Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
- You&A With Matt Cutts
Session Intro: What's a You&A? That's where you, the audience, put your questions directly to the head of Google's web spam team, Matt Cutts. As an engineer in search quality, Matt's been dealing with webmaster issues for Google since 2000 and is well known to many advanced search marketers from his blog and public speaking. Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief at Search Engine Land is moderating this session along with Alex Bennert, Director of Client Services at - Google Ignites Cloaking & IP Delivery Debate
The Google Webmaster Central Blog posted a blog post named How Google defines IP delivery, geolocation, and cloaking. They cover topics such as making sure to treat Googlebot as a California resident with the Geolocation section, they go over IP delivery, cloaking content and and Google News First click free program. I won't go through the blog post, you can read it at Google, I will however link to the related Google Groups thread and - Yahoo Still Trimming Off Trailing Slash, Causing Webmaster Headaches
A new WebmasterWorld thread has complaints that Yahoo removes the trailing slash from the URLs, possibly causing 404 errors on the receiving site. This is not new, I complained about this issue back in 2004 and it is still an issue for webmasters today. For example, let's say you have a URL that is www.domain.com/category/. Now, Yahoo will list the URL as www.domain.com/category and strip off the ending trailing slash. On some servers, if a - WebmasterWorld Compromised - Security Issue Reveals Some Passwords
Hasn't been a good weekend for forums. First we learn that DigitalPoint Forums had database issues and now I learn that the software used at WebmasterWorld was "compromised last week." Brett Tabke posted the details of the issue. He said, there was a "security fault in the lostpassword utility was used to access admin passwords." Although this may sound serious, Brett said "the perpetrator did not actually do any harm that we can see." How
SMX Advanced Conference Coverage:
- Closing The Loop: Are You Tracking Every Lead?
Session Intro: When paid search results in leads, are you keeping track of them in an organized, efficient manner? This session looks at integrating leads with Salesforce, ensuring that leads related to search but happening offline get properly tracked and other issues related to lead management. Chris Sherman, Executive Editor of Search Engine Land is moderating this session along with Chris Winfield, President & Co-Founder of 10e20 doing the Q&A moderating. Speakers include Adam Goldberg, - Buying Sites for SEO
Buying Sites For SEO - Forget the debate over buying links. How about buying entire web sites to gain success in search. This session looks at how to find the gems out there, criteria to consider, ways to negotiate and how to best leverage your new purchase. Tips, tricks, success stories, and painful lessons learned will be shared. Moderator: Stephan Spencer, President, Netconcepts Q&A Moderator: Eric Enge, President, Stone Temple Speakers: Gab Goldenberg, Owner, SEO - Creating Value In Your SEM Businesses
Session Intro: Hanging out your shingle is not building a business. Creating value that others will recognize and ultimately pay to own (read "buy") takes vision, planning and execution. In this session, you'll hear case studies from SEM business executives who have conceptualized and implemented strategies and tactics that make their companies intrinsically valuable. Chris Elwell, President of Third Door Media is moderating this session and speakers include Bruce Clay, President of Bruce Clay, Sean - Conversion Optimization: Winning After They Arrive
Moderator: Jeffrey K. Rohrs, Vice President, Marketing ExactTargert Speakers: Scott Brinker, President and CTO, ion interactive Rob Bergquist, Widemile Tom Leung, Business Product Manager, Google Jonathan Mendez, Founder and CEO, RAMP Digital Tom: Website Optimizer is designed to convert traffic. You can learn more about it at www.google.com/websiteoptimizer You can test simple things like location of buttons, color, copy, layout. Testing isn't just to improve your conversion rate but it helps you to keep from - Bot Herding
Bot Herding - Search spiders and bots are pretty stupid when the come to your web site. If you don't guide them, they'll generate duplicate content issues, miss important pages in favor of junk, not realize where existing content has moved to and have other problems. This session looks at some advanced techniques in herding bots, when IP delivery can be what hat and how search engines view cloaking issues today. Moderator: Rand Fishkin, Co-Founder - Money For What? Search Marketing Payment Models
Session Intro: At one time the model was simple -- agencies got 15%. That's not the case with search engine optimization or paid search advertising. Digital media and measurable ROI spawned a school of new services and nearly as many pricing models, such as retainers, billable hours, pay-for-performance, keyword management fees, percentage of media spend. But with so many options on the table, which pricing model works best? Comprised of a panel of SEM firm - Winning From The Start: Getting Ad Copy Right
Moderator: Jeffrey K. Rohrs, Vice President, Marketing, ExactTarger Speakers: Jason Doran, Yahoo! Benu Aggarwal, CEO, Milestone Internet Marketing Mona Elesseily, Director of Marketing Strategy, Page Zero Media Brian Kaminski, Managing Director, iProspect San Francisco, iProspect David Szetela, Owner and CEO, Clix Marketing Jason: Ad Group structure is foundation of success Poor Ad Group structure and keyword selection make up about 90% of failing ads we see. You're in a dialogue with potential customer how will - Blow Your Mind Link Building Techniques
Moderator: Greg Boser, President/CEO, 3 Dog Media Q&A Moderator: Matt McGee, SEO For Hire Greg welcomes the familiar spammers... Rae wont be able to make it last minute, so Todd is sitting in for the Q&A. The panelist introduce themselves. Roger Montti, Founder & Owner, MartiniBuster.com, is up first. Such a tease, they pause due to technical issues, its been at least four minutes now. 7 minutes later, Danny comes up to the podium to - Keynote with Kevin Johnson at Microsoft
Keynote - Kevin Johnson, President, Platform & Services Division, Microsoft - Kevin Johnson oversees Microsoft's Windows and Online Services businesses, as well as sits on Microsoft's Senior Leadership Team, setting overall strategy and direction for the company. In this keynote, Kevin will cover Microsoft's aspirations in the search and online advertising space, including the roles of Live Search and MSN. Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land Q&A Moderator: Barry Smyth, Director, Search Strategies We're
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- AdWords Downtime: June 7, 10am-2pm PST, Google Groups
- Feedburner AdSense for Feeds, WebmasterWorld
- Getting Spiders Past Disclaimer Page, HighRankings Forums
- Google Street View Not Welcome in North Oaks, Minnesota, WebmasterWorld
- Latest news: RSS for Adsense in beta!!, DigitalPoint Forums
- Microsoft deal with HP: pre install LIVE search on all PCs, WebmasterWorld
- Someone Has to Watch The Numbers at Google, WebmasterWorld
