There is a shorter version on YouTube, but it is worth hearing all 54 minutes of this interview by Charlie Rose with Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Product and User Experience, Google.
[googlevideo]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docId=2130473232539454111[/googlevideo]
He next interviewed Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google:
[googlevideo]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docId=8240499345320964787[/googlevideo]
Laloo Yadav’s speech in Parliament is a fine example of an ailing Indian English. It kicks off this website’s first post. Enjoy!
Search Engine Roundtable has an interesting post by Barry Schwartz about how Google Maps makes it easy for anyone to edit a business listing to say that it has closed permanently. I knew that Circuit City will shut its doors forever tomorrow and I looked for one that had already been marked “Place Closed” in Google Maps. No, that wasn’t me, as it seems that someone at Google has to approve these submissions. Read Barry’s article for a full account of how this happens. The problem shouldn’t worry anyone who has claimed their entry, but unclaimed entries without a point of contact may make it impossible for Google to check with the business owner. As this news spreads, I expect the feature’s process to be tightened up.
This is not news in North America, where Google introduced last July an input field for your postcode or suburb presumably so that subsequent results would be localised for you. I just saw it for the first time in Australia.
This appears to be a test, as I could not reproduce it for other words I tried, e.g. pillows. It would seem that certain words have been identified as “local shopping” keywords, and Google would like to display results that it presumes come from local businesses.
For a normal search, the URL is:
http://www.google.com.au/search?num=100&hl=en&newwindow=1&q=mattresses&btnG=Search&meta=
When I add a postcode, the URL becomes:
http://www.google.com.au/search?oi=local&ct=location-input-top&q=mattresses&num=100&site=search&hl=en&newwindow=1&output=search&sa=G&near=3000
I didn’t notice any difference in the SERP other than the input box disappeared after I nominated my postcode, so this test might be limited to seeing how many people use it.
Nonetheless, this supports my previous post that SEO will get harder as more and more users begin to localise their results. They don’t need to log in but some people will not remember many months later that they had localised their Google experience.
WebProNews reports yet another Google experiment for selected users where they see a “My preferred site” link to the left of the URL in a search result. The idea is that users who are constantly choosing certain sites will prefer to see results from those sites over others that might rank above it. Users need to log into their Google accounts to make this possible. I cannot see this experiment from Australia so far.
Some weeks ago, Google allowed logged-in users to vote out certain sites so that they would not be shown in subsequent searches. That alone promped SEOs to speculate that Google may well take these votes into consideration at some point. Google is already showing localised results in some parts of the US and now here is the latest experiment where positive votes are being studied.
Who knows – perhaps Google could compare both negative and positive votes from a large sample to smooth out artificial voting schemes? At the moment, one does not have to log into Google, but it wouldn’t be too difficult to introduce inducements that will compel the majority to be logged in. No other search engine poses even a mild threat, so there won’t be any likelihood of users defecting to other search engines.
Such uncertainty for ranking-centric SEO was a common theme at the recent Webmasterworld conference last November. Many of my SEO peers are in agreement that it is a matter of time before two users will see different rankings owing to personalisation and localisation. Most reputable SEO companies are no longer offering a “Top 10” ranking, so what are their customers buying?
I feel strongly that there will always be a place for applying proven on-page and off-page SEO techniques to websites to give them a fighting chance to rank high for someone, somewhere. If these sites also do “the right thing” and offer excellent, sticky content for their audience, then high rankings will be enjoyed by most users. What do you think?
Danny Sullivan has made a thought-provoking post concerning possible changes to the Google Search engine. It is about some testing that has been seen by some users. Do visit his site to read the details and see the images, but here is why some of these changes could be relevant to SEO:
If you haven’t booked a room for your visit to CES 2009 in Las Vegas, you can’t go wrong at $139/night (plus taxes) at the Wynn. The discount coupon code is RHHED07. [No, I don’t get a commission from them] 
Here is a direct link to the Wynn Reservation form.
