Register before March 21 and you’ll receive the best rate offered for the only conference designed exclusively for experienced search marketers.

The focus of SMX Advanced is unique. Conference sessions and keynotes are designed for sophisticated search engine marketers; they are fast paced, sophisticated and don’t review basic concepts. You’ll choose from in depth sessions on organic search engine optimization (SEO), paid search advertising (PPC), and social media marketing. Take a look at last year’s program (2010 agenda will be posted the week of March 22.)

At SMX Advanced Seattle, opportunities abound to get your questions answered and share your own ideas with the best in the industry. We’ve purposely kept this an intimate conference so you’ll be sure to meet the people you want to meet.

Headlining this year’s conference is Google Senior Software Engineer Matt Cutts, who will participate in an hour-long conversation with the SMX Advanced Seattle audience.

Register for SMX Advanced Seattle before March 21 and you pay just $1195. You get all of the sessions, keynotes, network activities and special events that make Search Marketing Expo conferences famous. It’s a fantastic value, plus your satisfaction is guaranteed.

Reserve your spot and save – register today! Interested in sending your team? Save 10%-20% when you register a group.

PS: Is London more convenient? Attend SMX Advanced London 17-18 May – full agenda just posted!

The event was given a home by the Jerusalem College of Technology for 6 hours while 30+ speakers from both in Israel and around the world came to speak to about 200+ attendees. In fact, it could have been close to 400 attendees, but we had to close registration once we hit 230 people.

Vanessa Fox flew directly from SMX West, while I skipped out on West mostly because of my nephew’s bar mitzvah. It was great to see so many familiar faces in Israel and such a vibrant SEM industry in the country.

Make sure to check out the full recap of SphinnCon Israel 2010 and feel free to join the Sphinn discussion.

Yes, that is the best picture I could find of myself and Vanessa at the event. Vanessa was extremely under the weather and now she is off to Amman, Jordan to speak again.

Two Opportunities: Session Pitches Vs. Speaking Pitches

We have TWO different pitching opportunities.

First, we ask for session ideas as part of the session pitch process. This is the very best way to get to speak. Suggest a great session idea, and if that makes it to the final agenda, there’s an excellent chance you’ll make it as one of the speakers for that panel.

Second, after the final agenda is made, we then have a speaking pitch process. This is where we accept pitches for people to speak for any spots we have remaining open for the final agenda that’s posted.

More information about both processes is below.

Session Pitches Accepted: Now Through March 16

From now through March 16, we’re accepting pitches for sessions at SMX Advanced. This is a search marketing event for EXPERIENCED and ADVANCED search marketers. That means any session ideas that you pitch must be for topics that would make those with years of experience in the field sit up, take notice and go “wow.”

We’re looking for ideas about advanced SEO topics, advanced PPC topics, social media as it relates to search and business aspects of running a search marketing company.

Want to pitch? Then submit your session idea here.

If you’re accepted, you’ll get a pass to the entire SMX event. Travel and accommodation are not provided.

Agenda Posted: Week Of March 22

We expect to post the SMX agenda the week of March 22. If you were accepted to speak as part of the session pitch process, you should be notified by this time. If not, hang in there until speaking openings are posted.

Speaking Pitches Accepted: March 29 Through April 10

Once the agenda is posted, we’ll next accept pitches to speak on particular panels, rather than ideas for the panels themselves. Those will be accepted via this form. If we have late breaking openings after April 10, the form will reopen (and we’ll likely do a blog post about it)

Speaker Acceptance Notices

We expect to tell everyone who pitched if they were accepted or not by April 19, 2010. That date might slip — but that’s what we’re aiming for. Everyone who submits should receive a yes or no message, in the end.

Just want to attend? You can register here and get the pre-agenda rate through March 19. The show sells out every year, so register early. Once the tickets are gone, they’re gone.

