We've done some preliminary analysis of the top-performing entries in our Biggest Search Geek Contest and have compiled some fascinating (though not entirely scientific) results by looking at LinkedIn profiles of the top 10 scorers. By the way, it's not too late to participate in the contest—it only takes a few minutes and the prize is a free Free Ticket To SMX West in February. Do you recognize yourself in these results? Demographics: 80% Male / 20% Female Average Age – 30 (range almost entirely from 25-35) Skewed Coastal Urban locations – NYC, Boston, SF, LA, Chica [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Search Headlines | SEM Industry: Community

Our very own Matt McGee has posted the 2008 Search Quiz for the search community to take. The quiz basically tests your knowledge of events in the search industry, including news, events and community related topics. You can take the quiz over here, but once you click on the link, it should start. There are 21 multiple-choice questions, and if you get one wrong, you lose. The test is being timed, and the person who answers all the questions correctly in the shortest amount of time, wins. You can win a $50 Amazon.com or iTunes (U.S.), or $50 via Paypal. I personally took the quiz an [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | SEM Industry: Awards | SEM Industry: Community

In covering search marketing for the past 13 years, I've tried not to be judgmental about certain marketing tactics some people might undertake. Search engines have "rules" that they themselves knowingly allow others to break. Arguments erupt over the idea that any type of marketing is "manipulation." But at some point, enough is enough with some tactics. And today, I'm done. I'm calling bullshit on anyone who is link spamming or creating crappy nonsensical content sites. Seriously, enough. You've wasted enough of my time, and you've wasted enough time of people all over the web. I'l [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: General | SEM Industry: Community | SEM Industry: General | SEO: Spamming | Top News

Our friends, Loren Baker, David Snyder & Jordan Kasteler have launched a new video site named IM Broadcast. IM Broadcast, as Loren describes it, is "YouTube for Internet Marketers." In short, it is a video sharing site focused around the Internet Marketing industry. The focus is not just to upload videos on Internet marketing topics, but to also create a social networking site around those videos. Why not for our industry? We already have dozens and dozens of discussion forums, we have our own Sphinn site and we have WebmasterRadio.FM as our radio site. IM Broadcast will be liv [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | SEM Industry: Blogs & Forums | SEM Industry: Community

Three people in the search marketing space have had job changes this week: Lisa Barone, Kevin Ryan and Natala Menezes. Below, a look at where they are heading. Natala Menezes is known to many as a dynamo who advocated for Microsoft adCenter as lead product manager. But it's her last day today at Microsoft, as she heads out to a new challenge as director of product management at TeachStreet. All the best, Natala! Kevin Ryan was named vice president of Search Engine Watch and the Search Engine Strategies conference series last year. Stewart Quealy (who I worked with for many years) now t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | SEM Industry: Community | SEM Industry: General

This Thursday, June 19th at 5pm (EST), Google will be hosting their second live chat session for webmasters. The first event, which took place in March, turned out to be a pretty big success. To register for the event, go here and click on the "register" link on the left hand side of the page - you won't want to miss it. SEMPO is hosting the "Great SEMPO NY Debate" at Stitch in New York on 247 West 37th Street. The event is tomorrow at 6:30pm on Wednesday, June 18th. The topic of discussion is, "Which is the best way to manage search engine marketing, In-House or Agency?" To register fo [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Webmaster Central | SEM Industry: Blogs & Forums | SEM Industry: Community | SEM Industry: Conferences | SEM Industry: Organizations

At our SMX Social Media Marketing conference this week, we had a great panel on the future of human powered search. Jason Calacanis of Mahalo, Jimmy Wales of Wikia Search, and Steven Marder of Eurekster all took part. Jason had some remarks on SEO that set off the usual wave of upset. But as I commented to those who weren't at the panel, by the end of Q&A, Jason -- along with Jimmy Wales and Seven Marder -- were agreeing about the usefulness of SEO. It's all down to the definitions. Below you can hear Jason's presentation yourself, then you can hear the Q&A portion that covered search [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Search 4.0 | Search Engines: Eurekster | Search Engines: Mahalo | Search Engines: Search Wikia | Search Engines: Social Search Engines | SEM Industry: Community | SEM Industry: Conferences | SEM Industry: General

