Can you win searchga.me?

=george

John Battelle is author of the outstanding book on how search engines developed, The Search, in which he also coined oft-repeated description of search engines as a “database of intentions.” A veteran journalist and entrepreneur, this keynote conversation will cover how John sees search developing, the challenges ahead and searches greater impact on the internet and society.

John Battelle has his finger on the pulse of the search industry.

• Cited an example of a recent dinner conversation where people around the table use mobile devices to add value to conversation. If somebody brings up an question or topic that nobody has an immediate answer for, everyone scrambles to use their phones to add value. This is the epitome of social search. A great example of a search application that is blazing a train: Shazaam for the iPhone. Who, if anyone will take Google’s place as the king of search? It very well might be a social search model similar to Shazaam. In any case, we will certainly be measuring the value and success of search different than we do now.
• When do we get to the Windows vs. Mac version of search? The problem persists: When you have digitzied all of the wold’s knowledge and made it searchable, the “hunt and poke” (similar to what we see in a Windows or Mac interface) just won’t work anymore. However, right now, search is still in its infancy. We are still in the blinking cursor at a command line phase. We are going to soon shift to a new interface. It will be driven by similar parameters that drive language in our brains.
• Let’s think about the other places search is headed. The Goog 411 service certainly wasn’t invented as a nice public service. It was created to build a database of human speech phonemes.
• Will Twitter change search? Check out John’s From Static to Realtime Search post. For many people, the process of figuring out twitter is hard, but once you get it it, Twitter becomes extremely useful. When you have a database of real time conversation (”what’s happeneing right now”), and you can query that database, you have absolute gold. There is a massive commercial opportunity with Twitter that has yet to be exploited, and it’s all based on the same basic principles as traditional search.
• Conversational marketing: Create media/content that adds value to online conversations. John used an example of a dinner party where a random dude runs in and yells “IBM servers are the best!” This would be totally out of place and make no sense. This is how a lot of online advertising happens. On the other hand, if you come to the dinner party with a bottle of wine and work into the conversation why yyou think IBM servers are good, assuming that the conversation is already about IBM or servers, then the endorsement becomes fully relevant.
• Battelle’s next book: The Conversation Economy. The premise is to look forward 10-15 years at the future of search and trace it back to now in order to write a presciption for success.

-Drew

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How are your SEO efforts going from a technical standpoint? This session looks at “status report” metrics you can tap into such as link counts, page counts and more.

Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land

Q&A Moderator: Todd Friesen, President, Oilman SEO

Speakers:

Seth Besmertnik, CEO, Conductor, Inc.
Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOmoz
Brian Klais, Executive Vice President of Search, Netconcepts
Kelly Kochert, Assistant Vice President New Media, NSI

This session was sponsored by Inquisit software. Many of the panelists had good things to say about Inquisit, so it might be worth checking out.

Seth Besmertnik:

• The top 4 SEO reporting myths:
  • Every keyword is equally important.
  • All potential keywords are accounted for and known.
  • Movement outside the first page doesn’t matter.
  • Education = buy-in.
• Far more clicks take place from natural SERP listings, but the majority of total online spend is in PPC.
• Chasing rankings as a “killer metric” is counter productive, but it can provide insight. Rankings can be a good way to measure how you stack up against competitors.
• SEO “snippet” optimization (”snippets” being the text - usually the meta description tag - that appears below the page’s title on SERPs). If your ranking is already secured or if you can afford to mess with your page’s rankings without reprecussion), do some A/B testing for click-through.
• Examine where where the traffic is coming from in paid versus natural search.
• “Destination and Traffic Modified Movement” is a formula developed by Conductor to provide more insight into ranking data. They take available metrics and go one step further to uncover more meaningful data.

Rand Fishkin:

• The SEO guesswork game is over. It’s time for solid, data-driven metrics.
• Compete, Alexa, and Quantcast all provide publicly availabe data. Quantcast’s “Quantified” metric is like Google Analytics but public. Compare these numbers against Alexa and Compete for confidence levels.
• For U.S. traffic, Compete’s data is the most accurate.
• For worldwide traffic, Alexa’s “3 month reach” is the most accurate.
• For all link data that has been collected, how do they stack up against one another? Which are most accurrate and how can we determine what the real data is (versus noise)?
• Never trust a single metric. Always compare.
• If all metrics appear virtually the same, there are good ways to dive deeper into the data.
• When metrics get mashed, expect better results.
• What are the factors that best predict google rankings?
  • Links, by far (85%).
  • URL (10%).
  • Page content (5%).

Kelly Kochert:

• Remember that since it will likely take more than one analytics solution to get the data that you need, be absolutely certain that you know what you wish to measure want beforehand.
• Identify what moved the needle for any metric and benchmark traffic graphs with indications of when each tactic was implemented.
• Align keyword traffic with ranking. Split out keywords into branded vs. non branded buckets. You should always rank for branded keywords, so it’s not worth spending a lot of time working on them (unless there is an obvious problem that is preventing them for ranking). But the should still be tracked.
• Look at entry pages for organic traffic, and align them with keywords. Are these really the pages that are driving the traffic into the site? What are the top performing landing pages? Are opportunities being missed?
• Site engagement:
  • Measure bounce rates, exit pages, etc. Why are people abandoning? If so, that page should be a priority for improvement.
  • Which pages and keywords lead to conversions?
  • Identify the common funnel. Is SEO different than paid search?
• Referral sites:
  • What other sites drive traffic?
  • Look for link opportunities and where anchor text can be changed.
• Mine internal search data. There are software solutions that specialize in just this.

