Ah; managed to find a power supply here in the huge Spanish conference centre and get some juice back in my laptop batteries - enough for a spot more live blogging.
Next up is the Target Global session. We've Matias Perel and Rand Fishkin speaking. Rand has sunglasses on his head and a beard - must be Spanish.
Do you know what... Matias looks a lot like Massimo Burgio. I wonder if there's been a last minute speaker change. Yep. No Matias.
Targeting US/English Language Regions
Rand promises less corny American jokes. Awww.
We kick off with Hitwise's market share graph they did for Search Engine Land. The one that shows Google with a huge 67.9% blue pie slice of the US market. Poor old Yahoo and Microsoft with just slivers. If I squint... oh, I think I can see... it's Ask.com.
Now the Hitwise chart for the UK. It's worse here; they have 73% with Google UK and 14% with Google.com. Yeah. Do the maths.
If you look at Western Europe - it's Google, ebay and Yandex. Hmm. Yandex? I wonder if someone in Moscow is currently sulking that they've just been lumped in with Western Europe.
In Canada Google has a 90% market share. Ouch.
In Oz and New Zealand - 90% Google too. That leaves Yahoo and nineMSN with about 5% each. Rand points out that Yahoo and MSN have their TV partnerships (7 for Yahoo and 9 for MSN).
Israel... go on, guess the number... yeah. It's 90%.
So! Is there anywhere Google doesn't rule?
China - Baidu 55%, Google 21.7% and Yahoo 7.2% Rand notes that when he was in China you could search at Google but get your results back in Baidu. The government was forcing the ISPs to do this... easy to see why Google might struggle.
Russia - Yandex 47.5%, Ramber... rumours that Yandex's share is much higher.
Japan - Yahoo, Google and MSN in that order. Searching is very vertical so lots of traffic goes straight to, for example, shopping pages.
Korea - Naver 72%, Duam 11% and Yahoo with 6%. Rand reckons the future of social search might be echoed here. When you type a query into Naver, before you see the SERPs, you get UGC answers.
Czech - Seznam 62%, Google 24%, Centrum 5%, Atlas 3% and Jyxo 0.5%
Also something about Estonia - but I blinked.
Rand says search engines look at the geographic location of your IP address. They look at the geographic association of your domain extension. He notes that .com, .org, .net have become English language centric.
The registrar information is also used. He says Danny's a hippy. On-page address information is also used.
Language can be used too but can be frustrating. Take Spanish, for example, there are a lot of people in the US and Latin America who write in Spanish and then Google assumes they're targeting Spanish users.
Rand toys with the idea of targeting SEOMoz to just Spanish traffic. :)
Ah... on to the challenge of targeting two or more countries via Google's WMC. It's true that you can't do it on one domain but you can register two folders (or more) and geo-target them.
Why doesn't Google use the Dublin Core meta tags for language/country targeting? Not enough sites use them.
What's important for Google?
- trusted domains
- trusted links; Rand reckons 1 or 2 trusted links can be more useful than 500 other links
- the dreaded sandbox; Rand reckons we'll see more of this in languages Google's not so confident in
What's important for Baidu?
- phone up Baidu and buy the organic traffic
- lots of traffic is multimedia centric
What's important for Yandex?
- similar to Google but less influence on domain trust
- rumours that you can ring up and buy changes...
What's important for Naver
- be social; get the community to write about you
What's important for Yahoo Japan
- it uses Yahoo search technology
- some focus on domain authority
- some focus on keyword use
- slightly easier to game
What's important in local engines (Seznam, etc)
- talk to a locals
Targeting the US
- competition levels very high; with the exception of some UK results
- best spam detection
- best spammers
- lots of link evaluation; lots of links discounted
The US population expects a high level of user experience. You need to do well here in order to get those editorial citation links. This is why blogging is popular.
Rand says he's not a monkey.
Here's a big question; Why am I ranking well in one enigne but not others?
Here are Rand's answers;
- different weighting of links
- different crawling/indexing index - Google is more robust; Yahoo & MSN are more flaky
- different keyword usage limits - easy to go overboard on Google
- different ways to measure 'valuable vs thin content'
- sometimes historical issues with the domain or IP address can cause problems
Getting Local Results from Anywhere in the World
- Rand shares the &GL=<country> trick with the audience
- ie; &GL=US or &GL=DE (for Google)
- for Yahoo; simply go to the country specific domain
And that's a wrap! Now onto the questions.
