Danny Sullivan is the moderator on this panel, and looking by the list of speakers, this one should be funny - high expectations guys. So 6 minutes late, we begin... (danny???) He said we need to stop persecuting people with "man bags." He said we have a strict no blogging policy here, everyone laughed. We have Zia Daniell Wigder from Jupiter Research is our analysts panel person. Now the bloggers; Robert Scoble from Microsoft, Jeremy Zawodny from Yahoo, John Battelle was suppose to be here but he couldn't make it so Matt Cutts came on in his place from Google, and finally David Vise who wrote the Google Story.
The topic is completely open and you can ask anything you like. I personally will try to write as fast as possible. No questions about how do I rank well for XYZ. Here we go...
Q: What will be the impact of search and search market share, when Microsoft introduces a new browser with search embedded in the browser. A: Scoble said he put Google back in his toolbar. He added that Windows Vista embedded search in the whole process. IE7 enables you to add other search engines. David Vise said he is actually Bill Gates, he looks like him, for real (its crazy). People come over to him and he asks them how their system is operating.... He said he will answer as Bill Gates, the answer is, "we are going to do everything in our power to destroy Google. That means everything, consistent with DOJ, our relationship with the EU. Search will be embedded not only in the next version of what you see, but in everything you do. We are not giving away free dishes like banks do, but we are really out to destroy Google. Immediately after this session, we will destroy Matt Cutts after this session. Matt Cutts said that he noticed in IE7 and there was information on how to add most search engines outside of Google to the search bar. Jeremy said they are completely behind the Microsoft plan to destroy Google. Danny said search has been built into Microsoft for years and despite that Google and Yahoo still succeed.
Q: What are your future predictions of vertical search engines and its impact on major search engines. A: David Vise said think of the major search engines as the main TV networks and vertical engines as the cable stations. Because we are in such an early period, there will be tremendous growth in both. Jeremy said a vertical engine requires a special need, and I don't use it often. But if I am looking for a car or house, I will use a vertical search engine. I may you a search engine to locate a vertical search engine. He said he doesn't believe that the verticals will take from the major engines. Zia said she has seen the numbers increase for both well. Matt said he thinks it fantastic having these verticals. If you are a major search engine it is a lot easier to write a vertical search. For example, he wrote a porn filter and for fun he changed it to a "code search engine" because the filter applied right across. Scoble said that he points out Technorati and how that engine is a successful search test. It may be the best blog search engine out there, he said.
Q: How is Google making money on these print ads and pay per call and radio? A: Matt Cutts said AdSense rose out of a search quality thing they did. Once they have done algorithms and products, they are able to apply them to other areas. So from Web search, to content, to print, to pay per call to radio. They are looking for new ways to expand that. Scoble said there is a company that is experimenting with buying phone numbers to track these pay per calls and offline ads. David Vise, Google has Madison Ave very worried. Because they are serving up print ads as an experiment, they bought deMarc (radio), to make it easy for small companies to run print and radio ads, something they have never done before. People like to talk about old media and new media, and how the money is moving from old to new. Google is enabling the channeling of these funds to traditional media.
Q: Rand said he started using delicious as a search engine to figure out what is the hottest thing on the net. Do you guys do that? Will the engines use that? A: Jeremy said that search ranking is not a democracy, you need to have the skills to build a web page. Tagging services lowers that barrier. Jeremy looks at tags or digg to find hot topics. This is an other time of real time search. Q: Will it ever be a tab? A: Jeremy said he doesn't like tabs. He doesn't decide what becomes a tab at Yahoo. Is this ready for the mainstream? No, not yet. But it is incredibly useful. Matt agrees, how ready is tagging for mainstream? Google allows bookmarks with tags, but he isn't sure how it will play out. He is just considered about spam.
Q: Where is this whole industry going, where should marketers be focusing on? A: Scoble, local and mapping. Matt said "buzz", authentic blogs and that what attracts links. Zia said social search will come sooner then wireless search. David answered as bill gates, really Microsoft will dominate everything with search and destroy Google and if you want to know when search will go, "where do you want to go today?" He picked up a hat with the Google logo and it will be a nice antique. Jeremy said he doesn't know how he can follow that speech. Local search and maps, yes. He discusses GPS and how cool it is. He also brought up Yahoo! Answers. Every day people are becoming more involved in content. David Vise as David Vise said the Teoma search technology that underlines the Ask search engine is very good. Barry Diller said yesterday that they are doing away with the butler, and turning it into Ask.com because they didn't want to make a place where people just asked questions. Now do you want a name Ask.com for a place where you don't want people to ask questions? He said, you will see the butler come back (he is kidding I think). Forget everything you heard yesterday. They will spend a lot of money on Ask.com and it will be like the new coke advertising campaign. You will see jeeves come back, like the traditional coke. Matt said the butler is big brother and made a motion of taking pictures (See ask jeeves blog for matt spying on Ask). Danny said you will notice a entourage around Matt as he leaves the room because people are so into ranking well in Google. But there are other ways to get into Google (vertical search, local, maps, news, etc.)
Q: What percentage is spam and how bad is spam compared to email spam? A: Scoble said I get very little spam and my email is out there. He said he does not like getting email, he prefers RSS. There are approaches that are coming along to fight this. Matt's Google take on what to expect on spam. Google will be targeting lots of other countries and languages. The big watch word is international Web spam. They always come up with new ways. English is getting better and is pretty good now. Other languages will get better in next several months. Google is open to new ways to look into scalable ways to improve this with algorithms, but if there are other ways to fight spam, they are into that as well (such as personalized search remove result).
Q: Relevant links versus a non relevant link... A: Matt said scoring links is interesting, they have several ways to do interpret relevant links and non. Scoble said same with MSN and Yahoo. Jeremy said that everyone wants search to be relevant but the searchers are doing little to help make them relevant (just look at how people search, short words and there are lots of ways to interpret the answer). Jeremy added that MyWeb is a good step towards this. Danny shows off myweb and google remove result and then shows off Google Search History. He put how top sites and seroundtable.com is number 10 on his "top sites" list. Nice Danny.
Q: There was skepticism about Video Search... A: Matt is a skeptic about having Video search because any time I want to watch a video it didn't work and its only now when its really working now. And it feels like there is more there, then it used to be. Jeremy, video is interesting because there are technical issues in the background when trying to improve it. Consumption will be radically different with video then it is with normal Web search and he is not sure how, just yet. A site like Flickr couldn't of been predicted earlier. When is video search going to hit the living room? David said unlike Matt he has better things to do then watch four hours of personal video online. This whole conversation is in the wrong place. He feels video search will dominate in a totally different way. It will be people who want to download people who want to download and watch movies and Tv. There will be a pay per view model. Digital Right Management is being worked on now, to gain access to the video content they really want to see.
SES NYC Tag: sesny2006
