Below is live coverage of the The State Of Search Marketing panel from the SMX West 2011 conference. This coverage is provided by Barry Schwartz of RustyBrick.
Disclaimer: The coverage is brought to you in real time, using a custom live blogging tool. Feel free to ask questions or leave comments for inclusion into the live coverage. During the live event, live notes will auto-scroll with newest entries at top. After the session is complete the archive version will have the oldest entries at the top. We ask you to please excuse any typos, as these are live notes.
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Barry Schwartz:
9:03:00 am
We start soon...
Barry Schwartz:
9:10:56 am
5 minutes...
Barry Schwartz:
9:11:16 am
The winner of the Search Geek award...
Barry Schwartz:
9:11:29 am
Barry Schwartz:
9:11:55 am
Barry Schwartz:
9:11:55 am
Okay, now Danny keynote time...
Barry Schwartz:
9:12:44 am
Title of his preso is Searchquake
Barry Schwartz:
9:12:55 am
It is focused on organic not paid search
Barry Schwartz:
9:13:00 am
The old cool is
Barry Schwartz:
9:13:01 am
Barry Schwartz:
9:13:16 am
New cool
Barry Schwartz:
9:13:34 am
Barry Schwartz:
9:13:39 am
Even cooler
Barry Schwartz:
9:14:01 am
Barry Schwartz:
9:14:32 am
So now Google vs Bing on Colbar
Barry Schwartz:
9:14:34 am
Barry Schwartz:
9:14:45 am
Barry Schwartz:
9:14:54 am
The point is, SEARCH IS BACK
Barry Schwartz:
9:15:18 am
People are now talking about search and it has been going on for two months now...
Barry Schwartz:
9:15:33 am
Search is getting tons of headlines, compared to Apple and Facebook
@honestnotes:
9:15:55 am
Thanks so much for the wonderful live blogging
Barry Schwartz:
9:16:14 am
Here are some of the headlines and Danny is explaining them... Bottom line, they are talking about search...
Barry Schwartz:
9:16:16 am
Barry Schwartz:
9:16:38 am
Google said, we are working on our issues
Barry Schwartz:
9:16:40 am
Barry Schwartz:
9:17:07 am
Google releases chrome extension and blekko is mocking google
Barry Schwartz:
9:17:08 am
Barry Schwartz:
9:17:29 am
Then the content farmer update is released...
Barry Schwartz:
9:17:31 am
Barry Schwartz:
9:18:02 am
He gets tons of calls from reporters and Danny said, hey - Search Was NEVER Gone it was just taken for granted
Barry Schwartz:
9:18:18 am
Proof?
Barry Schwartz:
9:18:22 am
Barry Schwartz:
9:18:36 am
Thing is, this is all going on during crazy changes at Google...
Barry Schwartz:
9:18:51 am
Google Places gets integrated in Google Web Search
Barry Schwartz:
9:19:09 am
Barry Schwartz:
9:19:33 am
NY Times talks about a technique
Barry Schwartz:
9:19:54 am
Barry Schwartz:
9:20:05 am
5 days later!!! Google makes a huge algo change!
Barry Schwartz:
9:20:07 am
Barry Schwartz:
9:20:39 am
People then complain about scrapers and 25 day later, Google releases the Scraper Algo update...
Barry Schwartz:
9:20:52 am
2% of queries with this were changed...
Barry Schwartz:
9:20:54 am
Barry Schwartz:
9:21:15 am
Then 3 weeks later they come out with the Farmer/Panda update
Barry Schwartz:
9:21:45 am
The update is awesome... people love it but ...
Barry Schwartz:
9:22:19 am
people were saying it was awesome without really testing...
Barry Schwartz:
9:22:22 am
Barry Schwartz:
9:22:50 am
He shows how ehow made it through this update
Barry Schwartz:
9:22:55 am
ehow does not suck
Barry Schwartz:
9:23:15 am
But there were other results were bad and irrelevant
Barry Schwartz:
9:23:29 am
The slide below shows how bad Gogole's results are after this update...
Barry Schwartz:
9:24:00 am
In short, he is not happy with the search results for his query...
Barry Schwartz:
9:24:51 am
He keeps ranting about the poor results for his "how to" query in Google
Barry Schwartz:
9:25:27 am
Other queries may be improved, but there are still plenty of bad queries for questions.
