Online Marketing Blog

Phillip Lessen at Google Blogscoped has a guest post by Tony Ruscoe explaining how to find new Google services, considerations for documenting the services you’ve found and what to do once you’ve found a new Google service. (or new service from any engine for that matter).

What a challenge this must be for Google PR. One the one hand, you want to keep things from prying eyes until they are ready to be announced. And on the other hand, there’s such an enthusiastic audience, you barely have to lift a finger to get coverage.

Here’s a link to the full article.

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Here are a few more videos from Search Engine Strategies San Jose. Matt Bailey - SiteLogic, Andy Beal - Marketing Pilgrim and a short clip from Danny Sullivan’s talk with Google CEO Eric Schmidt. You can listen to the full discussion over at WebmasterRadio.FM.

Matt Bailey in between sessions talks about wookiepedia. I had no idea Matt was a Star Wars fan.

Andy Beal before the Ask.com blogger dinner talks about the “lunatic fringe” of search marketing.

And here’s a short clip of Danny Sullivan and Google CEO Eric Schmidt answering a question from the audience about whether Google will start allowing users to monetize the use of their own clickstream data.

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This is actually the first session that I covered at the San Jose Search Engine Strategies conference, but I did not get a chance to clean up my notes and post until now. It was a good session about a topic that is very close to the consulting practice of our PR and marketing agency.

Part of the ClickZ track, this session was moderated by Rebecca Lieb and included Gary Stein of Ammo Marketing, Scott Meyer of About.com, Hans Peter Brondmo of Plum, a new social networking service and Brian Monahan from IPG.

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After hearing at several sessions and in the media about the rise of online video, I decided to try something different here at SES San Jose. Armed with a slick Sony Cybershot camera that takes decent video, I’ve started to ask people what they think of this year’s SES San Jose conference. These are very short clips, 30 seconds to 1 min, but provide an interesting view of the people at the conference on what’s happening and what they think.

Here’s one with Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable in the conference Press Room:

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Moderated by Rebecca Lieb of ClickZ with presentations by Matt Bailey of SiteLogic and Shari Thurow of Grantastic Designs. First up is Shari who answered questions about usability and search.

What is usability? Shows term highlighting in Google search results. Titles, snippets and web address.

Web site usability serves two purposes: Relevancy and encouraging clicks to your site.

Usability addresses all search behaviors.
- Querying (refining, expanding)
- Browsing, surfing
- Pogo-sticking (Jared Spool)
- Foraging
- Scanning
- Reading

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Barbara Coll headed up moderator duties for this panel that includes familiar faces Bill Hunt of Global Strategies International and Marshall Simmonnds of the New York Times. It also includes Kara Jariwaia from Cisco.

First up is Bill Hunt.

Audience poll: How many of you are big brands? Over half.
How many of you have multiple people attending? About half

Bill mentions he’s seen this as a trend.

IBM current results, 55 million pages in Google, 5,000 terms in top 5, search is 25% of all traffic, keyword research in all marketing.

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I was able to take a good number of photos at the Google Dance last night as well as a bit of video. Here are some of my favorites.

Waiting for the bus to the Google Dance

Googleplex

Danny Sullivan

Volleyball at the Googleplex

Green Screen Karaoke

Robot Wars

Ice Cream

Google Cafe

The Band

Lee Odden and Matt Cutts in a white hat

Goodbye!

You can see all or most of them on Flickr using the tag, “googledance“. Thanks Google!

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Yahoo has updated their Site Explorer tool to offer some very Google Sitemap-like tools including the ability to track more than one site, display the last crawl date, easier feed submission and an update notification service. These services require a Yahoo account to login.

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The Google Dance is getting started and I’m leaving in a few minutes. According to Google, here’s what to expect:

• Join the Meet the Engineers forum and come face to face with the people who make it all happen - Google Engineers
• Eat great food prepared by the Google Kitchen
• Socialize and network with industry peers
• Listen to cool sounds coming from our own Google DJ’s, as well as enjoy some live music in Club G
• Have fun in the Google Labs technology playground area, where you’ll be able to meet people who work on our products

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This session moderated by Andrew Goodman of Page Zero Media, is near and dear as press release optimization and online PR are big pieces of TopRank’s internet marketing consulting practice. This session included: Greg Jarboe from SEO PR, Sally Falkow of Expansion Plus, and Nan Dawkins of Red Boots Consulting.

First up is Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR who starts off by relating a metaphor for press release optimization as a shortcut. People initially looked at news search SEO as a shortcut tactic into search results. But the search engines have devalued links within press releases. However, there are opportunities and they are not shortcuts.

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I have to say, when I walked into the exhibit hall this am for a quick look, I was impressed! Lots of space and lots of exhibitors. Incisive Media has done a bang up job. Here are a few candids:

Google Booth

Yahoo Booth

Microsoft adCenter Booth

Ask.com Booth

Daron Babin and Greg Hartnet

SEMPO Booth

Mick Jolly and David McInnis of PRWeb

Fionn Downhill and a co-worker from Elixr Systems

Giving away a car?

An animated Rand Fishkin

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