• Analytics Action Plans For PPC, BruceClay.com
• Ask The Search Engines, Outspoken Media
• Ask The SEOs, Outspoken Media
• Blended SERPs Presentation SMX West 2010, www.dreamsystemsmedia.com
• Bringing SEO In House: How To Be Successful!, Outspoken Media
• Event Hashtag Etiquette: Overheard @ SMX, AIM Clear Blog
• Keynote – The State of The Search Union, Outspoken Media
• Keynote – The State Of The Search Union, BruceClay.com
• Liveblogging: The State Of The Search Union, WebProNews
• Measuring How Search Ads Drive Offline Conversions, BruceClay.com
• Microsoft-Yahoo: What’s It All Mean?, BruceClay.com
• SMX West: Analytics Action Plans, Search Engine Roundtable
• SMX West: Ask The Search Engines, Search Engine Roundtable
• SMX West: Ask The SEOs, Search Engine Roundtable
• SMX West: Bringing SEO In House, Search Engine Roundtable
• SMX West: Conversion Ninja Toolbox, Search Engine Roundtable
• SMX West: PPC Tune Up Clinic, Search Engine Roundtable
• Social Media 60 Minutes A Day SMX West 2010 Presentation, www.dreamsystemsmedia.com
• Social Media, Search & Reputation Management, Outspoken Media
• Social Media, Search & Reputation Management, BruceClay.com
• Don’t Slap Rainbows: Diversity Marketing Realness, AIM Clear Blog
• Google’s Matt Cutts Talks Caffeine, PageRank, PuSH, Buzz, and Much More, WebProNews
• Research you can use in search marketing efforts from SMX West panel, community.microsoftadvertising.com
• SMX West 2010 Recap and Canadian Olympic Pride, www2.webmasterradio.fm
• The Energy Was Up at SMX West 2010, blog.efrontier.com
• YouTube SEO at SMX West RECAP, vidiseo.com

Chris Sherman will moderate, and scheduled speakers include:

• Vanessa Fox, Contributing Editor, Search Engine Land
• Avinash Kaushik, Analytics Evangelist, Google Inc.
• Misty Locke, President, Range Online Media & Chief Strategy Officer, iProspect, Range Online Media / iProspect
• David Roth, Director of Search Engine Marketing, Yahoo! Inc.

It’s all set to start at 9:00 am, so come back then to follow-along with what’s being said (or at least to watch me fumble desperately as I try to keep up with what five people are saying at once).

CS: We’ve had an interesting year in search. Quite often, it’s just Google, Google, Google. But in the past year, we’ve seen more radical change than I’ve seen in the past 15 years of following the search industry. It’s very exciting. And that’s why we’ve assembled this panel.

The key question, when we were here last year, we were in the early stages of an economic meltdown. One year later, how are we doing? Does search still have a bright future?

DR: One of the interesting things about the economy as it relates to search marketing was it gave us a chance to show off our stuff. As a marketer, we were able to show results. There’s been a shift back to SEO, and not just focusing on the paid side.

ML: We’ve been meeting with clients, and while their business as a whole may have had problems, the e-commerce side didn’t suffer. It even grew when they didn’t expect it to. We saw many using really smart techniques. A lot combined search with other channels to do some innovative things. Our business was rewarded for that. I think many search marketers were rewarded. We had a record breaking year.

CS: Asks Vanessa about her Super Bowl ad watching.

VF: Pepsi decided to spend their money on social media. But what struck me more than that was that so many large brands seem to STILL be just starting to understand that search is important.

CS: Asks Avinash about whether search and branding mix?

AK: Branding was a great metaphor for wanting to do something without understanding a particular outcome. But search is different – you can understand exactly is happening. Mentions his blog post about 7 Ways to Measure Branding (I think this one). When people tell me they want to run a branding campaign, I ask what they want out of it. Search is a massively effective way to show up at the point of relevance.

CS: Asks Dave about the YHOO-MSFT deal.

DR: The integration is on. There’s a lot of resources being put into it from both companies. The proof of pudding will be when advertisers start to get moved. Yahoo’s stance is about continuing to innovate on the user experience.

CS: Asks about integration of cultures.

DR: There are a lot of resources from Yahoo that will be moved over to Microsoft, and some will stay at Yahoo. A lot of it remains to be seen. We just got clearance a couple weeks. But everyone understands that this is critical – it’s absolutely-must-work project.