Brian Klais:

• The session started with the questions, “How many here are SEOs? Now how many of you feel that you are paid what you are worth.” This kick started the theme that SEO tends to be grossly undervalued. And why? Because the metrics used to create reporting, ROI, and perceived value have been weak in the past.
• Stop talking SEO tactics and start talking performance metrics. This is how SEM does it, and it makes a lot more sense.
• How to communicate opportunity? Use the google adwords keyword tool (using “exact match”). Don’t use Wordtracker for this. You can build models based on this data.
• Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery are good for finding new keywords, but don’t use them for looking at existing opportunities.
• Use CTR to set goals and estimate traffic.
• Traffic acquisition cost: Compare PPC cost vs. anticipated organic costs, and then set goals to reduce this cost.
• Landing page yield: Understand how many total landing pages are available. What is getting crawled? What total percentage are actually driving traffic? Look at YoY and MoM data to eliminate interfering market trends.
• Landing page rankings: Calculate value of rankings and measure CPC.
• Keyword coverage: Focus on non-brand phrases.
• Incremental traffic and revenue: You cannot assume that non-branded rankings will stay constant. Always examine the YoY delta in as many areas as possible.
• Proper attribution: The final click that causes the conversion is likely to be credited to PPC. Set up sessions and cookies to track the path to the final click.
• ROI, (or return on ad spend): This is what is ultimately going to prove your worth as an SEO. Look beyond short-term revenue and measure all available metrics. Include the lifetime value of customer/searcher/visitor, etc.

-Drew

Google’s SearchWiki, Customized & Personalized Results - SearchWiki, Google Personalized Results and search customization based on previous queries or geographic location are all ways that Google’s “regular” results seem to be disappearing. This session looks at how “one-size-fits-all” results at Google are continuing to disappear, along with strategies on how to be successful in a more personalized results environment.

Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land

Q&A Moderator: Michael Gray, President, Atlas Web Service

Speakers:

Corey Anderson, Manager SearchWiki, Google Inc.
Bryan Horling, Software Engineer, Personalized Search, Google, Inc.

There were two short presentations, but the primary focus of the session was Q&A.

• The same question kept getting asked in different ways: How much is this going to affect search? The given answer was not much, but #1 position is no longer going to be winner-take-all. In my opinion, this is an important concept. Ranking will have a place, but it will mean so many different things that SEOs should no longer be relying on it as a metric.
• There is no correlation between customized searches and AdWords. Nor is there, for the time being (which was said with raised eyebrows by the Google folks), is there any correlation to Google Checkout.
• Danny sees big SEO and commercial opportunities with SearchWiki. At the bottom of the results page where is says “see SearchWiki results,” most of the categories are empty. Of course, nearly all of the SEO categories are full, dominated primarily by Aaron Wall and the SEOmoz folks.
• So far, SearchWiki has been used predominately for personal use. also, for the majority of searches there are no SearchWiki results.
• Malicious comments can be voted down and flagged as inappropriate. Google is claiming that spamming and malicious attacks are not yet a problem, but they are obviously going to be at some point soon. Google’s reply to Rae Hoffman’s question about how Google plans to control these attacks was non-specific and pretty unsatisfactory.
• When search history is deleted, is it really erased? Yes, but only in the places where the data could possibly be associated with any of your personal information. The data is kept elsewhere for other reasons (trending, quality control, etc.).
• Does Google’s Personalized Search interact with SearchWiki? Yes, but only in an indirect sense. If you were to vote a result to the top, this action would trump other triggers. In other words, explicit triggers trump implicit triggers.
• There is not always a personalized search link at the top right of the SERP (to indicate that the result has been personalized) . Google will sometimes modify/alter a search without notifying the user. Google feels that it’s not worth telling the user unless the modification is significant.

-Drew

YouTube is the leading online video destination for the web, which makes it in turn the leading video search engine. Plus, YouTube content is widely distributed in search results elsewhere, including those of its owner, Google. This session looks specifically at tips and tactics for doing well with YouTube.

Moderator: Chris Sherman, Executive Editor, Search Engine Land

Q&A Moderator: Eric Enge, President, Stone Temple

Speakers:

Drew Hubbard, Senior Linking Analyst, SEO, The Search Agency
Matt Liu, Product Manager, YouTube, Google Inc.
Jonathan Mendez, Founder and CEO, RAMP Digital
JC Longbottom for Eric Papczun, Director of Natural Search Optimization, Performics

This was my session, so if you would like to see the presentation, please email me and let me know. I thought Matt, Jonathan, and JC all had great tips. The Gary Busey and Pepsuber case studies were particularly entertaining. For full coverage, some other blogs did a great job of detailing the Up Close With YouTube session.

SEO Round Table
Web Pro News
Bruce Clay
Milestone Marketing

I wonder if anybody has video (let me know if you do). The Q&A created some interesting conversation, and I would love to share with colleagues and clients.

-Drew

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Local Search Marketing Tactics
Local search doesn’t only happen in relation what’s on a map. This session looks at a variety of local search tactics that are not necessarily tied to your physical location’s listing.

