… For a store in Scotland!

Anyway, I couldn’t resist hitting the plus box to see what would happen to the organic results.

And, as you can see, it was a big goodbyeeee, except for the number one organic result (which happened to be B&Q anyway, of course).

So, I tried a more specific local search – b&q newcastle upon tyne. And got this.

Close, but not quite. I get a paid plus box local result for Washington (that’s a town close to Newcastle – where the original Washington family comes from). So, not a bad try. And of course, when I hit the plus box, all of the organic results disappeared completely and only the paid result and local results remained above the fold.

I thought I’d try and recreate the results so that I could get the screen caps. And lo-and-behold… When I try a search for b&q Newcastle upon tyne, this time, I get this.

Notice, this time the ad is to the right hand side. But I can see immediately, this time it is for the store closest to me. But no plus box.

Cut a long story short, after a while of getting different results I realized that Google was tracking me. So, I started doing searches and after two or three I then flushed the system completely. Coming back, effectively I was a new user each time. My first search for b&q Newcastle after flushing the system brought me this.

Now that’s a local result for Sunderland which is a city about 14 miles from Newcastle.

So now I do another search for b&q newcastle upon tyne. This time I get this. It’s a result on the side, but promoting the B&Q store in Durham, a small city about 20 miles away (strangely enough, closer to Sunderland, the city in the screen cap above).

Okay, flush the system again and do the same search. This time I get this.

Now this is a proper Newcastle result, for a store on the other side of town.

One more search for b&q newcastle upon tyne and this time, I get.

And so it goes.

The plus box and map only shows in results at the top of the page, not the side column. Of course, that kind of suggests that, should Universal/blended results (such as video) start to creep into paid results – goodbye organic results (pushed below the fold each time the plus box is clicked.

In my ClickZ column (Monday 14 Jan) I’ve written about the diminishing value of the SEO shop. I’m certainly seeing (and hearing about) search marketers getting much better results when they concentrate more on marketing themselves online.

Links are still good. Really good in fact. But Web 2.0 (shall we just call that the broadband era?) presents search engines with all kinds of new signals. And in turn, that enables them to provide their end users with a much richer experience.

People are voting for content in so many different ways online. Tagging, rating, reviews, blogs, forums, podcasts and video, there’s a lot of user generated data to pick up on. It’s not hard for search engines to pick up what are the highest rated videos at YouTube and elsewhere online. It’s not hard for them to find out what’s big at Digg and del.icio.us and tons of other similar sites.

The entire search landscape is changing. And yet, as I mention in my ClickZ column, while search engines are taking advantage of the wealth of new signals Web 2.0 brings, a huge part of the search marketing industry is still preoccupied with the minutiae of on page optimization. It’s just so 1999.

It’s now six years since I wrote a pretty comprehensive book on search engine optimization. I’ve had the draft chapters for the follow ready for a long time. But the reason I haven’t yet published, is I now realize that a large part of what I wrote in the last edition is just not so relevant now (and the dozens of other books just like it).

That’s why I shelved it and I’m now working hard on an entirely new book, which I believe will be so much more relevant to search marketing in 2008.

I’m launching a brand new site to run in tandem with working on the new book. But more about that in a few weeks when the site is ready to go.

I’m very excited about it.

2008… Bound to be great!

OK, it’s true 2007 was very unkind to me personally. And professionally it was different. I hooked up with my friend Bruce Clay, we’d been talking about getting together for a while. But soon after we did, I had to pull out.

For the record, that was my personal decision and Bruce and I remain closest of friends. Bruce is a great guy and more power to him for 2008.

Anyway, my wife had this great idea about starting the new year on a high… For me. So instead of heading to the snow bound cities of Russia we love so much at this time of the year, we ended up in sunny Gran Canaria.

And here I sit, on a beach where the forcast temperature has been exceeded every single day.

That’s the bonus… Down side? The extremely bad service is only worsened by the tragic quality of the food which seems to have to die twice. Once in the usual fashion that livestock is killed. And then in such a tremendously horrific grease ritual before being slapped on a plate and thrown at you. I have never come across such bad service, lazy staff… And don’t even get me started on the hygiene of the toilets in the seafront bars and restaurants.

Still, it has a nice promenade (very nice, actually).

And a Christmas tree among the palm trees.

And on new year’s eve, I managed to climb inside it!

I don’t quite remember what it was that caught my attention on this picture of the promenade?

We did find a great little seafront restaurant for new year’s eve. Las Palmas has a pretty spectacular fireworks display. So, Tatiana and I did the full thing. It was fantastic!

The best I could manage was to be outrageous and put a bag on my head. Never looked better, some people might think. Just needs pulling down a bit.

There was live music on the promenade…

I went back to our hotel and picked up a bottle of Dom Perignon, my iPod and dock and then headed back to the beach. There, Tatiana and I (having stolen two shampoo glasses from the hotel) turned the music up, poured drinks and danced together on the beach for an hour. Just the two of us in a very secluded part of the bay… Our kids would simply die of embarrassment if I published any of those pictures. But it was magic. Just magic!

On new year’s day the party continued on the beach.

And I took a dip to try and sober up!

Las Canteras beach in Las Palmas has this beautiful sand carving of the nativity which draws thousands of people. It really is very impressive.