CS: Asks Misty about client reaction to MSFT-YHOO.

ML: I think they’re really excited about it because it gives us a viable number two. It lets us shift strategy and focus. Rather than 70-20-10, it’ll be a 60-40 time-split in our focus.

CS: Is the opportunity reach, or getting more customers?

ML: That’s what we’re asking, and what our clients are asking. I think it’ll open up opportunities for new customers. We’re seeing new customers from Bing Cashback. True new customers.

AK: It’s important to realize that competition is a good thing. You should have a portfolio of advertising. You should have an effective strategy across all search engines. You should have a strategy for doing SEO for Bing and for Google. You want to find every person in the world, regardless of how they exist.

VF: I’m waiting to see how all that works out with Search Monkey and BOSS. If the search engine doesn’t exist, will they be motivated to continue that? The integrations are going to be huge and complicated.

CS: Asks Vanessa about Google and Caffeine update. What will the impact be on SEO? Asks Avinash about Google’s willingness to continue offering tools.

VF: Normally I say you don’t have to worry much about SEO aside from the foundation stuff, but over the last year there was a lot of new stuff that people should’ve paid attention to. I don’t Caffeine will have a big impact on SEO. It’s a better way to crawl and index the web. It’s not a rankings impact, except in an indirect way — your site is crawled and indexed more quickly.

On your other question, I hope Google keeps reaching out. I think they will.

AK: There are two parts to Google’s tool strategy. One, even if every Googler spent a whole day answering questions from webmasters, it wouldn’t answer the world’s questions. Our approach with tools is to find out how to help users at scale. We’ll keep doing that. The second part of the strategy is to keep sharing data. I’m orgasmic about the amount of data Google has put out in the last year – tools like Insights for Search which I love and adore. Google AdPlanner is another one – it’s the only tool on the planet that does what it does.

CS: Back to MSFT-YHOO. There’s confusion about who’s doing what and Yahoo’s commitment to search.

DR: Yahoo is staying committed to search. Yahoo will maintain high-touch with big search advertisers. And then the platform itself, the goal is to make MSFT Adcenter the platform of choice for the smaller advertisers. (Discussion gets very specific into advertising technologies and platforms. Time for me to take a photo.)

CS: Asks about social (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) replacing search. Facebook was most visited site on the web for a day around Christmas.

VF: People are actually searching more, not less. It’s not an either/or thing.

ML: I agree. We’ve often complained that search is sometimes only a line-itm in budgets, but now we find that there are so many new opportunities. Search is actually driving campaigns and dictating discussions about PR and branding. Search is at the core of these things. We can drive lift, we can engage and enable our customers to carry that awareness into social and real-time search. I think it’s a new beginning for search.

DR: I’ve always told people at search conferences to sit tight, the rest of the marketing world is coming your way. I see all the discipline and accountability that search has grown up with is now paying off.

AK: The media loves “or” stories — Facebook or Google? Twitter or Facebook? But the world is an “and” story. Video did not kill the radio star. I once said Twitter is the dumbest thing in the world and got hate mails, but now I think it’s the coolest thing since sliced bread. But you can’t use the same strategies across different channels. You can’t use the same approach on Twitter that you use in TV advertising.

CS: Asks about information overload and will search be siloed – will it become just another function?

AK: Asking “how can we keep advertising more relevant” is sub-optimal. Shouting at people is going away, and that’s why search is becoming so important. The single reason for Google’s success is relevance. At the point of searching, the right ad shows up. We have to experiment with new and innovative things.

The smartest companies will use search to achieve a variety of goals. Not just selling products.

DR: If you look at how social media is managed in an organization, SM is the first channel that has delivered on being able to engage and connect directly with the customer. It’s breaking down the panels and divisions in a marketing company. Everyone has to consider it.

ML: I agree. Everyone in the company wants to own a piece of social. PR is involved, search is involved, marketing is involved. Search makes us tap into what the consumer really is looking for. It breaks down all barriers.

VF: Yeah, we have to go the opposite way of silos. Search affects marketing, web development, and so many areas.

