As you might guess, interest is high in speaking at SMX conferences. Here are some tips that will increase your chances of being selected.

Pitch early: Submitting your pitch early gives you a better chance of being selected. Coordinators accept speakers as soon as they identify a pitch that they think best fits the session, just like colleges that use a rolling admissions policy. So pitching early increases the likelihood you’ll be chosen.

Use the form: The speaker pitch form (http://searchmarketingexpo.com/speaker-form) is the way to ask to speak. There’s helpful information there about how your pitch should be written and what it should contain.

Write it yourself and be specific: Lots of pitches come in that are obviously written by staff or not specific to the session. These are two of the most effective ways to ensure that your pitch is ignored. If you’re a thought leader, write the pitch yourself… and make certain that it is 100% focused on the session topic.

“Throw your best pitch:” We’re limiting the number of pitches to three per person, so please pitch for the session(s) where you really feel you’ll offer SMX attendees your best.

If you want to know what we aren’t looking for, see our The Best (Worst) Practices For NOT Being Invited To Speak At SMX.

The speaking pitch form will close on February 20, and we’ll notify everyone whether you’ve been selected or not by the end of February.

• Best Practices With adCenter For Bing & Yahoo
• Beyond The Google AdWords Tool
• Duplication, Aggregation, Syndication, Affiliates, Scraping And Information Architecture
• Enterprise PPC
• Siri: Has The App Revolution Finally Arrived?

If you’re accepted to speak, you’ll receive a pass to the entire SMX event. Ready to pitch? Head over to our SMX speaker pitch form and submit your proposal. We’re closing the pitch form Monday, so don’t delay!

Acquisio’s existing clients will gain access to the Channel Intelligence Shopping Engines and Channel Intelligence Product Search solutions. ClickEquations clients will now be managed and supported by Acquisio and will have access to all Acquisio services.

More information about the acquisition and partnership is available in this press release.

As you might guess, interest is high in speaking at SMX conferences. Danny, Chris and the session coordinators sift through thousands of speaker submissions to make their selections. Here are some tips that will increase your chances of being selected.

Pitch early: Submitting your pitch early gives you a better chance of being selected. Coordinators accept speakers as soon as they identify a pitch that they think best fits the session, just like colleges that use a rolling admissions policy. So pitching early increases the likelihood you’ll be chosen.

Use the form: The speaker pitch form (http://searchmarketingexpo.com/speaker-form) is the way to ask to speak. There’s helpful information there about how your pitch should be written and what it should contain.

Write it yourself and be specific: Lots of pitches come in that are obviously written by staff or not specific to the session. These are two of the most effective ways to ensure that your pitch is ignored. If you’re a thought leader, write the pitch yourself… and make certain that it is 100% focused on the session topic.

“Throw your best pitch:” We’re limiting the number of pitches to three per person, so please pitch for the session(s) where you really feel you’ll offer SMX attendees your best.

If you want to know what we aren’t looking for, see our The Best (Worst) Practices For NOT Being Invited To Speak At SMX.

The speaking pitch form will close during the first week of January, and we’ll notify everyone whether you’ve been selected or not shortly thereafter.

UPDATE: Representative @DarrellIssa tweeted that the Judiciary Committee has scheduled the rest of #SOPA markup next Wednesday, Dec. 21 at 9 AM EST.

The delay is to allow more experts to weigh in with opinions and recommendations addressing technical, legal and first amendment issues.

SOPA proponents, including major content providers like the recording and motion picture industry, have argued that the new rules were necessary to combat “foreign” piracy and the sale of illicit goods like counterfeit pharmaceuticals.

SOPA opponents, including internet and tech giants and consumer and legal watchdog groups, say the proposed law is over-reaching, with the potential to “break” the internet and start a worldwide arms race of unprecedented censorship of the web.

If you’re involved with any type of online marketing, you should learn as much as you can about this proposed legislation, as the implications (mostly negative, unless you’re a large content provider or trademark holder) are huge.