We took a quick trip down to Maspalomas. This is a much more touristy area of the island. Not my kind of place, I have to say (unless you like chips with everything, cheesy Irish bars, pizzas and very greasy fast food – and even in the south they have no idea how to clean a lavatory!)

But they do have a lighthouse…

So anyway, I expect 2008 to be great.

Why?

Well wait for some big announcements. First about SES, London. And then… Well…

But for now, Cheers!

And T, thank you for being so thoughtful with this wonderful Christmas present. Just what I needed to kick-start the year!

And now… It’s time to go to the pub!

Well, as the Christmas holiday begins and the year draws to a close let me wish everyone and anyone I may have forgotten the season’s very best.

I hope Santa brings everyone what they hoped for and the coming year brings happiness and prosperity.

2007 was not my best year. I lost my big brother and my wonderful uncle. But I was surrounded by my family and the friends who I love so much. Thanks to you all for helping me get through it.

After Christmas day, Tatiana and I will head to sunnier climes in Gran Canaria for some Sangria, champagne and a week of sunshine to bring in the new year.

I have some very exciting stuff to announce in 2008 — very exciting 😉

SES, Chicago… Be there!

Can’t wait for SES, London? Don’t suffer search marketing conference withdrawal symptoms. There’s still time book for the search extravaganza that is, SES, Chicago.

See you there!

eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit, Washington DC

Yes, I said it. It’s on record and it was most certainly me who said it And I’ll say it here again. Without a shadow of a doubt, Jim Sterne’s eMetrics show is the probably the best conference on the planet!

Now that’s not to say other conferences are bad. Far from it. SES, SMX, ad:tech, PubCon are also fabulous shows. But, in my opinion, eMetrics is just that little cut above.

The speakers are fantastic. My buddy Avinash Kaushik, for instance, is a true wealth of knowledge when it comes to analytics and online marketing. And he delivers in such a natural, humorous and common sense manner. I guarantee you can leave any session of his and start to put things into action right now!

Here he is presenting the first of many important metrics: His daughter has 21 friends 🙂

The audience at eMetrics sessions are a lot of fun to work with. They thought it was a master stroke when I took this pic of them as I was introducing Avinash and told them I’d put it on my blog and claim the audience as my own! And look… I have 🙂

The catering at eMetrics is always outstanding. Beautiful, freshly cooked hot food and a full bar too. What more could a delegate (or speaker ask for?).

And the networking is excellent.

Legends abound. Such as, the mighty Jim Sterne himself. And analytics guru and all round good guy, Eric Peterson.

Of course, on the subject of networking, there are always fantastic sponsored events. I went along to the beer analytics event sponsored by Interwoven at the District Chop House. This was very cool as it’s a micro brewery. Everyone was given a card with a description of a type of beer (flavour, colour etc.) and the table had various numbered pitchers of beer on them. All you had to do was drink beer, identify which number it was and place it next to the description on the card. All correct cards went into a draw for an iPod. Oh what fun! And free food too!

Of course, knowing conference organiser and noted online marketer, Matt Finlay, meant that I got personal service from him, and also got to keep my very own pitcher of beer 😉

The following day, I joined a panel of industry stars for an audience driven Q & A session which went down a storm. With me was Chris Boggs (now with eMergent Marketing ), Manoj Jasra (of Enquiro ) and the omni present Avinash Kaushik (Z Q Insights). What a line up!

I got a chance to try out my brand new, dinky portable recording studio.

There’s an interview with Avinash over here. And a ClickZ column over here

On the subject of ClickZ, I got caught up with my UK, ClickZ writer and pal Neil Mason of Applied Insights.

He, me and the mighty Jim have shared many a beer over the years!

One other great thing about the DC show… I met my bestest, newest conference buddy, the lovely Fanny Jeanmougin. As assistant to Matt Finlay, it’s her job to all manner of important things. Such as dragging Matt out of the hotel bar to make sure he gets to bed before 4.00 am and… 🙂

Fanny is from Lyon. Therefore it’s also her job to choose the best French wines when we’re dining out.

The conference ended with drinks on the terrace. So terribly civilized, don’t you know.

The next eMetrics show takes place in Stockholm in November.

Did I mention that, eMetrics is probably the best show on the planet?

I hate my wife…

Nobody knows what it’s like to do things you’re forced into. My wife makes me do something so disgusting, I can hardly talk about it.

But this is my confessional. This blog is where all my deepest thoughts end up.

I want to talk about it, but it’s so hard. And disgusting…

I need a second to think before I write this…

My wife makes me… She makes me… I can hardly type through my tears… It’s so horrible. Absolutely horrible!

She thinks it’s normal… But she asks me to…

She… she makes me eat vegetables!

But no, it’s worse than that. She puts green ones in there. You know, the type that cows and sheep and other animals eat. It’s horrible. It’s disgusting and she makes me do it ALL the time.

She once put… I can hardly talk about it. She once put… Please wait, I’ll be OK in a moment.

She once put a pile of baby spinach on my plate and forced me to eat it. But wait, there was poached egg on top. And she wouldn’t let me eat the egg without the spinach.

She’s a maliciously sick woman. She needs help…

And I need a plastic bucket… she just made me eat rocket uuuuurrrrgggghhhh!!!!

My hyperlink can beat your hyperlink…

Hey, this looks like some seriously good testing. And a lot of fun!

Sure beats the usual “who can rank at number one for the word neefoofwar and win an iPod” bollocks.