CS: Asks about changes over last decade, black hats, privacy, and a host of other things. (panelists slightly confused about how to handle this one)

AK: Spam has been a problem for a very long time, and will continue to be for a long time. We need to suppress it as much as possible and provide incentives for people to do the right thing. We need more people to choose those incentives.

ML: Yes, there will always be spam. Marketers are always going to find a way to use new mediums. Now the users are replacing the good and the bad out there. Consumers can sniff out what’s authentic and what’s not. You don’t want to get called out by your consumer. I’m opimistic things will get better. Users are doing the policing.

DR: On the topic of regulation, there’s some risk there. There’s the potential not only to do unethical things, but illegal things. There’s not enough awareness and understanding of advertising mediums not only in the government, but also in the general public. If you’ve ever seen anything on Capitol Hill about the Internet, it’s frightening. My fear is that the legislators aren’t up to speed on what’s really going on.

CS: Let’s take a global perspective. One, what’s the global opportunity? Two, how do you work with restrictions in other countries?

VF: You have to understand your audience, where they are. If you’re going out globally, you can’t just localize your message. You have to understand the culture and the government. And you’ll see that audiences are very different. But there are lots of opportunities to do this.

AK: There are very sophisticated marketers in other countries. There just aren’t enough of them. Many of these countries are extremely young (population-wise) and so there’s opportunity to have an impact. As Vanessa said, you have to truly understand the market and demographics.

ML: In other countries, I’ve seen marketers doing some very cool things in social media. Maybe because search wasn’t as effective at the time, or other problems, but they’re doing some very cool things.

DR: There’s a lot to be learned from other populations online. They’re skipping email and going straight to Facebook.

CS: Outside the US, there’s a huge mobile population. We’ve heard mobile’s coming for years. Is it here?

DR: Yes, but it may not be what we thought it would be. We’re now at 20% penetration of smartphones across the US. I think we’re about to see dramatic changes. The iPhone was a gamechanger and things are headed in a direction that maybe we didn’t anticipate a few years ago.

AK: Tells story of being out with kids recently (and namedrops the Google Nexus One) and use of mobile during the day. “This is search!” People don’t think of it as search. But it is. Are our web sites optimized to “do this kind of magic”? Not even a fragment of search marketers are thinking about this as search. I encourage you to think of mobile as search.

ML: We need to teach clients about web site usability in mobile, but start with covering the basics and local information, local listings, etc.

VF: The ubiquity of mobile opens the door for a lot of new search opportunities. We have new ways and new devices, and we don’t even know that we’re searching.

And with that, we’re done. Excellent discussion.

• Liveblog: SMX West 2010 Keynote – An Insider’s Look At Google Research
• Google’s Norvig: PageRank Is Overhyped

But there was much more going on during the individual sessions. Here’s a recap of the SMX West coverage we’ve found; feel free to leave a comment if there’s something we missed.

• 60 Minutes Per Day For Social Media Success, Outspoken Media
• Adwords Grows Up! Formats, Sitelinks & Universal, AIM Clear Blog
• Ballmer, Sitelinks & Other Favorites from SMX West Day 1, SEOmoz
• Bing Cashback program and customer success stories from SMX West, community.microsoftadvertising.com
• Bing Talks Local Business Listings, WebProNews
• Bring In The Bling Via Bing Cashback, BruceClay.com
• Dealing With Domain Names, URLs, Parameters, BruceClay.com
• Diagnosing Technical SEO Issues, Outspoken Media
• Facebook Ad Tactics For Search Marketers, BruceClay.com
• Free Ways To Market On Facebook, Outspoken Media
• Google ‘personalizes’ one in five searches, The Register
• Google May Start Calling PageRank Something Else, WebProNews
• Google mulls blend of education, search, CNET News
• Google Research head dubs holy PageRank ‘over-hyped’, The Register
• Industrial Strength SEO, Outspoken Media
• Keynote – An Insider’s Look At Google Research, Outspoken Media
• Keynote: Peter Norvig, Google, BruceClay.com
• Live: Google Keynote at SMX West in Santa Clara, WebProNews
• Peter Norvig offers an insider’s look at Google Research during SMX West, Search Engine Watch Blog
• SMX West: Free Ways to Market on Facebook, Search Engine Roundtable
• SMX West: Optimizing Your Content on YouTube, Search Engine Roundtable
• SMX West: Paid Search Bullseye, Search Engine Roundtable
• Trends, ZombieBait & Sideways Keyword Research, AIM Clear Blog
• Steve Ballmer Unplugged: SMX West 2010 Keynote, AIM Clear Blog
• The Need For Speed: Google Says It Matters, BruceClay.com
• Way Up Google’s Research Snoot with Peter Norvig, AIM Clear Blog