Want to know more? Check out What All Marketers Need To Know About SOPA – The Stop Online Piracy Act over on our sister site, Marketing Land.

The results of this research present a good news/bad news scenario for search marketers. The good news: If you have a credible, trusted domain name, you’ve got an advantage, as searchers really do pay attention to the URL in search results before deciding to click. And this is true regardless of the position of the URL on a search result page.

The bad news, of course, is that it’s more difficult these days to acquire “credible” domains now that most single or even double word domains are in use or reserved. Add confounding factors such as personalization, Google changing its core algorithm more than 500 times a year, and the fact that most searchers don’t move beyond the first or second page of results and you’ve got a major headache for most SEOs.

Nonetheless, the study is worth a close read for anyone wanting to understand more about how to capture the attention and clicks of searchers, thanks to its wealth of data generated by observing real people and their search behavior. Probably the most significant conclusion from the study:

Surprisingly, we find that despite changes in the overall distribution of surfaced domains, there has not been a comparable shift in the distribution of clicked domains. Users seem to have learned the landscape of the internet and their click behavior has thus become more predictable over time.

In other words, even if search result rankings change due to factors like personalization or algorithmic tweaks, searchers don’t seem to care. They’re demonstrating a clear preference now for credibility and trustworthiness in a domain name now over simple ranking on a search result page. This is the strongest evidence yet that I’ve seen that an obsession with ranking is not only futile, it completely ignores the reality of how your site attracts users.

Key takeaway for bosses/clients: rank really doesn’t matter, if you’ve got a quality (trustworthy) domain name.

The study also has merit for anyone doing paid search, and considering what display URL is most appropriate for an ad. While advertisers are always limited to a display URL that corresponds with a top-level domain, the additional keywords shown in the display URL may be crucial in getting searchers to click. Also, even if searchers don’t have favorable “domain bias” for your main site, it may be possible to secure another more favorably-perceived domain for your paid search campaigns that serves as a microsite that ultimately funnels searchers into your main domain.

The report is thick with math and numerous citations to related work, but it well worth the effort for anyone involved in competitive search marketing.

Domain Bias in Web Search (pdf), Samuel Ieong, Nina Mishra, Eldar Sadikov & Li Zhang, Microsoft Research (Sadikov is now with the Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, but the study was done while the author was at Microsoft Research.

From the Google blog post announcing the video, Google sums up its approach to improving search: “Our goal is to get you to the answer you’re looking for faster and faster, creating a nearly seamless connection between your questions and the information you seek. That means you don’t generally need to know about the latest search feature in order to take advantage of it.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Along with the video, Google created a timeline of search features:

Click here to see a larger version of the timeline.

Why did Google eliminate the “+” operator? Google says it was because a better way to specify an exact match was to use double quotes around your search terms. True, but the “+” operator had been around forever, and some searchers found it offered more flexibility than quoting a query phrase. Many Google users complained—and fortunately, Google listened.

Today, Google has responded by adding a new “verbatim” option to search results. Though some may find it’s not as easy to use as the “+” or double quotes operators because you have to type your query first, then select further options before getting search results, it’s a welcome addition for anyone wanting more control over results.

To use the verbatim search tool, click on the “Verbatim” link on the “more search tools” links on the left side of a results page:

When would you want to use the new verbatim search results? In its blog post announcing the new tool, Google says that with the verbatim tool on, we’ll use the literal words you entered without making normal improvements such as:

• making automatic spelling corrections
• personalizing your search by using information such as sites you’ve visited before
• including synonyms of your search terms (matching “car” when you search [automotive])
• finding results that match similar terms to those in your query (finding results related to “floral delivery” when you search [flower shops])
• searching for words with the same stem like “running” when you’ve typed [run]
• making some of your terms optional, like “circa” in [the scarecrow circa 1963]

To be clear, the “+” operator is gone for good, so using verbatim search is the best way to get the most literal, specific results based on your query without Google applying its various other query disambiguation and personalization tools.