Barry Schwartz:
9:25:35 am
That stuff was not spam results...
Barry Schwartz:
9:26:33 am
Google knows how to get rid of spam, but how do they get rid of results that do not satisfy
Barry Schwartz:
9:26:54 am
Bing and Blekko are just as bad
Barry Schwartz:
9:27:12 am
Barry Schwartz:
9:27:37 am
Perception can beat reality, Danny said.... So this announcement by Google may have helped perception...
Barry Schwartz:
9:27:56 am
So Danny brings up nofollow solved the comment spam, because the comment spam was Google's fault... :)
Barry Schwartz:
9:28:36 am
But it didn't fix comment spam...
Barry Schwartz:
9:28:54 am
The Farmer/Panda update may have confused the perception of the problem that was likely not that bad anyway...
Barry Schwartz:
9:29:05 am
Next story, JC Penney was buying links...
Barry Schwartz:
9:29:08 am
Barry Schwartz:
9:30:02 am
So now, no one buys links. :) Look Overstock also...
Barry Schwartz:
9:30:15 am
The problem is still there but Google looks good....
Barry Schwartz:
9:30:55 am
So you have paid links still and site owners will blame the SEO, like JC Penney did.
Barry Schwartz:
9:31:03 am
Pesuedo-paid links we have...
Barry Schwartz:
9:31:18 am
There are spam links...
Barry Schwartz:
9:31:51 am
We also have "pension links", old links that are really powerful and they retired, they can write anything and rank for anything. Where is the fairness with that...
Barry Schwartz:
9:32:08 am
We also have nofollow madness, where sites nofollow all external links - such as wikipedia
Barry Schwartz:
9:32:34 am
We "oughttofollow" links to reward sites that really deserve links...
Barry Schwartz:
9:32:48 am
So now that is gone and the system is broken.
Barry Schwartz:
9:32:57 am
So google is fixing this issue with lots of duct tape...
Barry Schwartz:
9:32:58 am
Barry Schwartz:
9:33:14 am
These are not permanent solutions, we need new signals....
Barry Schwartz:
9:33:35 am
Signals include: words in title tage, words on page, anchor text, quality of links, etc. So what is next?
Barry Schwartz:
9:34:24 am
Google continues to bring in vertical results in the web search results. It will continue to happen more...
Barry Schwartz:
9:34:42 am
Now there is search 4.0... Humans Via Socialization and Personalization
Barry Schwartz:
9:35:01 am
So in October 2010...
Barry Schwartz:
9:35:41 am
Bing had a deal with Facebook and Bing was including your friends likes on the Bing search results...
Barry Schwartz:
9:35:46 am
This is big...
Barry Schwartz:
9:36:01 am
December 2010 Danny wrote...
Barry Schwartz:
9:36:03 am
Barry Schwartz:
9:36:26 am
How are you using social signals to rank your search results (good article)
Barry Schwartz:
9:36:39 am
It is impacting our search results
Barry Schwartz:
9:36:56 am
in February 2011 Google integrated the social search results directly in the SERPs
Barry Schwartz:
9:36:58 am
Barry Schwartz:
9:37:11 am
Then Bing did the same thing a week later...
Barry Schwartz:
9:37:25 am
Social arrived and they are in the search results...
Barry Schwartz:
9:37:50 am
But they still do not know exactly how to use it b/c at the same time Facebook and Twitter are constantly changing things....
Barry Schwartz:
9:38:22 am
The real challenge in social is how people search already within those networks...
Barry Schwartz:
9:38:28 am
The search for "anyone know..."
Barry Schwartz:
9:39:12 am
Barry Schwartz:
9:39:30 am
See the tweets below...
Barry Schwartz:
9:39:54 am
He ran this experiment and answered how do you know search stuff and people liked it...
Barry Schwartz:
9:41:21 am
So now people are doing these searches on social networks like facebook
Barry Schwartz:
9:42:25 am
Before search engines we asked family, friends, experts, researchers to get our answers...
Barry Schwartz:
9:42:43 am
It wwas helpful but time consuming
Barry Schwartz:
9:42:59 am
Then we got the search box and it threw aside how we ask questions.