Moderator: Greg Sterling, Founding Principal, Sterling Market Intelligence

Q&A Moderator: Cindy Krum, CEO, Rank-Mobile, LLC.

Speakers:

Scott Dunlap, CEO, NearbyNow, Inc.
Matt McGee, Assignment Editor, Search Engine Land
William Scott, President, Search Influence
Guy Yalif, Senior Director, Advertising Applications, Yahoo!, Yahoo
Dennis Yu, CEO, BlitzLocal LLC

Atif Refiq speaking on behalf of Guy Yalif:

• The first part of the talk was how to use Yahoo! Search Monkey to customize local search listings.
• He stressed the power of geo targeting.
• 3 tactics for local search success:
  • Increase user sophistication.
  • Ad product mix.
  • Channel strategy.

William Scott:

• Spoke of the “Barnacle” approach to SEO. That is, attaching yourself to a larger entity and waiting for the customers.
• So, what is local search? William covered topics such as geography, age and urgency. The example given was, “If somebody does a search for ‘flooded basement’ then they are probably looking for something to happen RIGHT NOW.
• Allow yourself to be represented in all local search - not just Google and Yahoo! If for not other reason than they can all show up in the major search engines and also multiple web results within a local search result.
• A common question, especially from small business owners is, “Do I have to have a website?” The answer is no. Promote and/or drive links to social media profile pages. These types of pages are probably going to rank better faster anyway. This is a great, inexpensive solution for small business.
• Local listings and reviews sites (like Yelp) are great to exploit for local search results, so make sure that your business is well represented on these kinds of UGC sites.
• www.getlisted.org is a great place to start.

Dennis Yu:

• How do you get your multiple locations on local search without being penalized?
• Be sure to use Yahoo! SSP and enhanced listings wherever possible.
• Piggyback on other local brands and try to link among related businesses.
• Create thousands of geo-specific keyword combinations, publish, and monitor analytics for the results. Quickly remove the ones that aren’t getting traffic.
• Social network advertising is non competitive right now. Traffic is still inexpensive on Facebook, for example. Geo-target with a local phone number.
• Include compelling pictures of people or interesting photos because, remember, it’s a social environment, and eye-catching images help click-through. The downside to advertising on Facebook and MySpace is that there is currently no good API solution, so you have to create multiple accounts on each service.
• But on the up-side, the unique thing about social media advertising is the viral possibility. With PPC, there is one click and that money is spent. With social media advertising, there is the possibility of sharing and viral.
• Twitter allows for custom backgrounds. Take advantage with contact information.
• Promote UGC and reviews for good original copy.
• For professional video content, hire local journalism students.

Matt McGee:

• http://www.hyperlocalblogger.com/
• Use hyperlocal blogging to promote your local business.
• He shared stories of the hyperlocal blogs created and maintained by him and his wife.
• There is a growing interest in finding local resources online.
• Traditional media is declining.
• Local (e.g. municipal) websites are often lacking in freshness and useful information.
• Search engines love good blogs

Scott Dunlap:

• Scott shared his NearbyNow service, and related some successes and failures with tracking offline conversions.

-DREW

Up Close With Google Maps & Local
This session gets up close and personal with Google Maps, covering factors that influence what appears and how it is ranked. Plus, a look at concerns over listings being “hijacked.”

Moderator: Greg Sterling, Founding Principal, Sterling Market Intelligence

Speakers:

Olivier Amar, Senior Web Marketing Consultant, Compucall Web Marketing
Jennifer Chin, Consumer Operations Strategist, Google Inc.
Steve Espinosa, Director of Innovation, eLocal Listing
David Mihm, Local SEO Consultant, DavidMihm.com
Chris Silver Smith, Director of Optimization Strategy, KeyRelevance

Let’s get started…

David Mihm:

• Where do local search engine results come from? Primarily from data feeds, business owners and user input.
• He stresses the importance of claiming your listing in Google’s Local Business Center (Google the term “google local business center” and you’ll find it).
• “Citations” (also called “web references” in this same session) help you rank on Google. The more references you have, the likelier you are to rank higher for a relevant search. Web references are found on the tab that says “Web Pages” in a Google Local or Maps search (see below).

• His presentation provides his best of third-party party data providers.

Chris Silver Smith:

• He provided a list of the top ranking factors for Google Local search:
  • Proximity to center of city: Businesses that are closer to the city center still tend to get preferential treatment.
  • The total number and positive sentiment of reviews.
  • The overall SEO-health of the business/destination website.
  • Keyword relevancy of the listing. If possible, try to use geo phrases in title tags and on the destination page.
  • Preference is given the to business whose address is in the city being searched.
• Solve common issues by building a unique page on your site for each city or geo area. He stressed that a single site is better than multiple or micro sites). Another option is to obtain a local address and telephone number. This, however, is frowned upon by Google… but it still works.
• Google will return non-pinpoint listings when it can’t determine a physical address.