The rates are valid for the month of January but the cheapest rooms at $129 are gone for the CES period. Suites begin at $149.
CntrStg is a big improvement (at least in terms of location) over other blogger activities held in previous years. The venue during CES 2009 is the Wynn hotel, just a short walk from the LVCC. Check out the CntrStg site for details.
It’s a place where bloggers can blog (obviously) using a fast connection and meet others, including vendor reps. The companies presenting there have been requested by the attendees, so there will be a stong affiliation and a better outcome for both parties. Speaking of parties, there will be a few held at this location, but you must register in advance.
It’s the first CES I will miss, as I used to be sponsored by my user group or Microsoft over the years.
Check out Mauricio Freitas’ Geekzone.co.nz and look for the HP competition that he’s running along with a bunch of my other friends from the Windows Featured Communities gang.
The competition doesn’t require you to visit all “50 of the world’s top bloggers”, but you increase your chances of winning up to 50 prizes if you do.[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNijmnfgg60[/youtube]
In fact, this competition has been running for a while, but I just found out about it, so some of those 50 sites have ended their competitions. My former work colleague at RingCentral (to whom I consulted remotely), Gina Hughes owns Techie Diva, which has a handy list of the closing dates.
This has been a great marketing win-win for both HP and the 50 sites that will get additional sign-ups.
The major networking event of the conference was Pubcon, which was held in the Hofbrauhaus Las Vegas, at 4510 Paradise Rd, Las Vegas, NV 89169. It ran from 1:30 to 5:30 pm. Beer flowed freely in large, heavy steins and was tempered with snippets of sausages.
This was a great place to meet other attendees in the industry. Most of the corporate attendees had left, so that they could enjoy the whole weekend at home, leaving behind just the serious networkers. Almost everyone had time to chat and pose for photos with Matt Cutts.
The WebProNews Video crew was there and filmed some of my co-speakers – Bill Hunt and Bruce Clay. I took the opportunity to interview cameraman Roger Akers – a chat was more like it. He showed me the video camera he uses – it costs over $14,000. As you will see in his Matt Cutts video below, the directional microphone did a great job of cutting out the background roar.
Roger is also working on a feature film with another professional, but he could not reveal the plot. I wished him well on that venture. I mentioned that my son Keith is studying film-making at university, so I had more than a passing interest in his profession.
In the video interview, Matt Cutts repeated the points he made in the Search Engine Smackdown the previous day. Ranking isn’t “dead” per se, but it will be less important because of Universal Search and how using video, audio and other elements will help sites rank on the first page.
More WebProNews Videos
Matt showed an HTC G1 phone running Google Android. It looks good but it’s too early to say if it will do better than the iPhone.
Lots of people were lining up to be photographed with Matt, including myself. – Stephan Spencer from NetConcepts (left) was also there – not that he lined up for a photo but I asked Matt to pose with him. 
More Pubcon photos at Flickr.
The keynote address was delivered by Satya Nadella of Microsoft Live Search.
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Ben D’Angelo from Google cited how they handle duplicate issues. They have many systems for de-duping URLs at various stages in the crawl/index pipeline. They cluster pages, then choose the best representative cluster. There are different filters for different types of duplication. Your site is not “penalised” – simply, a duplicate page will not rank high.
How can you avoid dupes?
How can you avoid duplication by another site?
Best way to reach Google – Webmaster Discussion Group
Deborah Wilcox, from Baker and Hostetler, gave a sobering account of the “Million Dollar Domain Case”. In this incident, the plaintiff was punchclock.com. They made software to record worker hours and to calculate payroll deductions.
The defendant was punch-clock.com, a Canadian company that sold into the US and made a similar product. It ranked higher in a search and the company ignored a C&D in 2001.
There was a Florida lawsuit in 2007. The defendant defaulted, so the judge ruled in favour of the plaintiff. In brief, the defendant had to transfer the domain name and pay over $1,000,000 in damages and corrective AdWords advertising for seven years!
Bryan Gmyrek gave examples of how you can work with datafeeds with the help of PHP, Perl and databases.