... oh. Wait. Massimo's talking about SEMPO again.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
SMX Madrid - Target Global
SMX Madrid - Target Europa
Oohkay; let's see if I need the translation headsets for this one. Next up I believe we are talking about targeting Italy and the Netherlands. Speaking we have Lennert de Rijk (Netherlands) and Massimo Burgio (Italy). The panel is going to try and take questions on the German market too.
The Netherlands
Ah yes; Lennert is speaking in English. Good man. +5 points already. He's Dutch and works in Spain. He's the Managing Director and cofounder of Onetomarket Spain. I wonder how many languages he speaks?
Let's see if his presentation on the Netherlands is as good as Joost's was for SES New York! Ha. :)
The Netherlands are 2nd in the world for broadband penetration. The Dutch spend about 6.4 hours online a week.
He doesn't understand the costing structure of telephone/internet usage in the Spain. The Spannish pay x4 more and have worse quality. He suggests that this is one of the reasons why internet shopping is larger in the Netherlands than in Spain (If you're not European; Spain is a large country and the Netherlands is not).
Ah! A picture of a cow. This is to remind us that agencies should have a global mindset but must act locally. All of the major players in the Netherlands are local - although iProspect just bought one of the market leaders.
Don't use Kelkoo. He says. He recommends using "ormaspdsfsdfsdffdf" or "asmdsfhdsfsdsdf" instead. Okay; I can't quite pronounce or spell the sites he recommends.
Also TradeDoubler, he says, aren't really getting into the Netherlands. Lennert says that TradeDoubler simply doesn't have the knowledge or marketshare to work as an affiliate network in the Netherlands (If you're not European; TradeDoubler is a large pan-Europen affiliate network).
Lennert describes the Dutch market as immature. It's growing quickly and expected to keep on growing.
Here's a fact for you; elderly people use the net more often than young people in the Netherlands. This is due to the demographic situation where there are simply loads of 65+ people and that they have the time and money to spend online.
Last year, on average, Dutch users would spent at least 500 euros online.
This is interesting; the leading vertical of spend in the Netherlands is travel and Lennert's included 'insurance' in that group. There doesn't seem to be a finance vertical of note.
This is a similar picture to the UK. In recent years we've seen the pure plays shops get their act together for online and start to take marketshare back from aggregators and affiliates.
Top sites in the Netherlands; Google.nl, Startpagina.nl, Marktplaats.nl, Live.com, Msn.com, Postbank.nl, nl.wikipedia and then hyves. Hyves is a popular social network in northern europe/the nordics.
Startpagina et al are the always popular 'starting pages' who simply refuse to go away in the Netherlands. Lennert urges us to be careful with the Startpagina clones as they're nothing more than link farm clones which mess up your link profiles and which have started to suffer drops in Google.
Some Dutch basics;
- use .nl domains
- host locally
- get local links
- be as aggressive as you need to be (Andrew's note; there's a Faith No More song about that)
The Dutch home shopping organisation (thuiswinkel.org) is important. It has 750 members and 100 business partners. It represents 80% of the Dutch home-shopping market. Oh... wait, I think Lennert has a connection to these guys.
Lennert would like us to remember that the Netherlands are neither Belgium or Germany. Yes; the Netherlands and Belgium have a language in common but the culture is very different.
Are there any other search engines after Google? Nah. Not really.
How do you get a Dutch person (or user?) to love you? Be unique, Lennert says. (Slide shows Dutch beauty blowing a kiss (lucky kiss)).
Hyves has 4 million users. 2 million of these people are Dutch. That's 2 billion page views.
NuJij has 1 million users. That's about 4 million page views.
74% of the Dutch are on at least one social network.
Right. That's Lennert finished. Now for Massimo!
Italy
Before he starts - I bet Massimo plugs SEMPO Italy.
Win. Massimo's plugging SEMPO Italy.
... still plugging SEMPO.
Right. Now on to Italy.