Barry Schwartz:
9:43:22 am
It is fast, consensus-like, trustworthy and confidential - it is revolutionary
Barry Schwartz:
9:43:40 am
But it is not always good, especially with subjective topics
Barry Schwartz:
9:44:30 am
Humanity has caught of with search
Barry Schwartz:
9:45:00 am
Social networks have digitized people, making people searchable... You can get answers really fast from friends and family and experts...
Barry Schwartz:
9:45:24 am
That is the challenge for search engines, how do they integrate that...
Barry Schwartz:
9:45:38 am
You have companies like Repliz and such trying to do this...
Barry Schwartz:
9:45:44 am
Also Quora
Barry Schwartz:
9:46:23 am
Danny doesnt know if people will search to these places
Barry Schwartz:
9:46:43 am
December 2009 and February 2011 were huge in search
Barry Schwartz:
9:46:45 am
Barry Schwartz:
9:47:05 am
December 2009, Personalized search for everyone was announced by Google....
Barry Schwartz:
9:47:14 am
Even if you are signed out....
Barry Schwartz:
9:47:50 am
The article there was a small headline in techmeme, so it wasn't a big deal to people, but it was...
Barry Schwartz:
9:48:09 am
Then last month Bing announced they are personalizing all search results...
Barry Schwartz:
9:48:39 am
Seriously, people lose their minds over a one time Google search update but not when Google and Bing personalize EVERYONE's search results!!! Are people nuts!?
Barry Schwartz:
9:48:50 am
There are "no normal results."
Barry Schwartz:
9:48:57 am
So SEO IS DEAD.... again....
Barry Schwartz:
9:49:08 am
Because of personalized results. :)
Barry Schwartz:
9:49:22 am
But it is not dead...
Barry Schwartz:
9:49:41 am
Some core results are always the same.... Much of it is not personalized, there is commonality.
Barry Schwartz:
9:49:53 am
There are vertical opportunities
Barry Schwartz:
9:50:01 am
Social is both personal and general
Barry Schwartz:
9:50:23 am
SEO IS ALIVE!!!
Barry Schwartz:
9:50:29 am
People still simply HATE SEOs....
Barry Schwartz:
9:50:36 am
Barry Schwartz:
9:51:12 am
On CBS, The Good Wife, there was an SEO on trial and he couldn't tell the jury he did SEO because it would look bad to the jury and get him in jail. :)
Barry Schwartz:
9:51:29 am
Check out these quotes....
Barry Schwartz:
9:51:35 am
"Shady SEO Blogs"...
Barry Schwartz:
9:51:37 am
Barry Schwartz:
9:52:17 am
This is from the Cult of Mac blog and he is clueless because the people helping in the forums are SEOs and Google is helping webmasters because of SEOs.
Barry Schwartz:
9:52:59 am
You can understand why people hate SEOs because this is what they see from SEOs...
Barry Schwartz:
9:53:01 am
Barry Schwartz:
9:53:18 am
Yea, people encounter SEOs with spam in their comment blogs.
Barry Schwartz:
9:53:52 am
So... nothing is going to Kill SEO...
Barry Schwartz:
9:54:13 am
Barry Schwartz:
9:55:00 am
7 minutes into the Google Instant announcement, Steve Rubel calls SEO is Dead again, and Google didn't even tell us what they were saying...
Barry Schwartz:
9:55:22 am
So Danny had a policy to ignore SEO is Dead posts and he encourages others to ignore it also...
Barry Schwartz:
9:55:30 am
Why give idiots time, he said...
Barry Schwartz:
9:56:10 am
If you must say SEO is scam, I won't talk to you because you don't understand it.
Barry Schwartz:
9:56:23 am
SEO is not about spam, it is about good content and good web development.
Barry Schwartz:
9:56:37 am
Jeopardy with Watson
Barry Schwartz:
9:56:38 am
Barry Schwartz:
9:56:55 am
Computer played a human in Jeopardy
Barry Schwartz:
9:57:21 am
He couldn't fully enjoy it, because he knew Watson vs Google, Google would have been way better...
Barry Schwartz:
9:57:39 am
He would like to see a Watson vs Google.
Barry Schwartz:
9:57:48 am
We take search engines for granted...
Barry Schwartz:
9:58:01 am
You are part of the continuing search revolution...
Barry Schwartz:
9:59:13 am
That is all...