Geoff Mack from Alexa Internet introduced Alexa Research, a new competitive analysis tool in beta release. It shows your web competitors, their success and where they get traffic. You can see their visitor demographics, the upstream and downstream sites, the shared audience, the top URLs, and so on.
You can drill down quite deep and get down to a specific category, whether the site accepts ads, where the company is based, and more. Want to find sites that target a certain demographic, such as a Midddle Eastern female aged 55-64 and living in a certain country, who went to graduate school, and browses from work! If you are fussy, you only want to find a site that has a certain minimum pageviews, minimum monthly growth, etc. Alexa Research can do it.
Sign up for the beta at http://cardea.alexa.com/
Ian Ring had an intriguing title for his presentation, “Optimising Conversion using Genetics”
Equally as challenging was his assertion that your stylesheet can affect optimal user behaviour. CSS can determine how you display links. Ian introduced “Genetic Algorithms” where user behaviour, namely, clicks could be used to weed out poor CSS values and strengthen favourable ones.
In this ecosystem, survival of the fittest requires a measurement of fitness. This can be any measurable action, such as a click, a transaction, subscriptions, and so on.
For more information, visit http://biostyle.ianring.com/
Day Two of the Webmasterworld was keynoted by George Wright of Blendtec, better known for the viral video series Will It Blend?. George gave an entertaining presentation about how BlendTec achieved millions of visits (therefore, brand awareness) with a budget of only $50.
When George was new at the company, he noticed piles of sawdust in their demo room and was told that the founder, Tom Dickson, liked to test new components by blending wood and that this was normal. George immediately saw the viral marketing potential and asked Tom for a marketing budget. Tom generously suggested $50, which turned out to be just right.
George bought a lab coat, some marbles, a McDonald’s Happy Meal, a rotisserie chicken, and so on. Each of them was blended by Tom and the video of each experiment was placed on YouTube with some Digg publicity. Some 75 such videos have been released, including some resulting from viewer suggestions.
This fantastic viral marketing campaign has resulted in:
BlendTec has no need to spend money on traditional advertising. In fact, a radio station in New Mexico pays them to make blend videos, then shows them on local TV as commercials for their blend of music – this must be the only marketing department that generates revenue!
Table of Contents
Brian Combs is an SVP and Chief Futurist at Apogee Search. His message was that reputation is best protected before a problem occurs. It gets harder once the mud starts flying. Precautions you can take include:
If the problem has arisen, then you should engage with the aggrieved person in a professional, non-defensive manner. Learn to recognise trolls and avoid them.
Set up multiple sites for products, perhaps a microsite for a problem that has gained widespread attention and encourage traffic to it (rather than your main site). Encourage positive articles on third-party sites. This does not mean pay-to-blog posts, editing Wikipedia, Googlebombing or other deceptive tactics!
Andy Beal described a lot of useful websites that you can leverage to spy on your competitors:
For more information, visit RadicallyTransparent and trackur.com
George Aspland talked about optimising PDFs to facilitate alternative discovery. For example, some PDFs consist of scanned documents and we know that search engines can’t read images. Their representation in a SERP can also get screwy. In the US government site shown, each page in the document showed up in the snippet as Page 1, Page 2, etc.
The first heading in the document may get picked up as the “title tag” of the search result, so pay attention to it. Better still, use the Document Title of the PDF to advantage. If you use Microsoft Word to create the PDF, you need to select File/Properties to find the dialog box. If you left it blank, the document title might read “Microsoft Word”, which isn’t very click-worthy.
Hyperlinks in the PDF should be enabled and have good anchor text. The PDF itself should be linked from an already indexed page.
You should invest in a copy of the full Adobe Acrobat so that you can edit the PDF that was created by some simple program or Office 2007.
George has a great PDF about PDFs at his blog: http://www.evisionsem.com/blog
Scott Hendison from SearchCommander gave some practical checklists to use before buying hosting. By asking such questions, you can save yourself a lot of bother later on.