Instant Answers and Visual Search galleries are given the winter games treatment.

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The largest search marketing show in Europe is heading back to London 15 - 19 February. And it's jam packed with a mixture of classic sessions, new sessions, top rated speakers, and new talent.

As a parent, I know it's never fair to say one of your kids is your favorite. They're all your favorite. And I kind of have this situation with the family of shows in the SES international conference series. I shouldn't really have a favorite. But I do have a very strong affinity with the London show. I've been involved on the programming side of the London conference since I was appointed as chair and host of the of the show back in 2007

And as it rolls back into town in a week or so, I've been taking a look at how the content has been evolving. For 2010, the show has a whole new look and feel. So, I thought I would pick out the fabulous keynote session we have lined up.

Before I do that, I should quickly mention that our partners at the Online Marketing Summit have a full day of sessions prior to the start of the main SES show. Monday 15 February has a great line-up of speakers and topics covering all disciplines in online marketing. There's a real bonus for anyone who has purchased a full show pass for SES, in that this also allows you to attend the OMS day free of charge. So, come in a day earlier and take advantage of some extracurricular digital marketing education.

And on the subject of education...that really is the byword for what SES is all about. For 12 years SES has been educating an international audience in the finer art and science of search engine marketing. And this year, in London, we've broadened the scope of content to really help online marketers refine their integrated marketing skills.

Each morning at SES London, we have specially selected international thought leaders. And to kick off the new decade we've invited three visionary marketers to share their insights into what's successfully working right now and where it might go in the future.

Day one kicks off with kick-ass-keynoter Avinash Kaushik. Many people will know Avinash from both his excellent books on analytics and his role as Google's analytics evangelist. But if you haven't seen Avinash present a keynote session, be prepared for an online marketing force of nature. "Be Awesome: Ideas for Approaching Search Analytics Differently is the session title for the first keynote of the show.

In his keynote, Avinash shares specific ideas you can execute to find the audiences you crave online and use data to ensure that you are getting the highest possible ROI. And his advice on how to prepare for this session? Bring an open mind!

Day two kicks off with another of the smartest minds in online marketing. Bryan Eisenberg is co-author of no less than three Wall Street Journal/Amazon/New York Times best selling marketing books. As an industry pioneer in conversion techniques, Bryan will share his 21 secrets to top converting Web sites. Search marketing, usability, testing, and more. It all comes together in this one "must take notes" session.

And day three sees the return to SES London by someone who truly does deserve the "guru" accolade. Eight books later and dozens of awards and accolades (including one of the 50 most influential people in digital marketing), Jim Sterne will reveal the findings from his upcoming book: "Social Media Metrics" which, coincidentally, also happens to be the title to this session. "Today, social media is where the World Wide Web was in 1995. Everybody's talking about it but best practices are few and far between. We know it's important, valuable and catching on. What we don't know yet is how to measure the business results of our business investments in this new communication medium," says Jim. So listen up, there's a global expert speaking!

Like most people I know in the industry, there's nothing I like better than a good old debate on what's working, what's not, where the industry is going, and everything else that goes with it. So, I decided to bring back the keynote power discussion panels each afternoon.

The first one on Tuesday afternoon is a state of the industry session and sees the new chairman of Incisive Media (the proud purveyors of this fine conference series) making her debut at SES London. Helen Alexander, CBE has had a remarkable career in publishing (The Economist), is currently president of the CBI, non-executive director of Centrica and Rolls Royce plc, as well as trustee of the World Wide Web Foundation. Phew! Some background. Together, she and I will moderate the afternoon power panel.

And what a superb panel we have. Jonathan Beeston, client services director, Europe with Efficient Frontier will bring us up to speed with findings from EF's quarterly reports on the industry. Meanwhile, Edward (Teddie) Cowell, SEO director with Guava, will give us a bit of trend analysis based on the annual report that Guava and eConsultancy produce annually. He'll take a look over his shoulder at the way things have evolved in the industry over the years they have been producing the report and also take a peek into his crystal ball to give initial thoughts on what's likely to emerge in the upcoming trends report.