Steve Espinosa:

• Use Yahoo local listing to link to your Google local listing. This will help improve your Google ranking.
• Get users or clients to review your product as much as possible.
• Buy Yahoo’s enhanced listing service.
• Add YouTube videos to local listings results. Create an individual page for each video because each one can get picked up as its own web reference. It’s best to own as much of the first page of results as possible.
• Steve cited a study that showed 3.3 times more calls were made to listings that had videos on them.
• Social media profiles and pages can be picked up as web references. Create pages and/or accounts on different social media and cross link among them. For example, link from your business website to your Facebook page in order to show that they are related.
• Do everything you can to put keywords in the title tags of web references.
• He finished his presentation by pointing out a nifty and free way to set up phone tracking via a Google Adwords audio campaign.

Olivier Amar:

• The majority of Olilvier’s presentation is a case study.
• Good landing page design is key, and he encourages the use of Google’s Website Optimizer product. Also, he recommends placing accreditations (like BotW, etc.) near the top of the page.
• Again, as many reviews as possible will help ranking. Incentivize clients to reivew your products… even if it sounds a bit unethical, getting reviews is huge.
• Spam in local search remains a big problem, so constant monitoring is necessary. And in many cases, reporting abuse to Google is the right thing to do.

Jennifer Chin:

• Jennifer’s presentation deals with the hijacking of local listings.
• Near the bottom of Google’s local listings, there is a message in green that indicates whether or not it has been claimed by the owner.
• Google community edits (basically the Google-driven wikipedia of local search) can help you refine the accuracy of your listings. You may also mark listings for removal via this feature.
• Google almost universally will prefer the business owner’s data over community edits or data feeds.
• If you want to report abuse, but you want to do it annonymously, you can report spam through Google’s help center.

Q&A

• How to get more reviews and how to deal with rep management on local search?
  • Reach out to negative reviewers and try to make it right.
  • Reward people (as a thank you) who were probably inclined to review in the first place. By the way, it was pretty obvious that everybody on the panel wanted to say, “Just bribe people to provide reviews”, but it probably isn’t a good idea to say something like that in from of Jennifer Chin.”
  • For those businesses that offer free WiFi, default the landing page to your reviews page.
  • Provide step-by-step instructions on how to create reviews.
• Definitely claim your listing for the sake of mobile which only shows the top few results.

-DREW

More information about the conference is here: SMX West daily agenda

I’m presenting for the first time ever today, so I’m pretty excited about that. I’ll be speaking on a panel about YouTube optimization, and I think I have some decent tips to share. I’ll also create a post specific to the session.

SMX makes all of the conference presentations (PowerPoint files, usually) available as soon as possible. Considering that most folks are making modifications until the last possible moment, they likely won’t be ready on the site until the conclusion of the conference. But I’ll do my best to have the relevant ones here so you can download them.

If you’re at SMX West, stop by Up Close With YouTube today at 4:30 and say hi.

-Drew

PANELISTS:
Mike Grehan, Global KDM Officer, Acronym Media
Adam Lavelle, Chief Strategy Officer, iCrossing
Julie Sun, Senior Manager, SEO, MTV Digital Media
Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, SearchEngineLand.com

Here is a quick overview of each speaker and their major points.

Danny Sullivan:

• Honestly, I didn’t take notes for Danny’s presentation because he said the whole thing would be blogged the next day on Search Engine Land. Well, I couldn’t ever find it. If you can, can you post the link in the comments or email me?

Julie Sun:

• The Digg community doesn’t typically like big brands (in fact, there can be some ugly backlash if the brand isn’t fully transparent). But is a great place to read feedback. Example:MTV launched a new video site, and some of the immediate feedback was along the lines of, “Oh great. Another video site that doesn’t work outside the US.” In actuality, the site worked just fine outside of the US, and after addressing the issues that led to the problem in the first place, this issue was nipped in the bud.
• Julie pointed out a potential flaw and/or exploit on Facebook. She said that when you do a Facebook search, the first results page will be whichever one was created first (pizza example). is this true? Does anybody know for sure?
• Facebook recently opened up their pages (not profile pages) to crawling, so we’ll probably be seeing them show up on the SE’s SERPs more often.
• Use Yahoo! Answers to get a #1 ranking before your site even launches. I liked this one. Everyone knows that Yahoo! Answers is one big SEO racket, but why not use it as a surrogate for your brand until your site goes live? Good stuff.
• Don’t blindly jump into a social media marketing campaign just because you have a good idea. Make sure that you have the proper resources before starting. No sense in starting something potentially great that you will have to abandon once it builds steam.
• Know your goals beforehand. Are you branding? Are you looking for traffic?

Mike Grehan:
This presentation was all about the crossover between search and social media.

• The communituies will drive the engines. This is the likely future of search.
• Librarything.com is an excellent example of user-driven search. Check ou its tons of UGC.
• Mike talked about an example of making a short video that he published to several different video hosting sites. He tagged it in such a way that it would compete with a moderately competetive term (he didn’t say which one). Within 3 days, several of the videos were ranking in the top 10 for that term. The point? Google is obviously listening, and HTML is not the future of content - nor is it what the search engines will eventually be prioritizing.
• Textbook SEO will disappear completely (nothing new there).
• DAO: Digital Asset Optimization. This is defines as offsite SEO using social media.
• Mike claims that the number one source of Google’s information is their toolbar. He didn’t elaborate, but I’m curious to know why. Mike? Are you reading this?
• He Quoted Andrew Tomkins who suggests that HTTP and HTML will become obsolete.

