“You can’t just buy page rank. You can’t expect to buy a site, add new content and expect it to rank the same right off” - Vanessa Fox
“Especially with SEO there’s no such thing as a quick fix or a quick buck. It’s a long term strategy! You have to put into your dues and it’s a rich, rewarding process.” - Avinash Kaushik
“I saved $300 last night by not going out drinking!” – Mike Grehan
“I spend a lot of time thinking!” - Avinash Kaushik
“Questions are the fundamental things you need to ask to gain actionable insight” - Matt Bailey
“Did you see the fabulous eBay presentation?” - Anon
“How did I manage to spend $300 last night on champagne?” - Mike Grehan
“As we go through life we try and figure out what people are communicating. We test we look at their body language, we look at their facial expressions, but then there is the problem of distance, we have to figure out other ways to communicate over long distances. And as the communication that we want to transfer becomes more sophisticated, we come up with more sophisticated and more elegant ways of transmitting that information.
We are getting good at sending signals. And when the technology comes around to help us send signals, it gets more sophisticated and more complicated. And we discover that we’re pretty good at receiving signals so we reach out to whatever kinds of signals are out there, whatever kind of signals we can find going by, to determine is there meaning there?
We take whatever data we can get and try and turn it into something that’s understandable, something that is logical, we take raw data and turn it into something that might be meaningful and hopefully is useful……………hopefully!
The number of signals that we are receiving are growing, the way that we are receiving them and interpreting them is improving. The potential for what we can do when we receive signals from people on our websites is enormous because we have a very sophisticated tool for receiving signals. We’ve got lots of different kinds of ways to receive those signals. We can array that data to be even more meaningful. We have the capacity to really, really listen to what’s happening in the market place.
We have the opportunity to move from simply reporting on what’s happening, to comparing us to others, to analysing what people are doing to dynamically returning signal with signal and try to match up with 1-1 marketing and peering into the hearts and mind of the market place.”
Pure nectar……
I’ve arrived in California for the eMetrics Summit and am really quite excited!
Being in charge of the adCenter Analytics Blog has meant I’ve had to get up to speed on the whole analytics industry……….and quickly!
It’s one thing going to web analytics sessions at a search conference and listening to Matt Bailey or Avinash do their very good & well established thing, but it’s a totally different bucket of page views to be thrust into THREE DAYS of numbers, goal, actions, funnels and treemaps!
How will I cope? Well at SES London I was a little nervous about attending a dinner Ian Thomas had organised for the Orion Panel - Jim Sterne, Bryan Eisenberg, Brian Clifton etc…. Ian had even said it might be a little dry & nerdy but it wasn’t at all.
I’m happiest when my brain is hurting! The wit, charm, intelligence and mental agility was immense and the generous repartee made for a fine evening…
Life’s about looking forward, moving forward and learning how to get there.
If you own a website, you could do worse than find yourself in amongst these guys…….you’ll definitely come away with some things to think about!
Just received a mail from The Wynn - I stayed there for PubCon back in November.
So I scroll down to unsubscribe and get told the usual “click here” but then it gives me an alternative……to write to them and request to be taken off their mailing list.
I did some research and found out a postcard would cost £0.56 to mail to the US. Add that to the £0.75 for a nice one of the Queen (London prices!) and you get a snail-mail cost for unsubscribing of £1.31.
Weighing up the options, I figured the effort of “clicking there” to be a far superior one to writing and sending a post card to Mr Wynn so that’s what I did! 
Next week I’ll be in Dublin for Search Marketing World 2008. The inaugural conference last year was a great success. A short, sharp injection of searchification with a keynote from Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land and tracks for the newbie and advanced search marketer alike.
Chris Sherman is officiating this year and I’ll be speaking on a panel with Google and Yahoo! getting quizzed on all sorts of interesting topics I’m sure.
So if you’re reading this in Dublin register here. If you don’t live in Ireland why not take advantage of a great one day conference and enjoy a few pints of the black stuff while you’re there!
The Irish Independent have written a great article to introduce the conference….
Wednesday night saw Microsoft show some of the delegates/speakers from Search Engine Strategies New York 2008 a good time.
It was all to celebrate the launch of our new adCenter Blogs and Forums
The Bus Driver
The Anticipation!
Times Square in the Rain 
Jeremiah Andrick - Cindy Krum - Richard Zwicky
David Szetela & Kristjan Mar Hauksson & Partners
Counting Cards
Jill’s Mean Backhander
Warming Up For Karaoke
adCenter411 Incognito
Fabulous Food….
Beautiful people!
Chips Are Down
Tamar Weinberg & Jonathan Hochman
Lady In Blue
JenStar - Lorna - Danny Sullivan
Me Carefully Whispering
Jason Yormark Wearing Some Billie Jeans
SMO New York - New York
Matt McGowan & Friend
Kevin Ryan & Rory Brown Outside SearchBash
3am - Time for bed!?
Seeing as tonight is the IMNY Charity Party here at SES New York I was doing some rooting around for some way to link to some BOTW content and found this little gem yesterday - Best Of The Web Awards 1998 - 10 years is a long time in New Media…..
“Best Navigation Aid (?) - Yahoo!”
“Most Important Concept - MapQuest (closely followed by eBay!)”
There’s no Google and no social networking platforms although RuralVermont.com wins best site designed to serve a local community!
Does anyone remember Urban Fetch?
PS: Greg - Nice to meet you last night at last! Thanks for voting for me, I’m just sorry 83k Microsoft employees couldn’t swing it for me!
Watch Steve ROAR for Web Developers!
Arrived on Friday and spent the weekend working on our announcement tomorrow at Search Engine Strategies New York and getting out & about. If you’re thinking of going shopping, Macys is pretty cheap and they offer overseas visitors an 11% off pretty much anything in the store just for not being American!
Turn up at the Visitor Center and show some ID and you’d get a discount card!
The Hilton
View From My Room
Healthy Breakfast!
Homesick
Do You Take British Pounds?
Times Square
So That’s Where The Marketing Budget Went!
The Say That British SEOs Are Bright On Broadway
Dinner Anyone?
Medium-Rare Please Dave!
Them Travelling Shoes!
