I am sitting at Arlanda Airport, Stockholm. It’s very quiet, I’ve just eaten smoked reindeer and the bar is closed….
The last 48 hours that was SMX Stockholm has gone in a flash of furious learning, rabid talking and the much needed drink or three.
My session on what’s new with the search engines went off without a hitch. A 9am slot is actually pretty nice as everyone’s keen, attentive and of course, awake! It also meant I had the next couple of days to relax and listen to all the goings on which was nice for a change.
Singling out the Universal Search session, Andy Atikins-Kruger and Dixon Jones both spelled out the advantages and disadvantages of a shift by Google and others to a more blended set of search results, including not just regular links but also pictures and video.
Adam Lasnik, who I’d never met until last night, then gave us the inside scoop into why Google went down this route.
Adam, who is a lovely bloke, obviously very clever, and an engaging, extremely polite speaker, said that as Google want to organise the worlds information, the natural course of action would be to try and include all forms of media in whatever format.
It’s just taken so long to come up with the 1-stop-shop because they had to figure out ways to scale it.
The mantra seemed to be – Keep it fast, keep it simple and keep it relevant – which is kinda what you’d expect?
He hinted that partnerships were in the offing too, so not just GoogleBot sniffing around for content, but going deals with third parties.
Keen to put agencies who specialise in search engine optimization mind’s at ease, he encouragingly said “it’s still about the web, keep the usual strategies, create quality content in other forms and expect similar SEO guidelines to apply.”
So how has it been received by users? Well according to Adam users are finding what they need a lot more quickly, resulting in them doing more searches for other stuff, and far fewer users clicking on the second page of results.
I asked him if it had had an effect on the paid ads (AdWords) but he said he didn’t know because he’s not on the advertiser side of Google, but judging by the recent revenue figures and the share price crashing through the $700 barrier, it can’t have had that much of an adverse effect!!
Other than the usual suspects that attended as speakers, there was a new kid on the block (the speaking one anyway) – Joost De Valk – a Dutch 25 year old SEO consultant and web developer, who impressed me with his knowledge and, more importantly, his delivery of it.
One to watch….
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Hey Mel,
Definitely a pleasure meeting you, and thank you very much for the kind words!
Sadly, I’ll not have a chance to be at SMX London this year, but I’ll look forward to catching you again at perhaps SES London or another event.
Hi Mel,
It was a great pleasure to meet you, we’ll meet again soon I hope 🙂 Like Adam, I won’t be making it to SMX London, but we’ll find time to meet again soon enough!
Well I’LL be at SMX London. Also now going to go to the ritz as well 🙂
Mel, dude! Nice seeing you here 🙂
I am producing SMX Madrid on 20-21th May 2008, so hope to see you there.
Right now I am in South America, enjoying family and friends after organizing SMX Argentina and Chile. We’ll talk ya as soon as i am back in Europe!.
Cheers
Tomy
Mel, great post! I had a great time in Sweden and I agree Joost de Valk did a great job and impressed me also. Kudos to Chris and and the SMX people Fanny and Matt.
Hey Mel, what analytics are you using on you site? Can’t find any tags.
Look in the footer 🙂
Great post Mate
Sounded like it was a good event. Shame I could not be there but look forward to catching up at SMX London
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