For certain, the search assistants and related 'helper apps' are where a lot of the research money and attention is going right now.  Partly because they take search away from being a destination you go to, and instead deliver the power of search to whatever app or activity you are doing.  The research will be able to transfer directly over to increased mobile and wearable use, making search and information omnipresent in our lives, without having to specifically 'go' to search. 

Whoever can first make the helper that is so good everyone else embeds it in their apps can upset the entire established pecking order for Search, or for Social networking, instantly being bigger than Google or Facebook in the next gen.

I think my first proper meet-up was Pubcon, the first one, which was all very spontaneous at the time really, hastily put together around the fact that Mike was going to be over here on a trip anyway.

Quote from: Rooftop on September 09, 2011, 09:05:45 AM
Some profile self-abuse is planned for today.

You'll go blind! 

If your site can't give a 404, it can't be trusted, because its a bottomless pit.  Googlebot especially is programmed to deliberately ask for broken URLs just to check a 404 can be gathered.  If it can't, it throttles the spidering to a level that seriously hurts.

>> I hear they kill more people a year than sharks:)
Hey, if a shark comes hurtling through the air at 100mph you'll be wishing it was a coconut!

Quote from: JasonD on July 01, 2011, 12:35:53 AM
I own contentforlinks widgetcontent and similar sorts of domains if anyone wants to run with it for the benefit of us all ?

Jason, that may tie into something I have in my mind of late.  I'll need to think about the angles, but may be interested in contentforlinks based ideas.  Sorry to be vague, but this idea is at too early a stage to be public yet.

Going back to the OP, yes, there is huge value in good content, and value can be taken in whatever currency you want. 

However, I wouldn't be giving away the USP of your own content, but rather, leverage the damn good content creation that the company obviously have.  Create a new 'shareable' version of the content that is different and distinct, but of equally high quality to the content the company use themselves.  That way they retain the uniqueness and authority, come whatever changes may.

Ah, tracking sales back to online actions, when the sales happen offline, in-store or by phone, has always been a deliciously tricky and difficult problem.

The simplest, of course, is the classic 'print your voucher' idea, implemented on the website and useable in-store.  Its nice because you can make people create an account and login to be able to print the voucher, and even include some sort of identification code number into the voucher that is printable and will be presented.  However, it depends on the company being willing to take some of their classic push marketing budget and put it into creating a special offer deal for the vouchers instead.

You can always add more value to the proposition by having the vouchers be a reward of some kind, for an action that has a value.  Perhaps they earn vouchers by completing online customer surveys, rating and reviewing products, or some similar small but valuable task that thereby 'discounts' the costs of the voucher discounts and system.  Referring friends to make accounts can also work, of course.

Going full circle can work too.  Everytime someone makes a purchase, their receipt (or a special ticket) can be given that entitles them to reward points, but the account for those points is an online one.  They get a voucher or number on their receipt that when entered in their online account gives them rewards points.  They can accumulate these if they like, and whenever they want, print out that coupon/voucher with its unique, one-shot code, to get money off their next purchase, or to get some special offer outright.

Naturally, telephone numbers on the websites should be dedicated ones only promoted/available online, so all activity on those telephone numbers can be attributed properly to the online presence too.

How are these ideas resonating?  Or have you already proposed all of those and are looking to go the extra mile somehow?

Quote from: Brad on May 17, 2011, 12:54:17 PMSomewhere there is a warning here about making an eco-system too closed.

So true.

Too closed, and too greedy.  They took the goose that could lay golden egs, and tried to crowbar them out faster, and sticking a crowbar up a goose won't work for the goose's long term egg-laying.  

30% was far too much to be asking for the market it was, and in the long term, the increased competitiveness and wider range a 10% fee would have allowed would have netted more income.  You'd think they'd have learned this from sales of download music singles, over the sales of actual CDs online.  Who is better equipped to know this than the people behind iTunes?

Too many to list but certainly the first ever Pubcon when Mackin came over was a classic.  Even managed a quiet meal with Mackin the night before.  Of course, I had to pretend the event was a more official 'marketing opportunity' to get there without having to take a day off for it.

Heh, yeah, alt-search-groups and similar is where it started publically, though I think Rumbas is referring to the old MarketPositionTalk forums, run by the folks behind the oldest big SEO software (huge in its day).

Then there was SEF, WMW, the original Cre8pc newsletter and later the Cre8asite Forums, etc, etc.

There were days of search engines that indexed and ranked in real time - submit a page, see where it ranked, tweak it, resubmit, watch it go up or down, in real time.  Those were easy days.  Then Altavista, Excite, Yahoo as a directory, and Looksmart actually mattering (a little bit).  Later Google getting its break providing SERPs for Yahoo, etc.

There were days when SEO wasn't.  When search engines provided less traffic in a month than Google alone can provide in an hour now.  When we still looked at banner exchanges, web rings, and links pages as sources of genuine traffic.  When a mention in the right newsletter was worth more than being #1 for a SERP for a couple of months.

Workwise itself, there were the days when respectable companies thought SEO was basically hacking, and you had to sign an NDA just to talk about talking about maybe giving a proposal.   Days when the only companies hiring SEOs were either adult industry or the mom-and-pop businesses with nothing to lose.  SEO was not just a dirty word, it was a word so outright filthy hardly anyone admitted to knowing what it meant.

It ought to make me feel old, but thankfully, I know at least half of you remember it too.  (Probably 3/4 if alzheimers hadn't started to get some of us).  Of course, its only old history in Internet years.  Half of that stuff is still out there (or still being sold as SEO if you outsource to some places).

Some might look at all the waters passed under the bridge and wonder at how far the SEs had evolved and forced us to follow.

But most of us here know the truth.  It was us that evolved, continually producing the next generation of spam and tactics that the SEs desperately strove to keep abreast of.  Only a few search engines made it.  Strange as it may seem, and argue as I'm sure most search engineers would, it is marketers and spammers that forced the evolution of search, and a heck of a lot of the entire success of ecommerce.

Looking at the names here all in one forum thread made me feel like I'd been gobbled up by the wayback machine.

Black Knight, aka Ammon Johns

History is just that.  Half of you were there to share it, the rest wouldn't appreciate it as an anecdote properly anyway.   Like most of the stories in SEO, you really had to be there.

So, "hey" to all those that know me and remember, and "hello" to whoever doesn't.

Noone seems to know what happened to that Ammon guy.  He's dropped off the map, or below the radar. 

But seriously, still kicking, just far more quietly. 

You can blame Rowan for nudging me that I was being asked about here.