Italy take 2
Google is big there. They're the market leader with Yahoo and MSN coming second. After that we've got Virgilio (an Italian directory) and Alice.
There are big publisher portals - kataweb group, RCS and RAI.
However, despite these big publishers and alternative portals there is only really AdSense and AdWords.
Panama is slowly gaining a little more traction but have very far to go.
MIVA disappeared from Italy. Facebook offers some PPC alternatives. Massimo doesn't recommend trying Facebook just for PPC campaigns... got to use it for social media strategies instead.
Massimo says that the interactive agencies in Italy have rushed to embrace Web 2.0 stuff but have forgotten their SEO basics on the way. There are some in-house SEO teams in Italy but they have neither the training nor the resources.
The Italian search agencies are working very well. Massimo thinks the agency fee is a problem, though, as the Italian clients don't really want to pay that. He says he adores Google Italy but hates the way they simply act as sales people. There are only six people in Google Italy, they're only sales people and can't solve your problems (reading between the lines; Google Italy are promising to run SEM campaigns for clients directly and Massimo doesn't rate their ability).
Turns out there are Googlers in the room. Massimo changes slide. :) (Actually Massimo ; there's an Italian Googler in the room and within throwing distance - if I shout duck then duck!)
The evolution of search in Italy;
- from SEO all the way through to SMO
- SERP rankings - blogs + social media (says Massimo)
- universal search = social search
- PPC = lead acquisition
Social media is of increasing importance in Italy. We're also seen an increase in Web TV and mobile ready users (thanks to the iPhone once again).
Germany
Thomas Bindl can't make it so we're going to adhoc...
Germany's internet market is more advanced than Spain. The Travel and Retail verticals in particular are much larger.
Some popular German social networks
- JUX.de
- StayFriends
- SevenLoad
- MyVideo
- Mister Wong
- StudiVZ
Tomy says Mister Wong is good for links as the site doesn't use nofollow. Er... I think they added nofollow some months ago. Tomy did warn the audience that he hadn't been active in Germany for a few months though and so that makes sense.
Alex (surname?) works for a search agency active in both Germany and Spain. He's here to walk us through some search campaign differences.
- Germany is more saturated than Spain; this effects the bid costs
- You can't transplant a campaign from one European country to another; you must localise
- Germany is more sober than Spain. German creatives need to be more technical.
- In Spain, Alex's agency uses 'flashy' landing pages designed to capture the users' attention
- In Germany, Alex's agency uses more conservative landing pages
- When data harvesting; in Spain you can ask for it, get it and know everything about the user - in Germany no one knows their national ID number
- It takes more effort to persuade a German to part with their money
- Spanish customers are easier to keep happy. If you can show a Spanish client you're doing well - then they'll keep the PPC campaign going.
Thanks guys! I'll not live blog any of the questions and answers and keep them exclusive to the conference instead.
SMX Madrid - The Programmble Social Web
Right. I've found some (weak) wi-fi and a set of translation headphones (currently buzzing in my ear) so I'm going to see whether I can do some live blogging from SMX Madrid.
It's 1 o'clock Madrdid time and next up is Eric Tholome from Google. He's the Group Product Manager, Applications there and I think he's going to be talking about open social. The title of the presentation is "The Programmable Social Web". He looks to have at least 7 slides - which is loads for a Googler in a search conference.
Google are also presenting in the other room but I can't get translation for that. Sorry Luisella!
Okay... so far Tomy's speaking in Spanish. No translation!
Oh! Success. The translation software is perfect for Eric... no wait, he's speaking in English! Score. :)
Wow. A patchwork of 10,000 gadgets! These logo swarm slides get bigger for each conference. Who had the time to put this together?
Eric talks about phase 0. Destination websites. Web 1.0.
Then there's phase 1. Users creating their own sites by taking content form one site (RSS) and building their own pages with it. For example; iGoogle.
Phase 2. People start taking applications (rather than just content) from one source and building their own stuff with them. For example, iGoogle evolves from just being RSS modles to showing apps.
Phase 3. Containers - those sites who can host gadgets - start to appear everywhere. For example; combining a real estate gagdet with a map gadget.