Adam Levelle:

• If you think that you are in charge of your own brand, you are not. Eventually, nearly all information about any brand will be UGC. Most will be crap, so the SEs will be in charge of filtration.
• Case study: The company was able to radically decrease negative sentiment by merely answering questions. Here is a great argument for getting involved. You don’t even have to initiate anything - just answer people’s questions.
• Clive Thompson of Wired is quoted: “Google is not a search engine. Google is a reputation-management system.”
• Measuring social media is still very difficult. One tactic that Adam tried was to track the links posted and clicks received via every different social media site on which they had activity. He mined the Omniture data in order to do this, and it was horribly tedious.
• Measuring social media is not the same as ROI.

-Drew

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MODERATOR:
Jeff Flemings, Senior VP, Renaissance Planning, VivaKi

PANELISTS:
Kay Madati, VP, Audience Experience, CNN Worldwide
Michael Lazerow, Chairman and CEO, Buddy Media, Inc.
Jeff Hunter, Innovation Toolkit Director, Cereal Partners Worldwide, General Mills, Inc.
Marc Ruxin, Chief Innovation Officer, Digital, McCann Worldgroup San Francisco
Chris Pan, Head of Brand Solutions, Facebook

Discussion highlights included:

• CurrentTV’s election coverage that ran a  Twitter feed and a Digg feed below video window.
• Dont’ try and create something new. pick something you know people will already engage with and center your social media campaign around that.
• Obviously you have to give people a reason and a chance to engage.
• Don’t merely set up a SM listening system. Create concrete goals for engaging and make a plan for converting participation (offline or online) into a way to generate revenue.
• Brand relationship networks (groups of brand enthusiasts) can help you understand why/where to engage and develop new ideas and campaigns.
• Consumers now have more of a face than ever. Therefore, even though so much of social media is driven by technology, there needs to be a layer on top of that that is driven by emotion.
• The challenge isn’t finding people but rather learning about them and knowing which content to direct them to.
• How do you build relationships with consumers? How do you create one-on-one engagement with an ongoing dialogue? If there is a local event, how do you communicate it to the correct people? The quest to answer all of these questions is driving the evolution of a new type of CRM. Can you create or nurture fans that will help you promote your own brands?
• Any advertiser who is getting involved with any social media space needs to understand the expectations of that space before getting involved.

Take-aways

• Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day is a must-read for any social media marketer. It’s available for sale at Amazon:
  It was written by Dave Evans of ClickZ, and it came highly recommended from several members of the panel.:

This presentation was overseen by Samantha Skey, Executive VP, Strategic Marketing, Alloy Media + Marketing. The focus was on the panel of six “Millenials,” who can be generally defined as people born between 1980-2000. At this presentation, the Millenials were between 18 and 21 years old. Our panel was made up of Carlos, Emily, Dash, Brianna, Joe, and Nicole.

To open the keynote, each panelist was presented with an image of either the infamous Barack Obama “change” poster, the icy-white, beveled Apple logo, or a carton of Ben&Jerry’s ice cream. They were then asked to say the first thing that came to their minds.

The discussion opened, as had already become a trend at ad:tech, with Tuesday’s election. A huge amount of young people turned out to support the campaign. This fact led to a discussion of “Obama-nomics,” which was defined by Ms Skey as…

Obama-nomics: reach (access + utility) = cause adoption

The idea and/or hope is that this method lends itself to development of brand passion. The suggestion is that Obama’s campaign was hugely successful with younger people, so can we leverage the same principles in every-day marketing?

The majority of the presentation was questions being asked of the panel. So I’ll run down some of the more interesting points:

• The majority of panelists watch their television online via services like Hulu. Exceptions include top favorite shows, breaking news and sporting event. Although most agreed that they use Twitter for the latter two items.
• If you could only have one gadget, what would it be? Responses were limited to phone, laptop, and iPod. Most responded “phone,” and the reason given was staying in contact with friends and family.
• Is there anything you think phones shouldn’t do? Most replied “no,” but at least one person suggested that phones are too complicated already.
• How do you use your phones? Primarily texting, and talking is secondary.
• What are some of your favorite TV commercials? Target, Subway, Sony Bravia, anything with good dancing and/or choreography, Sonic, NBA, Nike. The most common reasons given for enjoying a commercial were humor and relatability.
• Where do you notice that you see or watch the most ads? Internet, the subway, on the street, Facebook. Also important are art/aesthetics and any ad that carries a special offer or deal (e.g. free prints at Shutterfly and Snapfish). Most agreed that Facebook ads are probably the most useful because they are so highly targeted and seem unobtrusive.
• Polls show that 49% of Millenials say that they like the appearance of social responsibility. But this “green” trend carries a risk. There is a backlash against compaines who spend money on “green” campaigns because they are trying to cleanse their reputations as polluters.

At this point, I actually started to feel sort of weird, like I was at a zoo. Here were all of these people in the audience in their 30s, 40s and 50s, and we were all dissecting everything these kids had to say. It made me giggle just a little bit to think that everyone in the room was furiously writing down every last word that these kids uttered.

The discussion turned to a group called “The Reachables.” This group consumes more media than any other group, but ironically, they are the hardest to reach. Here are some stats on The Reachables:

• Willing to consume advertisements if they accompany content that is cheaper or free than ad-free content.
• 62% report learning about new and/or popular brands via advertising channels.