Also on the panel is Anders Hjorth, CEO of Outrider, one of the industry's longest serving SEM companies. He'll be giving expert comment relating to the information provided by Jonathan and Teddie as well as adding his own insights on differences in industry trends between the U.K., Europe, and elsewhere. And joining from the U.S. is Kristen Mangers, founder and CEO, WebVisible, Inc. Kristen is a search marketing expert specializing in local search. She has proprietary data to share on how local search is changing in the U.S., as well as giving some insight into the U.K. marketplace as it continues to develop.

All-in-all this is a not-to-be-missed session for those with their eyes on industry trends and developments.

On Wednesday afternoon, we focus our attention on the SEO side of the business. The session has the title, SEO: Where to next? and will touch on every aspect of the art and science of search engine optimization. The panel will be headed by industry stalwart and managing director of long established SEM firm Receptional, Dixon Jones. He'll be joined by Lisa Myers, CEO and owner of SEO and social media agency Verve Search. Lisa's been in the business for five years and she certainly knows her onions when it comes to search and social. A genuine award winner, Lisa is the founder of seo-chicks.com and also blogs for SearchCowboys.

In the blue corner, Maile Ohye, developer programs tech lead with Google, will be giving us the big G viewpoint. Maile coordinates Google Webmaster Central outreach efforts, such as the Webmaster Central Blog. And in the red corner, Dan Cohen, global SEO lead, MSN, gives a viewpoint from the Bing camp. And Julian Sambles, head of audience development with the Telegraph, provides a few of his own SEO headlines.

The Thursday afternoon panel tackles all things paid search/content networks/display. The panel is led by Jon Myers, head of search/associate director with Mediavest and the newest addition to the SES Global Advisory Board. With 11 years of search marketing experience, Jon is a veteran with a very impressive background. Known to the powers that be at the major search engines, he is well up to speed with industry matters and frequently tapped into by major online marketing publications.

Joining him on the panel is Ciarán Norris, lead, global social media, Mindshare. Ciarán has been working online since getting a job in a Sydney Internet cafe in 1999. Working with clients such as Nike, Rolex, Unilever and HSBC he certainly brings the big brand value to the session. Duncan Fisher is head of paid search with leading agency, Latitude. Keeping abreast of the latest techniques and technology in search, Duncan is very much "hands on" and has great experience in campaign architecture and developing trends in the search space.

It's probably not unusual to have Tom Jones on this panel. But no doubt he's heard that joke too many times. And I'm beginning to wish I hadn't written that... but too late. Tom is head of media with international agency, iCrossing. Tom and his team of search experts offer consultancy and deliver accountable media campaigns across myriad sectors including retail, travel, finance, and B2B. So, when it comes to looking into what's happening in industry specific sectors, he's an expert.

Julie Warburton, client service director at Microsoft Advertising (U.K.) rounds off this panel of experts. Julie is responsible for premium search, display account management, and both display and network operations. So, on a panel discussing the near convergence of paid search, content networks, and display she's certainly a great addition. Formerly with Yahoo, Julie joined Overture as head of implementation in 2002. This is a lady steeped in industry knowledge.

And something I am so looking forward to is the Black hat/White hat - Unconferenced debate. Join us for a first time and unique session at SES, London. The session takes place in the hotel bar. The soapbox will be available for a few select speakers on either side to make their case and then the audience takes over. All with a glass of your favorite beverage in your hand, of course!

Don't forget to sign up for the pre-conference meet and greet too. The crowd is building already and I'm much looking forward to catching up with friends and colleagues.

Join around 1500 of your friends and colleagues in London 15 - 19 February.

Ahhh, this is the stuff conferences are made of!

Action contrasts rhetoric since Google ultimatum.