As I posted earlier this morning, here is a quick compilation of logos for Earth Day from the search industry. Google: Yahoo (Flash version): AOL: Ask.com: Cre8asite Forums: Search Engine Roundtable (our theme, it actually glows): Past Earth Day themes and logos from the search industry: Google, Ask.com & Yahoo! Earth Day Logos, 2007 Search Engine Commemorate Earth Day 2006, 2006 Ask Jeeves & Google Earth Day, 2005 Google Commemorates Earth Day, 2004 [...]

Related Topics: AOL: General | Ask: Other | Channel: Consumer | Google: Logos | SEM Industry: Community | Yahoo: Other

Happy April Fools Day! April Fools can be a fun but scary day for news reporters like myself. On one hand, we get to make up stories and fool people into thinking they are real. On the other hand, we have to determine which news stories are real and which are fake and not be fooled ourselves. Below is a recap of stories I found throughout the web, focused on mainly search, designed for April Fools Day: Let's start off with Danny's Microsoft's $1 Million Guarantee Program To Win Searchers article. I hear it fooled several people already. Over at my Search Engine Roundtable site, I decided [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | SEM Industry: Community

Last month I attended the SMX West session in Santa Clara entitled Is it Time for Search Marketing Standards? It was an interesting session, but I wasn't really sure where I stood on the issue at the time. Now that I've had a few weeks to think about it, I've come to the conclusion that not only would it be impossible to come up with standards that most would be happy with, I strongly believe that we don't need them at all. I have long been a proponent of performing SEO in such a way that satisfies all stakeholders, i.e., the client, the search engines, and the internet as a whole. My fee [...]

Related Topics: All Things SEO | Channel: SEO | SEM Industry: Community | SEM Industry: Organizations | SEM Industry: Outsourcing | SEO: Spamming

I finally got around to watching Whiteboard Friday - The Matt Cutts Interview and felt it was worth pointing out. Matt Cutts, Google Engineer, is a huge part of the SEM industry. Rand Fishkin's interview with Matt Cutts explores that relationship. Questions include how Matt got into being the face of Google for webmasters, how other Googlers are aiding him, and the struggle in demonstrating that he is not the final answer at Google for SEOs. It is really a great interview. In addition to the SEOmoz interview, Wired has a really short Q&A with Matt that was just published yesterday. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Employees | Google: Webmaster Central | SEM Industry: Community

Over the past ten to twelve years, various SEM practitioners have brought up the need for industry standards. I started asking the question in 1998, and others have brought it up since, but the industry seems to have a laissez faire attitude. Albeit, we've seen some standardization steps taken by the search engines themselves. Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft got together on the Sitemaps protocol, and Google, Ask.com, and Microsoft are now anonymizing log file data. Subsequently, Google called for international privacy standards. The November 2007 FTC public forum on behavioral advertising also [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | SEM Industry: Community | SEM Industry: General | Stats: History

SEO is making it big time, hitting Oprah! Actually, it's an SEO who will be on Oprah and not talking about his business but his personal life. Rand Fishkin is slated to share how he popped the question for his fiancee Geraldine last year. Kim Krause posted the news of Rand being on Oprah at Cre8asite Forums. Kim explained that the show will be aired on Valentine's Day "where Rand and Geraldine's romantic TV engagement will be discussed," said Kim. Rand also did a behind the scenes post on his "super proposal" named The Super Bowl Ad That Almost Was. Congrats Rand and Geraldine! [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | SEM Industry: Community | SEM Industry: General

