Jamesq

Just saw a post on the marketing Pilgrim for Google’s Magazine search facility where they aim to provide search results from magazine archives. This got me thinking of a couple of questions which I’ll list just in case Matt Cutts is stuck for something to do with 20% free time at Google!

How long before this covers current magazines and newspapers? Each scanned and tagged by article and image. It would certainly make searching for editorial, brand mentions and column inches a fair bit easier. You could create custom publications with articles only relevant to the sections you choose to read. Perhaps even an opportunity for additional ad revenue through making adverts interactive! I say get scanning Google!

The other question is when do they plan to scan the back catalogue of Isle of Man Portfolio and Manx Tails?

Whilst looking up the new owner of Man City Football Club in Google Images I found this picture of the Sheikh’s Wife. I’m assuming this isn’t his wife (If anybody has met his wife and can confirm this isn’t her let me know) and can only take from this a lesson not to rely on Google Images too heavily when compiling guess the famous person quizes.

Search Engine Land recently reported that Google has added a page load time score to its quality score algorithm. Adds another dimension when optimising landing pages for Google Adwords campaigns!

From a marketing aspect, and depending on the importance placed on this metric by Google, it is another important stat to be aware of in relation to other websites in your industry, particularly key competitors. After all, what’s considered fast and what’s considered slow? My take would be fast is quicker page load times compared to competitors and slow is a longer page load time than competitor websites.

I’m sure there’ll be plenty of speculation over it’s importance and method of calculation within the Google algorithm but if you identify websites appearing for your selected keywords and identify landing page load times compared to yours that can’t be a bad starting place to benchmark performance.

Met up with Kristjan from Nordic eMarketing and Charlie from Indextools on Tuesday night and headed out to a Thai restaurant nearby. Food was great, beer flowed and it continued back at the hotel were many of the guys from the conference were staying. Met up with Steve Jackson who’d spoken on the all star analytics panel that day. Probably some of these meetings with people as are more useful than even the great content at the conference.

Morning was a little hazy to start with but kicked off with Blog and Feed SEO. This was a really good session and got a lot out of this. Speakers here were Amanda Watlington who I’d seen at last year’s conference and was perhaps the reason I got in to blogging, Massimo Burgio and Lee Odden whom I’d not seen before but really added great content and fresh perspectives to ensure very little duplication across presentation.

Followed this up with a Google University session. Another sell out and it appeared to me one of the few times I’ve seen people volunteer to be sold to. Such is the power and influence of Google I guess.

After this European Search Marketing wasn’t as relevant to what we’re currently doing as one of the major focusses here was language. Searcher Behaviour and Linking Strategies were much more valuable though got a fgood deal of notes from these.

Had a quieter evening out with Don’s sisters around Islington which was really cool. A few OJ’s  to replace missing vitamins and a bite to eat. Islington was pretty packed with the Arsenal game on but found a really nice little restaurant called Todd’s Grill. Ok not the most inspired name but actually a Mediterranean restaurant. Baby Squid for starter  followed by Duck. Good service, good food and a good atmosphere.

Just got a 45 minute break before an all star panel session on universal, blended and vertical Search. This mornings sessions have been great. Spoken to a few people at the expo with interesting products, resolved an issue I was having with one of our web analytics packages. Head’s already spinning with thoughts, ideas and a list of things I want to try. Speaking to Google about adwords campaign and also video and banner ads through their network which sounds like it’s worth trying.

On a personal front spoke to Izea about  Pay Per Post, an advertising platform for advertisers to approach bloggers in their network to write about their product, website or service. Thought this would be interesting to try from a blogging perspective to see how this works and consider it from a company perspective also.

QR Codes came up a couple of times again today. I looked at these a year ago and thought these were really exciting but not heard of much development, certainly in the Isle of Man, since then. I think a great opportunity to enhance user experience and perhaps help drive the mobile search/web adoption. It was mentioned in the context of Japanese Mobile Internet use. Interestingly which now exceeds internet use on PCs! Still a way to go over here before we get to that. I think it had a fair bit to do with low PC penetration.

But all great stuff and plenty more scribbled down in notes. Always a fun time deciphering these afterwards!

I’m heading next door to the Business Design Centre for the Search Engine Strategies London Conference today. Well day 1 anyway. The Business Design Centre looks like a garden centre so I expect we’ll all be sitting in nice swinging chairs made from cheap stained wood. Yeah whatever….

I’ve picked out a few sessions from today’s conference that I’m aiming to get to.

Search Around the World: Asia/Pacific & Australia. This should be a really good session especially since we do a lot of international marketing with Australia a major centre for British Expats.

Mobile Local Search: A Moving target Mobile keeps getting hyped as this seasons thing and hasn’t yet been mainstreamed in the UK. But with more and more sites integrating mobile into their services the experience is getting to the stage that is worth people taking part. From a business perspective I think it is really important to be aware of what is possible and available to provide the opportunity for providing our customers with the added convenience provided.

The afternoon is made up of panels and keynotes, particularly looking forward to the Orion Panel: All Star Analytics Team. Brian Clifton, Head of Google Analytics is on the Panel with a number of guys who I’ve not heard of before so really looking forward to this. There is then a later session on Universal, Blended and Vertical Search which might give some interesting insights.

Looking forward to the Search Engine Strategies Conference next week in London. I got down to this last year and got loads out of it. Had some really great speakers over the three days covering everything from linkbaiting, SEO and Site Design to podcasting and Blogging. Also had some really interesting keynote sessions with the likes of Matt Cutts from Google. It was a really inspirational conference to go on. I went to a number of other conferences throughout the year but this one certainly was streets ahead in terms of content and networking.

Quite a few new names on this years list but looking forward to seeing a couple of the guys that were at last years too. Dave Naylor was quite a card and had some really interesting stuff to say in between taking the piss out people, Kristjan Mar Hauksson from Nordic eMarketing who we work with on our ePR and online competitor strategies, Mikkel deMib Svendsen of deMib.com (In Danish so only worth visiting this link if you’ve been to legoland.) and also Bruce Clay who I didn’t see there last year but follow his blog and newsletter so will be interesting to hear him.