Phase 4. The applications evolve into 'creative applications' - really clever and impressive looking ones. For example; IM Google gadgets or Starbuck's interactive map gadget or Honda's sponsorship of Fall Out Boy through the gadget ad. (P.S. Google are keen to push gadget ads)
Eric notes that the web has become an eco system for gadgets.
Under a slide called "Everyone's Writing Code" Eric shows a curve going up that takes data from iGoogle. It shows that they've now got about 20,000+ gadgets and 100,000 sites acting as containers for gadgets. The curve goes up as it plots gadget numbers against time.
Guess what - there's a longtail of gadgets too. Google data; 50% of traffic comes from outside the top 125 gadgets (that's taken from a base of 500 gadgets).
Woot! Google uses a slide that shows a dinosaur, then an asteroid and then a mammal; here comes the evolution of the web speach (I hope he mentions the Flying Spaghetti Monster intelligent design theory too - just to balance things).
Ah... yes; the shift to the browser being the next operating system of choice (I think I can hear someone in Microsoft HQ weeping).
So... roll in OpenSocial. Why is it important? Google says the web is better if the web is social. Eric notes how annoying it was to always have to re-add your friend data whenever you started a new site. He admits that Facebook has been very important. OpenSocial is here to let many social sites have access to not only a gadget eco-system but also to this common set of social data.
Eric stresses that Google doesn't want all the social sites to merge. They want OpenSocial bridge the gap between networks.
OpenSocial allows more applications to be developed. Rather than spend time writing conversion code so aps can run on different sites - the time can be spent writing more aps. It also means that more websites can run more aps. The result? More users will be able to experience the joy of applications.
OpenSocial is not GoogleSocial. It's very much, Eric says, a partner driven project. MySpace and Yahoo, for example, are partners. (Hey; if I was Google I might look into advertising on MySpace and Yahoo... oh... wait. Um.)
PayPal's in OpenSocial. NewsGator. CurrentTV. - Wah. He had a slide of small print that listed lots of OpenSocial partners. I hope I had time to cherry pick three good examples.
There are 5 categories of OpenSocial API
1) People and Friends (access friend info via API)
2) Activities (what friends are doing API)
3) Persistance (Store and share API)
4) Gadgets core (utilities)
5) Gadgets Feature-Specific (interface utlities; flash, for example)
What is Shindig? An apache license container which allows you to serve OpenSocial applications. It takes a little work but not that much. It's open source. Ning is a champion example.
Google are introducing REST APIs for OpenSocial - coming later, working on now - becase not everyone has a JavaScript enviorment.
Eric won't go into more details here but the REST APIs will also allow OpenSocial to go mobile.
So, what about Friend Connect? This helps every site provide some social features with just a snippet of code. In the past you had to use something like Shindig which, of course, meant you had to do some programming. Friend Connect makes its easier to get started with OpenSocial - you just need a few snippets of code from Friend Connect.
Once on Friend Conect you can;
- user registration
- invitations
- members gallery
- message posting
- reviews
- OpenSOcial applications
So, a possible summary here is that Friend Connect is here to help encourage OpenSocial adoption.
What do users get from Friend Connect?
- log in with existing credentials
- see who among their friends are already registered at the site
- invite friends from other social networks
Eric uses the Ingrid Michaelson example. She's a singer and not a coder. Just a few snippets of code from her friends at Friend Connect allows her to enhance her site. We can see that Eric (who uses a Calvin icon!) is logged in to her site and that Ingrid has added the iLike application to her site.
Google are making sure users stay in control of their data. Privacy is important. That's a key point to remember as Friend Connect and OpenSocial lets visitors use one set of data to log into lots of places.
Ah... OpenSocial is not just for friends. There's an Enterprise potential which Google reckons is largely untapped. Business partners can interact. Eric asks us to imagine a sales person on OpenSocial (actually, Eric, I can... not sure I want sales people stalking me on OpenSocial...)
Let's look at some business sites in the OpenSocial partnership; LinkedIn, SalesForce, Viadeo, Xing and Orcale. Not bad, huh?
Eric's wrapping up with some resource URLs. You can find the Google ones easily so here's Shindig; incubator.apache.org/shindig.
Thanks Eric!