Before we start, one note: Google’s Peter Norvig has an Apple laptop with this sticker: “My other computer is a data center.” Brilliant!

9:03 am – Looks like we’re running a little bit late. We’re going to announce the winner of Marin Software’s “Biggest Search Geek” contest before the keynote starts at 9:15 am.

9:10 am – Okay, we’re announcing the contest winner now. And his name is Tim Ossmo. Congrats, Tim.

9:15 am – And now we’re underway with introductions and such. Chris Sherman is telling us that Peter Norvig holds the world record for creating a 17,826-word long palindrome. Whoa.

Peter is going to show 21 projects from Google Research over the next 15 minutes, so I’ll do my best and hope the fingers don’t fall off.

Person Finder: the app Google created to help Chilean earthquake victims locate friends and family.

Power Meter: device you can plug into your house to monitor how much electricity you use each day.

Earth Engine: a maps-like tool that shows changes to earth (like deforestation) over a period of time.

Trike and Street View: the Google Maps projects we all know and love.

User Photos in Street View: just announced this a few days ago.

Image Swirl: a tool to show similar images that’s available in Google Image Search.

Web-Scale Image Annotation: tool that matches images to the queries that trigger those images.

Image Rotation Captcha: rather than typing in words, user has to rotate an image back to its “straight” position.

Goggles: the phone app that lets you search by taking photos.

Discontinuous Video Scene-Carving: lets you squish video down, like the cropping tool you’d find in Photoshop and similar image tools.

Sharing Cluster Data: data lists that Google likes to share with the education community.

App Inventor for Android: an introductory program environment that Google uses to teach people how to program for Android OS. Uses a visual programming language.

Speech Recognition: another phone/mobile app.

Punctuation/Capitalization in Transcribed Speech: puts the punctuation in Google Voice transcripts, for example.

Translating Phone: talking about the possibility, they have the two pieces needed to put this together.

Low Resource MT – Yiddish: translation tool for difficult languages.

Sounds Understanding: this is in development. “I want something that sounds like a car crash,” and Google will return those results.

Google Squared: the database search display tool that Google announced last year.

Clustering: tool that determines clusters of related words based on concepts.

Attribute Extraction: Goes beyond concepts to recognize related attributes for terms, i.e., “fuel” is related to car terms.

Browser Size: the tool that Google released last year to put an overlay on any web page that shows what portion of users can see your web page.

Wow. So that was 21 tools in about 10 minutes. We’re gonna do some Q&A now.

CS: How does Google approach the research process, esp. with the 20% time we’ve all heard of.

PN: Anyone can start a research project as part of their 20% time. They recruit co-workers. Projects get reviewed to decide which ones to pursue more seriously with staffing and resources. They review actual demos to decide this.

CS: asks how they decide which projects to pursue.

PN: We’re focused on doing things that are useful.

Danny: What are some of the biggest things that have come out of the 20% time?

PN: Depends who you ask. Gmail is one, but the creator (Paul Buchheit) says that wasn’t really from 20% time because it quickly became his main project.

CS: How involved are Larry and Sergey anymore?

PN: They’re very involved. They see themselves having two roles. One, setting the long-term plan for the company. But two, also getting hands-on to make sure projects are proceeding and have what they need.

DS: Do they have 20% projects?

PN: No, their jobs are 100% time. Actually, they do have some stuff they work on from home.

DS: What about you?

PN: I’m looking into things related to education search, which is different from other types of search.