The most interesting take-away for me was that we, as advertisers, can learn a lot from Millenials as they shape the future of social interaction. But the panel’s concept of privacy was virtually non-existent. Most expressed dismay about the fact that their personal information or photos could be used by the company that owns the service on which their information appears. They saw it as an invasion of privacy. I guess they’ll be some of my future reputation management clients.

-Drew

MODERATOR:
Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO, IAB

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:
Tina Sharkey, Chairman and Global President, BabyCenter LLC
Rob Master, North American Media Director, Unilever US
Rob Norman, CEO, Group M Interaction
David Morris, Chief Client Officer, CBS Interactive

Rob Norman, an agency guy, started the discussion by stressing that the marketing paradigm isn’t shifting; it has already shifted. It’s time to stop talking about how and when the changes in the marketing world will happen because they are already here. So let’s discuss how to take advantage of new media.

Tina Sharkey said that according to her numbers, email marketing is stronger than ever. She made an interesting point that there is too much crap on the web to trudge through, so when somebody can present digested information in the form of an e-newsletter, people are appreciative.

As an SEO (specifically a Link Builder), I didn’t get a whole ton out of this session. Though I did think it was pretty entertaining when Rothenberg referred to the Obama/McCain election as one of the most important of the 20th century.

-Drew

Jonathan Klein, President, CNN/U.S.
& Geoff Ramsey, CEO and founder of eMarketer.com

Klein dominated most of the available time with his discussion about bringing traditional media out of the past and into the present by taking full advantage of interactivity, social media, and user generated content. He opened his presentation with a discussion of the “Obama Loses by a Single Vote” viral video campaign that was launched by Moveon.org. This is an example of the next generation of advertising, whereas the “Mad Men” (the AMC drama about ad men on Madison Avenue) paradigm of media-buying is representative of the older generation of marketing.

Using today’s presidential election as an example, Klein broke the voting demographic into the “next gen” voters who are alienated from politics and stay largely independent of political parties, choosing to align themselves with the issues instead. The realization that CNN has made in the recent past is that many 40-50 year olds share these same ideas now. Therefore the question becomes, “:How does a traditional media outlet like CNN survive?” Klein provided several examples of web 2.0/UGC sensibility that has been injected into the CNN brand. Among those, he briefly touched on:

• iReport, which is a UGC form of reporting by regular Joes
• Interfacing CNN directly with Facebook
• The “Magic Wall,” the multi-touch, interactive big screen
• Real-time debate scoring, tracked by CNN analysts
• Rick Sanchez’s new show that pulls news stories directly from Twitter
• Impact Your World: An opportunity to participate in the stories you read by donating your time and money to organizations that get involved

Klein made the claim that because of these innovations, CNN is now the #1 news network on cable or broadcast for the 18-49 demographic. He also made the claim that CNN is now the #1 site on the web for video delivery. Hmmm….

Not according to Compete.com as recently as May, so he could have meant something different, but there is no question that he made a claim as #1 for video. Either way, the point he was trying to make is that embracing new media is what boosted the viewership so dramatically.

He then talked about how Twitter continues to scoop every news outlet in existence on new stories, Klien stressed how important it is for traditional media outlets to listen to social media and pay attention to where it’s going. The most relevant example was the recent Los Angeles earthquake. It was reported on Twitter less than 30 seconds after the first rumbles. Local news took about 5 minutes and AP took another 10.

During the Q&A portion of the presentation, Klein was only able to field a couple of questions, but I thought one was particularly good: “You are CNN, so you obviously have tremendous opportunities for revenue, but what would you recommend to a smaller media presence who is attempting to convert quality content into revenue?” Klein kind of dodged this one was answering, “You have to join a gang. If you’re not a Blood or a Crip yet, you need to consider getting on board.”: OK, I guess. A moderately funny answer that suggests allowing yourself to be bought by or aligned with a larger media company.

But I don’t buy it. I think that’s a bullshit answer to a good, honest question. Frankly, it was the perfect ending to Klein’s whole presentation given everything he had discussed up to that point. In terms of social media, he didn’t offer a single innovative idea. I suspect that going live with new ideas at a place like CNN is pretty hard. So the initial reaction might be to congratulate this guy for the leaps and bounds he has made at the network, but that isn’t what I am thinking. Integration with social media and UGC isn’t just a good idea; it’s vital. As in, if he didn’t do it, somebody else would have to or else CNN would be dying (or dead).

Klein is, no doubt, a compelling speaker and a seemingly interesting guy, but I didn’t think he presenting anything unique or useful in terms of real-world implementation. After all, how many people at this conference have a brand like CNN backing them up?

The economy sucks, but don’t freak out because that’s the worst thing that could possibly happen in advertising. Media spends are going to ether remain the same or improve over the next two years. The only change will be that money will be removed from traditional marketing campaigns and moved to online advertising.

I think this is something that we already know, but it was certainly comforting to see Geoff back it up with some solid data. He recently wrote a paper about the immediate future of marketing that eMarketer.com is giving away free. As soon as I obtain my copy, I’ll make it available here.

-Drew

Related Blogs

• Related Blogs on ad:tech New York 2008
• Ad:Tech New York & Leadpile Lead Exchange
• Thoughts for 2008-11-03
• Share Results Attending ad:tech in New York
• Next Stop, Ad:Tech New York!
• Ad Tech New York 2008

Of course, I’m here for the social media conversations. So I’ll keep you posted about the buzz.