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Isabell Wagner speaking at SMX Munich
I've uploaded this and a whole bunch of new photographs to our Flickr account.
We've snow in Norway, SMX in Munich, SES in New York, a Marathon in Paris, Ad:Tech in Paris and a party in Milan!
Friday, January 04, 2008
Yup! SMX In London in 2008
Good news people. I fired up Gmail today to find a comment from Danny on my No SMX London in 2008 post. Simply put; there will be a SMX in London 2008. We'll get more news soon.
Thursday, January 03, 2008
No SMX London in 2008
I've an internal meeting next week to sort through which conferences, expos and shows we're most likely to go to. I'm putting together a spreadsheet to try and sort them into 'sales conferences', 'networking conferences', 'geek conferences' etc. I don't have to - I just figure the more organised I seem to be then the more likely I'll be to make sure that it's myself who gets to go!
Anyway, I'm here on the Search Marketing Expo 2008 page and dimly noticed that there doesn't seem to be an SMX London for 2008. We've got SMX Munich (great news for bigmouthmedia Germany! - lucky people) and SMX Sydney instead (ooh, I'll have to plot some clever reason why I have to go).
This will be interesting as we do have a Search Engine Strategies London this year. In fact, it's only a few weeks away.
I'll have to find a big conference towards the end of '08 to look forward too!
Update: Danny commented below to say that there will be an SMX London in '08. Phew.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
EvilGreenParty
After SMX I was unusually social and popped along to a SEO pub get together which Rob Kerry (aka evilgreenmonkey) had organised.
One thing that you'll discover is that if you put enough SEM types together in a room (ideally, add beer and wine) and you'll get some good quotes. 
For example, Kelvin Newman came up with a cracker;
"We have millions of ideas and as we're in marketing one of them is bound to be genius."
I couldn't agree more!
We also had SEO Chick Judith Lewis handing out Swedish Druid Chocolates.
Friday, November 16, 2007
What's Vanessa Fox worth?
We were lucky enough to have some Googlers over for SMX London. One of my favourite quotes from the conference came from a Google Solutions Engineer.
After Vanessa left... well, we replaced her with about 400 people
Ha-ha! That just shows you how effective caffeine and BlackBerrys are!
SMX London, Day 2, Think About The Human
The title from this post comes from Danny Sullivan who mentioned it during one of the best pro nofollow speeches I've heard. Think About The Human.
This post is a chance for a short pre-dinner break and to jot down some of today's highlights.
Nathan Buggia is brilliant. It's great that he's over here in London. I really expect to see significant things coming from Webmaster Live. I'm confident that we're going to see added extra from this - stuff we don't get from Google.
I think we'll see some more search engines join the Sitemap XML protocol. This can only be a good thing.
I think - much further down the line - we'll see a Claim Your Content for text offering. No one said that; that's me reading between the lines.
In the Dealing With The Penalty Box track hosted by Danny I thought we got some interesting reactions from MSN and Ask about paid links. It's pretty clear that Live Search are still discussing the issue internally - in fact, at times it might have appeared as if they care less about the paid link issue than Google does.
Ask doesn't think the paid link issue effects them so much. Their focus is so much more, they say, on the quality and relevance of the page.
I think Jane Copland of SEOMoz did really well in her Linkbaiting presentation. I heard a rumour that it might have been her first live presentation but based on her performance I'd doubt it. Also, Ciaran Norris' choice of videos ensured he'll leave the conference as "King of Audience Attention".
I've been going to a lot of conferences, presentations and industry events in recent weeks. At first you start to see a trend, then that becomes a fashion, then that becomes "aarhg! not again!". I seem to have scribbled down a must ban forever list.
On the MBF list I have
Thursday, November 15, 2007
SMX London, day 1, write up
After attending the Google Keynote Speech I found myself talking to Gillian Muessing the president of SEOMoz. We decided to try and save the Local Search Tactics session from the advanced track which had been canceled at the last minute (no fault to SMX, either). I agreed to step in and follow my talk on Social Media Optimisation in Europe with a talk on Local Search.
I kid you not. No joke. Not yanking your chain. I've been asked to post the slide I used to talk about a conversation from SESs speaker room last year.