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After failing to acquire Twitter, will Google now compete?

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Get ready for the "Bring Back the Old Facebook" groups.

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If you look at Hot Searches in Google Trends for Feb. 7, 2010, "dockers free pants" ranks #1, "dockers.com/freepants" ranks #2, "dockers super bowl ad" ranks #10, and "www.dockers.com/freepants" ranks #14.

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Suggestions run the gamut from competitors to simply next-door establishments.

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Tell us which search results you prefer for professional football's biggest day.

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The Google Superbowl ad ran in the third quarter of the big game. As CEO Eric Schmidt said in a tweet yesterday, "Hell has indeed frozen over."

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Posted by randfish

Like 150 million or so other folks, I spent today watching the Superbowl. As a marketer, it's hard not to pay close attention to the advertisements, and this year featured a heavy focus on sending viewers to the web. However, I was a bit surprised that we didn't see anything like 2007's Pontiac advertisement:

At the end of the ad, Pontiac invites viewers to "Google" their brand to learn more. This seemed a bit odd in 2007, but today, it would have been a brilliant marketing move. Here's why:

Personalized search is now on by default. This means that every click, branded search, and expression of a "brand preference" or "brand affinity" in Google's results is likely to result in preferential biasing towards that domain in future searches. A "Google" Pontiac message during this Superbowl wouldn't just send users to their site, it would also mean that tens of millions of searchers would now be "personalized" towards that domain.

I'm not sure when we'll start to see this strategy employed, but it can't be long. Personalization (and even social search, which Google pushed out of Labs two weeks ago) make leveraging your brand, in any channel, a powerful tool for SEO.

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In abount an hour, you'll get a chance to vote for your favorite Super Bowl 2010 commercials at YouTube's AdBlitz Channel. But you can vote for the best pre-game YouTube videos now.

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Posted by RobOusbey

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According to a variety of sources, Google plans to run a Super Bowl commercial in the third quarter to today's big game.

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Five years ago in February 2005, according to legend, the idea of YouTube was born after Chad Hurley and Steve Chen experienced difficulty sharing videos that had been shot at a dinner party at Chen's apartment in San Francisco.

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Nearly 178 million U.S. Internet users watched 33.2 billion online videos during December 2009, according to the latest data from comScore Vedio Metrix.

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Cupertino-based company rumored to be launching mobile ad network.

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It's that time again.

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Posted by mgalecki

This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

A SHORT INTRODUCTION...

We all know that the search engine robots more frequently visit popular pages, i.e. those that have the largest number of incoming links, both internal and external ones. The architecture of a website is usually correlated with the popularity of these pages expressed by number of backlinks:

• Home page has the most backlinks,
• 1st (e.g. product categories), 2nd & 3rd level pages obtain less links,
• finally the least important are deep pages (with articles, classified ads, product pages, etc).

The above mentioned “importance” of web pages versus the web site architecture has been illustrated in one of the Rand's posts titled "Diagrams for Solving Crawl Priority & Indexation Issues":

Important pages tend to have a different priority of indexation, and this was also presented very nicely by Rand:

Purple spots are those with the highest number of external links. As it can be seen, the pages which are close, take some of the popularity and they pass part of it further (pink spots). All the other spots stand for pages that are too far from the entrance points of search engine robots, which means that the chance of their indexation is much smaller.

In case of classified websites, which contain a lot of content, the above diagram should include subsequent category listing or search results pages. They are obviously less important than the main category pages, but their indexing additionally influences the indexation of their components - ad details pages. This is particularly important when the listing starts with so called premium ads, which change less often than standard classifieds.

BEFORE THE TEST...

