Online Marketing Blog

We are all about the social media on this blog and our coverage of conferences with interviews, photos and below a few videos.

Here is the programming chair of the conference, David Berkowitz talking about how this is the biggest Search Insider Summit yet as well as the kinds of topics that drove the programming ranging from innovative search technology to click fraud to mobile marketing.

I also caught up with Cam Balzer of GoogleClick Performics oops, I mean DoubleClick Performics. As tempting as it was to ask Cam about Google’s acquisition of a company that provides natural and paid search marketing services, I kept it PC.

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The first of the breakout sessions was a choice between click fraud and this session on video search optimization. This was an easy choice since video optimization is an important component of social media campaigns and we like the social media here at Online Marketing Blog.

The session was moderated by Matt Spiegel of Resolution Media and speakers included: Chase Norlin from Pixsy, Scott Rhodes of VeoTag, Christy Tanner of TV Guide and Dan Perry from Cars.com.

Matt Spiegel: Is online video search for entertainment or other purposes?

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From the conference session handbook: The Future of Search Engine Innovation - As search engines evolve, so must the methods of the marketers. We’re seeing the emergence of smart mashups, of visual search engines and personalized search. What does the future hold for search marketers and advertisers as they struggle to match speed of improvement being set by the engines themselves?

This session was moderated by David Berkowitz of 360i and included: Ron Belanger of Yahoo!, Paul Martino of Aggregate Knowledge, Chase Norlin of Pixsy filling in for Dr. Barney Pell of Powerset, and Ravi Raj from Kosmix.

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Esther Dyson of Edventure Holdings and David Vise of BreakingViews.com and author of “The Google Story” took their seats on the stage as the first keynote for MediaPost’s Search Insider Summit here in sunny Florida. The schedule says Esther will be interviewed about the semantic web, but we get much more than that from this impromptu interview that includes some mystic channeling.

Q and A style presentations are, as you might imagine, a bit challenging to blog. So I’ve not captured everything exactly but my notes should give a good indication of the exchange. Keep in mind, some of the content below is verbatim and some is my characterization.

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As Media Post’s Search Insider Summit opened up, everyone fresh with coffee and battles with the bagel toasting machine, the smell of change in the search industry was in the air. Of course we know that change is a key component of search marketing and it’s what makes this industry so interesting and challenging.

Gord Hotchkiss of Enquiro, who was tasked as the event emcee, kicked off the Summit with opening remarks about search as a connection to social change. While innovations with search features and functionality are occurring every day, Gord reminds us that technology changes much faster than people do.

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At Search Marketing Gurus blog, Li Evans has a great collection of opinions on paid links from both the search marketer and publisher’s perspective. She asked several people that work in the search marketing industry these questions:

• What is your opinion of buying links for clients?
• What is your opinion of sites that sell links but do not indicate they are paid?

Responses come from Greg Meyers, Andy Beal, Chris Sherman, Christine Churchill, Frank Watson, Anne Kennedy, Bill Slawski, Debra Mastaler and a little something from Cameron Olthius.

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The day started with a sponsored breakfast by Compete.com with a presentation by Jeremy Crane on Compete functionality. I came a bit late so I did not catch the entire presentation, but one interesting tidbit that I caught concerned the reporting of an Attention metric. What percent of users are visiting a particular site compared to others over time. This is particularly interesting considering sites that are engaged in significant PR and buzz generation.

Compete is also offering search marketing related competitive intelligence reporting similar to Keyword Discovery CI and basic levels of Hitwise. Compete is looking for beta testers also.

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Wow, I just checked my calendar and June is one heck of a month for conferences. Regrettably, I’ve had to turn down two regional/private speaking gigs due to time conflicts and those really are the best for generating new business. However, the two events I will be speaking at are:

Bulldog Reporter’s Media Relations Summit, “Media Relations Unbound: How SEO and Social Media Have Revolutionized Our Reach” Washington, D.C. June 10-12, 2007. I will be speaking with fellow PR, Social Media and Search Marketing enthusiasts, Jamie ODonnell from SEO-PR and Sally Falkow of Expansion Plus. This looks like a fantastic event for the PR industry and I’ll be bringing one of our new account managers, Mike Yanke to fill up on all the PR and marketing wisdom being shared.

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After reading Neil’s post about Pronet Advertising, Search Engine Land and Online Marketing Blog making Technorati’s Popular 100 list, I thought I’d search T’rati a bit more and noticed an Authority score starting to appear next to the blogs in the search results. I know a widget was released that blogs could use to show their Technorati score earlier last month I believe, but this is the first I’ve seen it on the Technorati site.

Here’s a screenshot:

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As Karl Ribas found recently, Yahoo is testing some new search results page today. Funny thing is, I don’t use Yahoo standard search all that much but I couldn’t find what I was looking for on Google. (Note: the query in the screenshot is not what I was looking for)

Click for larger version

As Barry has also noted over at Search Engine Land, blue doesn’t really seem like “Yahoo”, it seems more like another company. It’s purple (my favorite color) that I think of when I think Yahoo.

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The fun never stops with our ongoing search for interesting and informative blogs about search engine marketing. Open up your RSS reader/aggregator and invite this week’s entries into your blog reading party.

• SEO Content Solutions - SEO savvy copywriter Christine OKelly writes about SEO, SMO and a few other acronyms we writers like to throw around.
• SearchGrit - Marios Alexandrou writes a lot about search engine optimization as well as the search marketing industry.
• Vaughan Marketing - Shane Vaughan, VP of marketing for Balihoo and former Global Search Marketing Manager for HP, writes about his experiences with search marketing.

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Spotlight on Search Interview with Gord Hotchkiss of Enquiro, SEMPO

It’s been too long since we’ve done a Spotlight on Search interview and I’m happy to say we’ve been able to catch up with world traveler and search marketing ninja master Gord Hotchkiss. He’s probably never been characterized quite that way, but there’s a first for everything. Gord is CEO of search marketing agency, Enquiro out of BC Canada and is a very busy/active speaker with a variety of industry conferences.

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