The new verbatim search tool will be rolled out to everyone over the next few days.

Anyone can submit a session idea for an SMX conference, even if you’re not interested in actually speaking at the show. Just tell us the name of a suggested session, a description of what you’d like the session to cover and your contact information, if you like. Contact details aren’t required, but they help in case we have follow-up questions.

Interested in speaking on a session you suggest? You can indicate this by ticking the “I’d Like To Speak” box to let us know. However, in most cases, you’ll need to put in a formal pitch after the final agenda is posted using our separate speaking pitch form. This form will only be active once an agenda has been finalized.

Remember that all sessions at SMX usually feature 3-4 speakers with 10-15 minutes each of speaking time, so please make sure your idea will accommodate that format. We’re not interested in any ideas for sessions where a single individual would speak for an entire session. And also please remember, no product or service pitches.

Key milestones for SMX West

Again, the “suggestion box” is for session ideas only. We will open up a separate pitch form for people to apply to speak on specific panels once the agenda is posted.

• The session “suggestion box” is currently open; closes December 3
• Agenda posted & speaking pitch form opens week of December 12
• Speaking pitches close January 7

Have a suggestion? Please read our guidelines for speaking at SMX conferences, then use the SMX session idea form. And don’t delay—we’ll be closing the session idea form in just a few weeks.

In an analysis of a large, random sample of search queries, the study from Josh Wright, Professor of Law and Economics at George Mason University, found that Bing generally favors Microsoft content more frequently, and far more prominently, than Google favors its own content. According to the findings, Google references its own content in its first results position in just 6.7% of queries, while Bing provides search result links to Microsoft content more than twice as often (14.3%).

The results from the new study by Wright, sponsored by the International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) are important, especially given the challenges Google has recently faced from an FTC Inquiry over its business practices, antitrust complaints and Senate hearings looking into its alleged anti-competitive behavior.

The findings of the new study are in stark contrast with a study on search engine “bias” released earlier this year. That study, conducted by Harvard professor Ben Edelman concluded that “by comparing results across multiple search engines, we provide prima facie evidence of bias; especially in light of the anomalous click-through rates we describe above, we can only conclude that Google intentionally places its results first.”

How can the conclusions from two prominent scholars be so different? And, perhaps more importantly, given recent interest (and potential oversight) by lawmakers and regulators in search engine activities, what’s going on behind the scenes here?

A Tale Of Two Studies

First, some background. Harvard’s Ben Edelman has serious chops when it comes to search. He’s done thoughtful research into many important issues involving the dark side of the internet, including deceptive advertising, spyware, and so on. But: He’s also been a longtime paid consultant to Microsoft.

The new research from professor Wright, who has a deep interest in antitrust law and economics, was sponsored by the International Center for Law & Economics, with a mission “to create the academic underpinnings for a regulatory environment that ensures the protection of property rights from inefficient interference by government agencies and private parties in high priority markets.”

So, Microsoft has a paid consultant in its court. Did Google sponsor the new research, or influence its outcome? Google continues to increase spending on lobbying U.S. government officials to advocate its interests and ward off the attacks from competitors—was this another, more subtle approach to fend off critics?

Apparently not.

Although ICLE, which sponsored the research, has received financial support from several companies, organizations and individuals (including Google) Geoffrey A. Manne, Executive Director organization responded to my inquiry with this statement:

“The study was not done at Google’s request, and they had no involvement in the design, methodology or conclusions. Rather, the idea for the study and its execution were entirely Josh’s. It was undertaken independently and supported, as all of our affiliates’ supported work is, with an unrestricted grant from ICLE.”

Harvard’s Edelman released the results of his study in January of this year. As said above, Edelman concluded that he found “prima facie evidence of bias” that Google was promoting itself when it “shouldn’t” have been based on other alternative search results.