Having this theoretical information, we have decided to see how it is like in practice. We have analyzed a website of http://www.morusek.pl (with animals and pets related classifieds from Poland) which has a total number of indexed pages exceeding 100,000. Using the combination of "site" and "inurl" queries we checked what is the number of indexed pages with a list of classifieds (in Polish “ogloszenia”): http://www.google.pl/search?q=site%3Awww.morusek.pl+inurl%3A%22%2F0%2F%22+inurl%3Aogloszenia

The initial results were the following:

To continue the analysis, we excluded the first pages, as the numbers here are influenced by existence of some category pages with no classifieds at the moment, but which are indexable (there are crawlable links in the menu). In addition, to verify the effectiveness of the "site" query, we took into account a number of pages reported by Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) under "Internal Links". The results were as follows:

WHAT'S IMPORTANT TO KNOW?

The first conclusion is obviously that the higher the page number is, the less probability that the page will be indexed. Secondly, while the actual numbers of GWT and “site” queries vary a lot, the trends (slopes) are almost the same. On average, the chance that the robot will crawl to the next page of search results decreases by 1,2-1,3% per page.

It is also interesting that, according to Google Webmaster Tools, pages from 2 to 4 have a good indexation ratio which later decreases dramatically at the fifth position. For example, for sites with number 4 the level of indexation is 60%, while for pages number 15 it falls below 30% (according to Google Webmaster Tools), or 40% (for the command “site” in Google). This is due to the fact that Googlebots have a much longer way to reach the appropriate link in case of the latter (a link to page 15 first appears on page 12), while there are direct links to pages 2, 3 and 4 on the first pages of search listings (see below):

THE SUBJECT OF THE TEST: INTRODUCING MORE LINKS

We decided to test what would be the changes in indexation ratios if we introduced more links to subsequent ad listings pages. On the first page of each category we added links to the 5th, 10th and 15th pages as show on the picture below:

After a month we tested the changes. Due to inaccurate results returned by the command “site” in Google (number of indexed pages seemed to be greater than the actual number of them) we present data from Google Webmaster Tools (internal links) only:

THE RESULTS

The graph clearly shows us that indexation of pages that were added to the listing on the first page is much higher after the change (pages: 5th, 10th and 15th), and actually equals the indexation of pages 2, 3 and 4.

However, the increase in indexation of pages directly linked from the home page did not affect the indexation of the neighbouring pages. For example, we can see a huge increase for page 10, but there is no change for pages 9 and 11. The conclusion is that for Googlebots these pages are too far from the points of entry. Only category pages for main region have incoming links. To index page 9 of the intersection of categories and regions, the robots would have to go the following path:

1. main category page (entry point),
2. category page + region (first page of results),
3. category page + region (tenth page of results),
4. category page + region (page 9  of the results).

What makes it even worse, not all the category pages have incoming links.

THE CONCLUSIONS

For classifieds or e-commerce websites, the conclusion is that the more pages linked in the listing, the greater the chance that they will be indexed. In general, it is clear that the farther from the point of entry (external link), the less chance that the page will be indexed. Therefore, it is advisable not to create sites with a very deep structure and to remember that the pages far from the points of entry should be additionally linked to (for example as "similar products", "see also", "related categories", etc.).

Looking at the chart we can see yet another change – a slight decrease in indexation of pages 2, 3 and 4. This can be either because there are new pages added recently and they have not been indexed yet (when the number of ads in a certain category has started to exceed the space on the first page), or due to increase in the number of outcoming links on the first page. I would rather bet the first explanation, because in fact the new links were added to a small percentage of pages. There are only 400 fifth pages (so the links to fifth pages were placed on 0,5% of all the first pages). Pages 10 and 15 are even less numerous.

Introduction of additional links has not increased the level of indexation of classifieds, however I suppose that the rate of change was simply too small to affect their indexation. Moreover, the indexation of ads of Morusek.pl exceeded already 80% when the experiment started. Such changes can produce a visible increase in the number of indexed pages in case of sites where the rate of change is much higher and the level of indexation of classifieds or products - lower.

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Posted by great scott!

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Would marketers be smarter to take the money they'll spend on Super Bowl 2010 commercials and use it to by YouTube ads instead?

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