A Guide To SXSW For Those Interested In Search Engines & Search Marketing

I’m attending South By Southwest for the first time, later this week. I have to say, already I find SXSW to be overwhelming — and I’m not even there yet! To get myself organized as to how to attack this monster, I starting making a list of search-related sessions. I thought it would be useful to share those publicly with others, including one I’m leading for gamers. Yep, gamers and search marketing!

Below are the sessions. Occasionally there is more than one session happening in a particular time slot. In those cases, I’ve prioritized the sessions I think are most appealing from top to bottom. But that’s my personal opinion. Those “lower down” still might be great for others. It’s sad you have to pick at all!

Friday, March 12

2:00 PM

Social Media Marketing for Your Business: Social media marketing is separate from search marketing but is still extremely useful for search marketers to know about. And this session is led by two long-time search marketers, Tony Adam and Chris Winfield.

Smackdown: Consumers Privacy vs. Advertiser Revenue: Possibly some focus on search ads in this.

3:30 PM

Google in China: Context and Consequences: No, no one from Google speaking here. But it’s led by Beijing-based writer and tech commentator, so there might be some good insights.

5:00 PM

Time + Social + Location. What’s Next In Mobile Experiences? Just seeing Foursquare and MapQuest listed among the presenters caught my attention. Maps, location checkins — they may not seem like search, but they are.

ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income: Darren Rowse has been making a living from good content for ages. And good content is one of the key ways to be successful in search marketing, so this session makes the list.

Saturday, March 13

11:00 AM

Can the Real-Time Web Be Realized? Search engines have certainly jumped to add in ways to find real-time content. This panel features reps from three of them talking: Google, Microsoft and Collecta. Plus, you’ve got real-time guru Marshall Kirkpatrick in the mix. It won’t all be search, I’m sure, but it’s going to come up.

How to Create a Viral Video: Video content is integrated into Google’s Universal Search results and often overlooked as a way to make it into the top results. So why not learn how to make a hot video? I saw Margaret Gould Stewart from YouTube speak at TED recently — she was awesome and is on the panel. Lots to learn here.

Are Content Farms Good or Evil? Yes. Personally, I think there’s far more concern that content farms are somehow overrunning Google than is actually happening. But still, there are worries. Session is led by journalist Dan Gillmor, so should be fun.

12:30 PM

Getting Your Game Found In Search Engines: This is the session I’m leading. It’s meant for those involved with games, who are trying to bring more traffic to search. Tony Adam, who I mentioned above, will be taking part in the discussion. It’s not a traditional panel. No presentations. Instead, I’ll be leading the group there to help each other share tips and experiences.

Maps 2010: How iPad Impacts the LBS Market: LBS means location-based services, and that has a tie into search. In this, Mok Oh of EveryScape looks at how street-level and in-store photography.

5:20 PM

RIP Jeff Goldblum: Truth vs. Web BS: I know first hand how search helped spread the rumor that Jeff Goldblum was dead, so there’s an aspect of search that should show up here. The session is led by Techmeme’s — er Mediagazer’s — Megan McCarthy.

Sunday, March 14

9:30 AM

Augmenting Maps with Reality: Bing, Twitter, Foursquare, Navteq and Yahoo all take part in this panel. Google? Google? No.

Google Hackathon: Android TTS/Accessibility, Geo APIs, Chrome Accessibility Extensions: TTS, that’s text-to-speech. And there’s geospatial APIs being covered.

11:00 AM

What If Your Phone Had Five Senses? Google’s been talking a lot about how your phone is like an extension of your senses, especially in terms of the Nexus One. So expect more of this here, given the panel features two Googlers along with others.

12:30 PM

Writing Web Content For A Living: Did I mention the importance of web content in terms of search rankings above? Yes, I did. Here’s another session that might help you sharpen some skills.

3:30 PM

Beyond Algorithms: Search and the Semantic Web: Put “semantic” or the “semantic web” in a press release, and you pretty much make me zone out. So much hype. So little definition over what that means. Still, speakers from both Factual and Wolfram Alpha are part of this panel. Should have some interesting discussion.

5:00 PM

Search Patterns: Tangible Futures for Discovery: Long-time user behavior expert Peter Morville looks at search from a design perspective.

Monday, March15

11:00 AM

Social Search: A Little Help From My Friends: Google recently bought Aardvark, one of the panelists on this session. Should be some interesting discussion. Also see our The Rise Of Help Engines: Twitter & Aardvark article for more background on getting search help from friends.

11:20 AM

Video Search Optimization Strategies To Grow Your Business: I said video was a great way into the top results above, right? Right.

2:00 PM

Evan Williams Keynote Interview: Twitter’s had a huge impact on search, so tune-in to this interview with one of its cofounders.

Did I Miss Something?

I probably have missed some search-related sessions. Well, here are some additional resources:

• All sessions that mention search
• All sessions that mention Google (and some speakers from Google)
• All sessions that mention Bing
• All sessions that mention Yahoo

Enjoy SXSW, those heading out!