DS: What technology things do people talk about a lot and overhype that you think are way off-base?

PN: I don’t know. There’s a lot of emphasis on mobile, and I think that’s appropriate. “I’m pretty happy with the way things are.”

CS: Asks about social search, and how Google determines relevant signals without a huge link graph.

PN: Let me rephrase my answer to Danny. One thing I do think is overhyped is PageRank. It’s important, but it’s just one of many things. We never felt that PageRank was such a big factor because we’ve always looked at all the available data. Paraphrasing: He says the lack of PageRank and legacy links is not a big deal when dealing with social search.

He’s talking about how Google switched from the monthly dance to doing daily updates, and then to hourly updates. “Hourly isn’t good enough,” Larry said. “Now we’ve realized his vision.”

DS: Is it time for Google to come up with a better name than PageRank to stop people from over-focusing on it.

PN: I do think we need some better branding.

CS: Asks about the Caffeine infrastructure update.

PN: It’s in one datacanter now, and we’ll be rolling out to the other datacenters soon, but I don’t have a specific timeframe on that.

DS: Asks about signals and ranking. Are there signals people don’t realize are important. Mentions citations in local search. Are there other surprises that have worked well outside of links?

PN: Yes, we’ve sort of manufactured links with that – mentions of a business can be a signal.

DS: Asks about moving beyond textual matching to the matching of concepts and objects.

PN: The clustering tool I showed is one example of that, and Google Squared is another. To get the right answers we need to do more than basic textual matching.

CS: What kind of problems will take a while to solve?

PN: Mentions visual and voice recognition. Still images and video images are still challenging. There’s so much more data in a video than a text file. It’s also messier to understand what all is going on in the video.

DS: Asks about solving email overload.

PN: Says he had an intern working on that last summer, and they do have some tools they’ll be rolling out to help with that. But also, “is email always the right tool?” Sometimes starting over is a good first step. Says he still uses email more than Google Wave.

CS: Asks about his teams – do they use Wave?

PN: Yes, they’re trying to figure out what it can do for them. “I think we’re at a confusing point.” Internally, do employees use Wave, email, Google Docs, something else for collaboration?

DS: Goes back to video. “Who’s winning – the new information flowing in, or our ability to keep up with it.”

PN: We’ll keep getting better at keeping up with things. We need tools to help us figure out what’s useful information and what’s not.

CS: Sergey has mentioned having an embedded chip in your head to search Google. Anyone on your team working on that?

PN: (chuckles) No, we’re not doing that.

DS: Asks about the idea of a training center to help people learn what Google needs its new employees to know.

PN: Says there is some issue with people coming from academia and not being fully prepared for what they need to do in company setting.

CS: Asks about how Google trains people.

PN: We have an internal course that everyone takes, and then we put them on a starter project.

CS: Asks if Google moves employees around like MSFT does.

PN: We do. We try to keep projects short so people can stay fresh. We also move them around a bit. We have a common infrastructure, so it’s easier to move from one place to another — you use all the same tools.

DS: What do you see as the next big thing in search?

PN: I think you see the page becoming more interesting and varied. Not just 10 blue links. A result page may look more like a newspaper page than a list of links. We’ll have to do a better job adapting to new ways of searching — like mobile. Talks about how the screen is so much smaller, so the right result needs to be at the top.

And with that we’re wrapping up. Thanks for tuning in.