Search Engine Land’s editor-in-chief Danny Sullivan skewered Edelman’s results, writing that “statistics can easily be turned to whatever you want them to be. I feel like Edelman is turning his study into the most negative view possible. I’m just looking to provide some balance to that.”

Wright’s study had two missions: First, replicate the Edelman study to test its findings, and second, expand on it to eliminate perceived problems with methodology and conclusions. For the first part—replicating the Edelman study, Wright found that Google references its own content more favorably than rival search engines for only a small fraction of terms, whereas Bing is more likely to do so. “For example, in our replication of Edelman & Lockwood, Google refers to its own content in its first page of results when its rivals do not for only 7.9% of the queries, whereas Bing does so nearly twice as often (13.2%),” the report said.

For the second part of the study, Wright employed a much larger, random sample of search queries, rather than the small set (32 different searches) that Edelman performed. Wright’s expanded study found that Bing generally favors Microsoft content more frequently—and far more prominently—than Google favors its own content. Google references own content in its first results position when no other engine does in just 6.7% of queries, while Bing does so over twice as often (14.3%).

So, what conclusions to draw? Wright says that “analysis finds that own-content bias is a relatively infrequent phenomenon”—meaning that although Microsoft appears to favor its own sites more often than Google, it’s not really a major issue, at least in terms of “bias” or “fairness” of search results that the engines present. Reasonable conclusion: Google (and Bing, though less so) really are trying to deliver the best results possible, regardless of whether they come from their own services (local search, product search, etc) or not.

The Bigger Issue: Is “Search Neutrality” A Good Thing?

The study also looked at the whether search engines should be “neutral”—being “fair” to websites in terms of ranking rather than attempting to ferret out the best results for searchers.

It’s both a tradition and a blood sport in the U.S. for traditional media to transform the popular image of scrappy startups into “evil empires” when they’ve grown successfully into a dominant player. Microsoft has been through this; Google is now on the cusp of being the new creepy champ in the minds of many.

A large part of the media and regulatory oversight is now focused on whether Google is “anti-competitive“—typically shorthand for favoring its own content over that of other search engines. The Wright study concludes that the complaintants are simply wrong, saying “many of these complaints ignore the fact that search engine users self-select into different engines or use multiple sources for different types of searches when considering the competitive implications of search rankings.” Well said, and for most sophisticated internet users, probably true.

Why? Consider this scenario: You are going out to dinner in a new town tonight. So, to get recommended restaurants, are you going to Google that—or tweet a request for suggestions, or look up reviews on Yelp or Open Table or Chowhound or… My guess is that most people are going somewhere other than Google for this type of information. Or, for other types of information, going to WebMD or SeatGuru or IMDB or Wikipedia or countless other specialized sites (or mobile apps like Alfred or Ness) when they want more nuanced results than Google typically delivers. No question: Google has a lock on basic queries, and it’s really, really good for those. But the web is huge and asking Google is more often than not like asking the gas station attendant how to get somewhere when your GPS has died. In other words, internet users are smarter than critics give them credit for. We have options, and many are increasingly aware of our non-Google options (hello, Siri?).

But just because a company has grown into a dominant position doesn’t mean they’re doing wrong, or that governments should intervene and force changes that may or may not be “beneficial” to users or customers. I’m not going to rant about this. But in light of the findings of these studies, the pedigree of the researchers and the starkly contrasting opinions they offer, I’d encourage you all to read these analysis pieces, and form your own opinion—and contribute to the comments in the dialog below.

• Deconstructing “Search Neutrality”
• Some Skepticism About Search Neutrality
• Once Again: Should Google Be Allowed To Send Itself Traffic?

Link to the full study from professor Wright: Defining and Measuring Search Bias: Some Preliminary Evidence (pdf).

More reading (thanks to Gary Price for the links):

• Google and the Limits of Antitrust: The Case Against the Case Against Google
• If Search Neutrality is the Answer, What’s the Question?
• The Problem of Search Engines as Essential Facilities: An Economic & Legal Assessment