We expect more than 1,500 people to attend Search Engine Land's three-day Search Marketing Expo West conference later this month in Silicon Valley. A monster show! There will be sessions stuffed with search marketing knowledge and a bustling expo floor. But it needn't scare those looking to network. We've carefully coordinated a number of events and parties during the show, plus there are a variety of ways for people to meet others before they arrive, ranging from our just-launched exclusive SMX Connect system for attendees to popular social sites like Facebook. Below, more about some of the e [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | SEM Industry: Community | SEM Industry: Conferences

The nominations are in, and now it's time for search marketers to vote on which two people should represent SEMs against the major search engines in the SMX Search Bowl search trivia contest, which happens at our SMX West three-day search conference next month in California. The nomination round happened last week, and now SEOmoz has a voting form up. Cast your vote! Below, more about the contest and the finalists. SMX Search Bowl will have teams from Ask, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo competing against each other and a search marketer team to test their knowledge of search and search mar [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | SEM Industry: Community | SEM Industry: Conferences

There are three surveys underway right now for the search engine marketing industry looking for participation. SEMPO and SEOmoz are both running surveys to collect data on the search marketing industry, while the SEMMYS are a more fun look at search marketing articles up for awards. SEMPO's 2007 State of the Market Survey is open and taking your responses up until February 1st. SEMPO's surveys are used throughout the industry and beyond by analysts, editors, internally by SEM companies, and more. You can win an iPhone and free tickets to an SES event if you complete the survey. Please ma [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | SEM Industry: Awards | SEM Industry: Community | SEM Industry: General | SEM Industry: Organizations

For years, a conference idea banging around has been a trivia quiz involving the search engines. For our SMX West search marketing conference this Feb. 26-28 in California, we've got it happening! SMX Search Bowl will have teams from Ask, Google, and Microsoft competing against each other to test their knowledge of search and search marketing. I'm pretty sure Yahoo will be stepping up to take part, as well. The fifth team is being assembled right now. We're taking nominations for search marketers to be on that team to take on the search engines, so please help out! Rand and his team at SEOmo [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SEM Industry: Awards | SEM Industry: Community | SMX & DMD Alerts

SEO Company CEO Arrested, Jailed: Accused of Foreclosure Scam from Search Engine Watch reports Traffic Power's CEO, Matt Marlon, was jailed for allegedly committing foreclosure fraud. The news comes from Las Vegas's News 3 station, which reports Matt Marlon was arrested for allegedly conning homeowners faced with foreclosure to give the company their homes. Traffic Power is a popular name in the search engine marketing industry. Traffic Power sued Aaron Wall of SEO Book for defamation, but the SEM community stood behind Aaron to help the case get dismissed. In fact, the case brought out a [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | SEM Industry: Community | SEM Industry: Outsourcing

I'm now taking nominations for the 2007 top 10 list of the funniest/most irreverent blog entries in search. Why? The search industry is important. I mean, what industry (besides the sex industry) can singlehandedly cause Google to change its vaunted PageRank algo? However, on occasion we tend to take ourselves too seriously. I have always thought that the "10 Best of the Year" idea always had merit as a blog entry, but it was so often used by others that I couldn't see my way clear to figure out how to play in that game... I mean, when you are competing with marketers on how to best market y [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | SEM Industry: Community

Last night in Las Vegas, SEOmoz held a game featuring well-known names in the SEM industry. The game is based on a game called Werewolf, and special cards were created picturing folks in the search marketing industry. Ian Kennedy posted coverage with pictures of the event and Rebecca Kelley from SEOmoz posted her coverage of the event. From here we learn which names are on the 24 cards: Matt Cutts - Revealer of Hats Danny Sullivan - Gracious Granter of Re-Inclusion Rae Hoffman - Never Mess with a Woman in a Black Hat Dave Naylor - Black Fookin’ Hat Thomas Bindl - Refined Black Hat M [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | SEM Industry: Community | SEM Industry: Conferences