• Google’s Personalized Search Revolution, BruceClay.com
• Keynote Conversation: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Outspoken Media
• Keyword Research: Beyond The Ordinary, Outspoken Media
• Keyword Research: Beyond the Ordinary – SMX West 2010, raven-seo-tools.com
• Live: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer Addresses Search Marketing Community, WebProNews
• Mobile Paid Search Ads: Real Opportunities, BruceClay.com
• Mobile Search Apps, Outspoken Media
• Not Your Father’s AdWords: The New Google Ad Formats, BruceClay.com
• Real Time Search & The Major Search Engines, Outspoken Media
• Real Time Search Ranking Factors SMX, www.localseoguide.com
• SMX Keynote Conversation: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, BruceClay.com
• SMX West 2010 Yelp Mobile Apps, www.dreamsystemsmedia.com
• SMX West: Google’s Personalized Search Revolution, Search Engine Roundtable
• SMX West: Keynote Conversation: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Search Engine Roundtable
• SMX West: Keyword Research: Beyond the Ordinary, Search Engine Roundtable
• SMX West: Mobile Paid Search Ads, Search Engine Roundtable
• SMX West: Not Your Father’s AdWords, Search Engine Roundtable
• SMX West: Supercharging your Descriptions with Sitelinks, Search Engine Roundtable
• SMX West: The Current State Of Social Search, Search Engine Roundtable
• Steve Ballmer Discusses Search Alliance with Yahoo! at SMX West, community.microsoftadvertising.com
• Local Search and the Importance of Customer Reviews – Panel at SMX West, community.microsoftadvertising.com
• Steve Ballmer Keynote at SMX West, SEM Clubhouse
• Steve Ballmer SMX Keynote Breakdown, www2.webmasterradio.fm
• Supercharging Your Descriptions With Sitelinks, BruceClay.com
• The Current State of Social Search, Outspoken Media

Augmented reality is basically presenting some kind of digital overlay on top of a view of the “real world.” Think about what the Terminator sees when he looks at you and sizes you up for the kill, or perhaps tries to sell you a Coca-Cola.

Current examples include:

• Google Maps’ Street View for Mobile: Hold up your phone and via geolocation, you get Google Maps info for wherever you point it.
• WikiTude: Uses the camera on your phone and brings up a Wikipedia entry for whatever you are viewing through your phone.
• Layar: An aggregator of real time information displayed on top of whatever is in your mobile phone camera<./li>
• Gunman: An iPhone app that allows you to virtually shoot other people.
• AcrossAir: Find the nearest subway in NYC.
• WhereMark: Allows users to “augment” reality by splicing information and the real world. It is a quick reference tool and a travel companion that will find users their next meal, get them to the nearest subway, lead them to a museum and remember where their cars are parked.
• Yell: Find the tube and some good ale near you in the UK.
• Zagat To Go: Food in your phone.

Key takeaways for understanding augmented reality for marketing: Augmented reality is based on some kind of location-based tagging or meta data, so to show up in an augmented reality app you need to tag your data. And augmented reality can provide a closed loop between online & offline by directly connecting your business with customers where they are.

Augmented reality’s biggest potential winners

• Local shops
• Social networks
• Travel
• Real estate
• Restaurants
• Malls

How can you participate in this new approach? Seek out apps that reach your audience then figure out how they get results. Four common methods include direct pull of data, a daisy chain (e.g. aggregators of aggregators), paid submission/placement and free submission.

It’s important to optimize all of your feeds and make them as easy to parse as possible. Use standards like:

• Hcards
• Vcards
• VCal

Site maps are also helpful. The original sitemap standards live are XML site maps. For video, mRSSis emerging as a standard. Google Webmaster Central also explains how to create Video site maps and News site maps.

Augmented reality offers some key benefits to marketers, including the fact that application behavior is trackable, purchase behavior can be seen in context, making it easier to analyze conversion triggers, which is turn helps us better understand post-conversion behavior.

I think this area is going to be the biggest source of opportunity in the mid-to-long term.

The agenda is live, and we’re now accepting submissions to speak at Search Marketing Expo – SMX Advanced London 2010. To increase the odds of being selected, be sure to have read the agenda. Understand what the sessions are about. Ensure that your pitch is on target to the show’s audience and the session. Please also be very specific about what you intend to cover. Also, if you do not see a particular session listed, this is because there are no openings for that session. Use this form to submit your request.

As you might guess, interest is high in speaking at SMX conferences. We literally sift through hundreds of submissions to select speakers for the show. 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.

You’ll be notified: If you are accepted to speak, you’ll be notified by e-mail. If not, you’ll be notified by e-mail by the end of March.

Don’t delay—the speaking pitch form closes on March 19.

Want to attend SMX Advanced London? Click here for the agenda and all the details.