So I was doing some brainstorming last night…several people I know have been pretty enthusiastic about blog farming, and I think it’s a really interesting idea without regard to how long it might be viable.

Essentially, the premise is that you’re creating a large number of unique content pages in a semi-to-fully-automated fashion.  We know Google loves blogs (seomfg got out of the sandbox within a week, and had a TBPR on the homepage in less than a month — and we did everything completely legit).

So, let’s say you have an autoblog or blog farm that is generating 5-20 posts a day as an example.  Assume you’re using Eli’s PingCrawl Wordpress plug-in, you can realistically expect to get at least a few backlinks a day (probably 2-to-40, which is a wide range — but either way).

To take it a step further (this was triggered by Aaron Wall’s post on SEO book about WP IP delivery hacks), let’s assume you cloak the entire blog by crawler IP address (I recommend Fantomas’ SpiderSpy for IP content delivery) and 301 everything that Google sees back to your home page — as long as you are either autoblogging or blog farming everything with enough detail that your posts’ titles include your head keyword, you’re getting somewhere between a couple and a few dozen links back to your home page on a daily basis.  And those backlinks show some relevance because all of your fake-blog posts have your head keyword in the title.

Let’s assume your vertical is somewhat competetive.  Whoever is ranking first for your head term is probably lucky to have 10-20% of their backlinks with “head keyword” in the anchor text (unless they rented a lot of links).  So this strategy should pay some dividends, because you’ll be ruling the “head keyword” with inbound anchor text relevance (albeit varied slightly, but also productively).  Especially if you have total control over the title of your auto/farm posts.  Just make sure that most (if not all) of your posts have your head keyword in them somewhere, with slightly different surrounding text.

Hope this is interesting,
=george

PS. It should be noted that, after a short time in this industry, it makes me laugh how poorly people cloak for SEO value.  Look at this example for CareerBuilder — look at the “Jobs” footer link to Careerbuilder.com on usatoday.com with a typical browser UA…and then look at it as Googlebot.  Not that I agree or disagree with what they’re doing (or, especially, how they’re doing it).  But UA checking is for pussies; pay for an IP feed if you’re going to go balls to the wall.

How funny.  There are now 4 URLs with a toolbar PageRank of 10:

• Google
• usa.gov
• universia.esp

And…wait for it….seriously, get this:

• Google’s AdSense page

I’m not kidding.

There are several things that are important to illustrate:

1. According to Google, there are no backlinks to the URL that shows a toolbar PR of 10 (https://www.google.com/adsense/login/en_US/ – nofollowed, obv).

2. According to Yahoo!, there are a very small number of backlinks to that URL.

3. This URL doesn’t show up in Google’s cache — yet it doesn’t have a robots tag instructing engines to noindex or noarchive it.  How the fuck is one of the four most important URLs on the Intanet missing from the largest search engine’s cache?

4. Look at this handy JavaScript cloaking on the page.  That iframe redirect is included, not on-page (tricky move, Google): https://www.google.com/adsense/login-box.js

document.write(’n74iframe style7542width:19em;height:16.4em;42 align7542center42 marginwidth7542042 marginheight7542042 scrolling7542no42 frameborder7542042 id7542awglogin42 name7542awglogin42 src7542https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLoginBox?service75adsense46amp;ltmpl75login46amp;ifr75true46amp;rm75hide46amp;fpui75346amp;nui751546amp;alwf75true46amp;passive75true46amp;continue75https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fadsense%2Flogin-box-gaiaauth46amp;followup75https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fadsense%2Flogin-box-gaiaauth46amp;hl75en_US427674/iframe76′);

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some fairly similar code on some hacked .edu forums that redirected to pillz sitez.

Without speaking to Google’s business interests, I really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really find it hard to understand how Adobe’s home page got demoted to a TBPR9; or that Yahoo! is a TBPR9 when Yahoo!’s home page obviously has entirely more backlinks and natural, loyal, willing visitors than the AdSense login page; and especially when the AdSense TBPR10 page is in a sub directory, it uses JavaScript cloaking, and it doesn’t have a link profile worthy to compete in a low-profit affiliate vertical.

But…don’t hate the player, right?  The mouseover on the PageRank button in the Google Toolbar reads:

“PageRank is Google’s measure of the importance of this page”

I’m not going to lie.  If I’m Google, the AdSense page is the second most important page on the web to me, save my homepage.  So maybe we should applaud Google for being transparent in this case.

