Online Marketing Blog

This week was my first MediaPost Search Insider Summit event and I was glad to have been able to participate. I’ve been a reader of MediaPost publications on and offline for several years and have been a big fan of the Search Insider, which is pretty much the only email format search marketing content that I’ll actually read outside of my ClickZ subscriptions.

To answer a question I had posted to Gord Hotchkiss in an interview last week, “What’s different about the Search Insider Summit conference from other search marketing related conferences?”, is that both the content and the conversations were weighted more towards the strategic side of search marketing. In fact, I overheard Gord at the end of the conference say he had more strategic discussions about the future of the search marketing industry this week than he’d had at any other conference.

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.

First up is Ron Belanger who basically sums up three areas of focus for Yahoo in terms of search engine innovation. They include:
1. Getting search to mobile

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.

As an agent of change the internet has the potential of having a far greater impact than something like TV. However, we won’t see the real impact of the internet on society for 10-15 years, just like it took many years for TV to change society.

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.

This isn’t Gord’s first appearance at Online Marketing Blog though, he was good enough to talk about Enquiro’s most recent analysis and eye tracking report of the major 3 search engines last year. I would highly recommend checking out this very insightful review of Google, Yahoo and MSN search results – at least until personalized search takes over.