There's something of an unspoken rule 'What's said in the speaker room - stays in the speaker room'. I don't think I broke that. I didn't give details. However, it was a real story of an SEO trying to get his British client listed in Google UK.
As I had to put this presentation together in just a few hours I missed the global stats session. Alas! Other bigmouths, however, where at hand to take notes.
The one note I scribbed down from the What's New With The Algorithm track (which didn't really talk about the algorithm) was a comment from Mikkel deMib Svendsen. He said;
Google does need to deal with the paid link problem. I don't think they'll succeed.
I'm looking forward to day 2!
SMX London, Day 1, Google Keynote Speech
Ah. I've only just got access to internet - here are my quickly typed notes from SMX London, Day One.
Great event. Here's how it's different from SES
- Less 'clients'
- Less advertising
- Higher knowledge
- Cleaner, neater, more organised (I think Rising Media have done well)
- We're going to see more from Google Trends - development is largely driven by Tel Aviv
- Images and Maps have been widely pushed out into Universal Search. Google started rolling Universal Search out across the regions.
- Book Search outranks Blog Search - we'll see Book Search in Universal Search first* - *This is due, I think, to authority of author
- Google changed some elements of openSocial after they got to see some of the aspects of Facebook's API
- Google is keen to stress that the privacy issue of openSocial is not theirs. Data does not pass through Google. It's up to the widget creators to adhere to the privacy policy of the different containers/
- Google Europe would like a standard privacy policy to exist on the web
- What you once knew as a website is now a container.
- There are some hints that openSocial could be used as a platform to a 'Universal log in' - Google didn't say this, this was me reading between two heavily drawn lines.
- Android is primarily a way to give mobile users better access to the internet
- Less than 1% of internet content is in Arabic. Google sees an opportunity here.
- Google has invested hugely in Russian projects but not advertising.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
SMX London
Needless to say I'm annoyed at missing A4U/SES this year. I had a good excuse - I was in hospital! Fortunately, Phil was able to cover for me (even if he did take the picture of the dinosaur out of my presentation!).
As a result of missing A4U/SES I'm super pumped about SMX in London this week. I'll be there for the whole event. I'm even in the main hotel. There are a bunch of us going down but I'm keen to turn blog friends into people I've met in real life. Now, I need to buckle down, stop messing with Search Engine Land and email the poor organizers my ten minute talk (it's a challenge for any bigmouth to only talk for 10 minutes!).
If you're going and fancy meeting up; let me know!
Thursday, April 26, 2007
SMX and Internet World
Danny Sullivan is a lucky man. He has set up SMX - a set of search conferences - which should be a daunting and formidable challenge. Of course, you know all about this - many of the key blogs you read are currently running adverts for SMX. Clever. There's no doubt that Danny's up to the challenge.
I'm particularly impressed at the level of support SMX is getting from the search engines. Not sure whether you should go to SMX or not? Google, the world's most powerful brand, suggests:
Come out to SMX Advanced in Seattle and party with Webmaster Central
and
So, we're very excited about an upcoming conference in our hometown, Seattle -- SMX Advanced, June 4-5. Since it's nearby, many from our team can attend and we're hoping to hear more about what you like and what you'd like to see us do in the coming year.
and Matt Cutts is coming!
The Google Seattle/Kirkland office and the Webmaster Central team are hosting SMX After Dark: Google Dance NW on Monday night. We want to say thanks to you for this great partnership, as well as give you the chance to learn more about what we've been up to. We'll have food, drinks, games (Pacman and Dance Dance Revolution anyone?), and music. Talk to the Webmaster Central engineers, as well as engineers from our other Kirkland/Seattle product teams, such as Talk, Video, and Maps. We may even have a dunk tank! Who would you most like to try your hand at dunking?
If I was Danny - I'd be very happy with Google right now!
Sadly, nope, I can't make it. I will be at Internet World though - which is shaping up to be the big conference here in the UK this summer. I get to speak twice! Come see me as part of Brands Reignited where I'll be part of a panel discussing how to integrate PPC with SEO. Then, on the last day, check out Digital Marketing Theatre where I'll be talking about Local Search with 192. Oh yeah - there's an expo too and bigmouthmedia have a stand. Come grab some of our free stuff! :)