=george

Another first for Google was their use of Google Moderator for fielding some Q&A from the session. You can see the participants’ questions and the moderators’ responses here:

Google’s Q&A Via Google Moderator

Here is an article that Aaron Wall wrote last year:

And here is the Michael Grey post that inspired it:

I wish I could have uncovered something good that was a little more current, so let me know if any of you guys find anything. The valuable information is located in the comments sections of each article. The general consensus seems to be that automated, mass-submission to article directory sites is pretty worthless. I think we would all probably assume that anyway, so the real question becomes, “What, if any, is the value of submitting unique, keyword-rich content with back links to deep pages with good anchor text?” Given that Google did a PR revision of these article submission sites about a year ago, search engineers decided to knock the value of article submission down a peg or two resulting in PR3s or PR0s, according to Aaron and Michael. But I just checked the major submission sites that I know (and sometimes use), and the domain PRs breaks down like this:

• http://ezinearticles.com/ PR6
• http://www.articlecity.com/ PR6
• http://www.buzzle.com/ PR6
• http://www.articlebiz.com/ PR3
• http://www.easyarticles.com/ PR4

Not too shabby. So the owners of these sites have obviously taken a firmer stance on editorial guidelines, and the Google search engineers rewarded that jump in quality by restoring some or all of their PR. A comment that was repeated a number times in the above posts was that the real power of article submission services is not in the links that come directly from the submission sites themselves but from the other sites the syndicate/republish the content. This means that we absolutely must track our submitted articles to see where there were re-posted. And we should be doing the very same thing with any original or repurposed content that we publish or promote. This includes blogs and social media interaction on Digg, Delicious, Reddit, etc. Find a unique phrase in the article and set up a Google alert for it. When you receive a notification, check it out. If it’s legit, add it to your tracking documentation (You do have tracking documentation, right?).

Frank suggested that it might be better to create a new blog and/or micro-site and publish the content there. I think this is a great idea, but I don’t think it’s a replacement for article submission. If the value of article submissions is their syndication power, we would likely not be able to achieve the same reach with our own blog or micro-site (unless it’s been around for a while). But if you have the time to publish to both, you could take advantage of the power of an article submission site while simultaneously building up the PR/value of our own site.

Thoughts?

-Drew

Look how fast the tabs open!

Look how I can drag things around!

Ah man, no plug-ins yet!

Is Google tracking my activity?

Wow, how predictable can you people be?  Don’t you see the overlying message here?  Am I the only one that sees what is going on at Camp Google?  I feel like that guy from the original Twilight Zone where he is the same but everyone around him is different.  (George: Which one is that?) (Jerry: Ah, they were all like that.)

What everyone is missing, but I have cleverly discovered, is Google’s blatant attempt at the hip hop community.  That’s right - I said it.

It is no secret that marketing firms turn to the hip hop community to see what the future will look like.  For twenty years rap music and the b-boy culture have been setting trends from the inner cities to the suburbs.  But who would have thought that a search giant like Google would focus their marketing efforts at this demographic.  That is just how smart Google truly is.

Wait, you don’t subscribe to my theory?  Okay…proof:

First, let’s take a look at Google’s product line; G Mail, G Chat, G Docs, G Calendar - as Snoop would say, “How Gangsta!”  And don’t think that the hip hop community hasn’t taken notice.  Of course every rapper would want their email to be drdre@Gmail.com (that’s not real, but will now be spammed anyways).  Don’t believe me - take a listen to this clip from the song Can U Werk Widat by Dj Quik and AMG (some of the originators of west coast gangsta rap):

Second, let’s take a closer look at the man who has put himself as the spokesperson for the Google Algo: Matt Cutts.  Coincidence that his initials are MC?  See: MC Hammer, MC Lyte, MC Breed…nuff said.

This brings me to Google Chrome.  Not up on your hip hop lingo, then read: Urban Dictionary - Chrome.
Not sure what a Firefox is, and I guess Safari is kind of related to searching for something; but what the F does Chrome have to do with searching the internet?  Nothing.  It is simply the O.G. (Google) telling all competition that they are rollin’ out, chrome blazin’!

So finally, since I know how much interweb users need to read all of their information in list form: The Secret Gangsta Products Coming Out Of Google Labs Next

5. Google Ice
Reader: Are you telling me that all you’re giving us for Google Ice is a poorly Photoshopp’d image of a diamond studded Google logo?
Frank: Yes, that’s how I roll.

4. Google Weed
Have you ever typed in your own address on Google Maps and zoomed in all the way in satellite mode?  Have you ever typed your own address on Google Maps and zoomed in all the way in satellite mode on GOOGLE WEED MAN??  Is that my truck?  Wait, when was this taken?  Was I even living there then?  Yeah, I’ve been living here for awhile.  Wait, my truck is dark green; and that truck looks like it might be some kind of blue color.  Whose truck is that in my driveway?  Whose fuckin truck is that???

3. FUBG
Or wait, has Google already begun their secret infiltration of hip hop clothing, see: Coogi.

2.  Google Bitches and Hoes
I’m not even sure how this is a product.  And frankly, I am disgusted that Google is planning to branch out into the pimp game.  I’m not even sure how related this is to mainstream hip hop.  Shame on you Google.

1. Google Coolio
Before you say anything, take a look at how nice those two names look next to each other.  It almost looks like they were made for each other.  And Coolio?  That guy will do anything for a couple bucks and some Google Weed, see: Cookin’ With Coolio.

You may have been wondering when Google would finally adopt a mascot and what mascot they would choose.  Firefox has a dragon (btw, a dragon?  a MFing dragon? come on Firefox, what is that all about anyways?).  Microsoft has a paperclip (that may not be the entire story, but Paul Harvey won’t return my emails).  Apple has the kid from Dodgeball…yeah, the one that takes the wrench to the balls.  Netscape has a…ah who gives a shit about Netscape.  And now, Google, the largest search site on the web, has Coolio!  See: G’s Paradise.

FRANK