WebConnoisseur

It seems a bit premature to have tips for the Search Marketing Expo considering the first-ever SMX doesn’t take place until next week, but it is taking place in my hometown and I’ve been to enough search conferences to know how to make the most of them.

Below are my tips for those who are new to search conferences and those who aren’t new to search conferences but are new to SMX (should be the rest of us). If you are new to search, I think you are at the wrong conference (SMX Seattle is geared towards advanced search marketers).

New to Search Conferences:

• Some of the best search information is gained outside of the conference rooms – in hallways, at the parties and in the bars. Danny realizes this, and has set up three networking events. Attend them all.
• Many of the brightest minds in search will be at this conference (both search engine employees and those whose lifeblood is tied to search). Listen and remember, not all experts will have a microphone in front of them, some will be sitting right next to you.
• No matter how brilliant or “famous” the people at the conference may seem to you, don’t let that deter you from introducing yourself. I’ve found people in our industry to be incredibly welcoming. Remember, these people aren’t famous outside this industry and they are as much of a geek as you and I are.

New to SMX:

• After being beautiful and in the 80s all week, the weather is expected to flip completely to rain on Monday and Tuesday. It’s really a conspiracy. Seattle wants out-of-towners to tell everyone it rains here all the time. Regardless, we’ll probably be spending most of our time indoors anyways.
• The Bell Harbor conference center rocks. Great views and good location. Wifi is free, so bring a laptop so you can connect to the web during a conversation to show people what you are talking about.
• Andy Beal claims he’ll be videotaping everything. Jump on camera if you’ve got a spare moment, but shoo him away if the camera is taming down your corner conversation. Don’t forget about the WebProNews guys either.
• If you want to try a local favorite beer, ask for a Mac and Jacks (it’s only available on tap).

Other people excited about the upcoming SMX Seattle Conference:
Google Webmaster Central
SEOMoz
Karl Ribas
Todd Mintz
Scott Clark
SEO Chicks
Adam Killam
Matt Cutts

SEOmoz released the results of the 2nd Annual Web 2.0 Awards yesterday. I’m happy to announce that I was one of the 25 judges. I’ve judged the Webby Awards for a number of years and even judged an online Miss World competition a few years ago, but I must admit that judging the Web 2.0 Awards was a refreshing change. It’s fun to see how people are changing the web in exciting ways.

I highly recommend you take a look at the 2007 Web 2.0 Award Winners, especially if you are still unsure what a “Web 2.0 site” is. I think every company with an online presence could benefit from paying attention to sites that are leading the movement towards Web 2.0 experiences.

Think about how you might be able to integrate elements of what these other sites are doing into your site, especially if it adds value to your existing user base.

I love it when someone takes the time to research and answer a question that many people have. In this case, Stone Temple decided to put several web analytics providers to the test by installing multiple solutions on a few sites to see the differences. Their results can be seen here. Be sure to read the whole report because some of the differences were due to implementation mistakes.

Here are what I found to be the key findings:

• Be prepared for different numbers whenever switching analytics packages. None seem to count the data in the exact same way.
• 3rd-party cookie deletion rate exceeds 1st-party cookie deletion by about 13%. More proof that you shouldn’t use 3rd party cookies.
• WebTrends, ClickTracks and Google Analytics may over count uniques and WebSideStory (HBX) and Unica may undercount.
• ClickTracks may severely undercount page grouping data.

Potential flaws with the study:

• Just four sites used. Pre-screened by sites that had large enough paid search spending.
• Of the four sites, none are high traffic sites. I could only find two of them in ComScore and the site with the most traffic only sees about 200k U.S. visitors a month. I’d love to see the same study on sites with more visitors which would make the datae much more reliable. reliability of the data.
• In an effort to “protect” the participating sites from sharing their real traffic volume data, daily uniques time period was not disclosed, plus each analytics package probably has different rules on what constitutes a daily unique. For example, some may cut off a “visit” at midnight, but let it carry to the next day as another unique “visit,” others may not. Another example is that some may choose to expire visits at different time periods (30-minutes of non-activity, etc.). I would have liked to see a weekly or monthly uniques count comparison instead.

When I first heard of this study I was excited that we may finally learn a lot about the different providers and which are the best solution, but was a bit disappointed when the results were released. Sounds like we may learn more when the final results are released, but it may be more along the lines of implementation findings. I hope it inspires more people to do more tests.

The 11th annual Webby Award Winners have been announced. 69 sites and 11 videos have been blessed with the web equivalent of an Oscar. As a judge for the awards, I’ve flown to NY for the past two Webby Awards Galas and must say they are THE coolest web event to attend. Unfortunately, this year I’m not making the trip thanks to SMX Seattle being scheduled on the same two days.

Hitwise correctly predicted people’s voice winners for MiniClip Games, Manchester United, TripAdvisor, BBC News, Great Schools and Facebook. If you look at the list of nominees and winners, you may notice some that were notably missing (Zillow for the Real Estate category, for example) and I’d like to make it clear that the sites go through a pre-screening process and sometimes don’t make it to the list of sites for judges to choose from. The people’s voice also has a similar restriction: people can only choose from the 5 nominees.

In the future, I hope the Webbys will re-introduce write-in votes for the people’s voice awards and that Judges can review the voting eligible lists before the voting begins to nominate any noticeable gaps. While I’m giving feedback, I’d like to offer the following advice to judges and people’s voice voters to help eliminate bias:

Webby Judges: please place more weight on site usability and repeat visit likelyhood. Ask yourself, “is this a site that I would come back to?” As a judge, I find it tempting to let the first-visit “wow” factor play too big of a role, especially considering the number of sites we look at. For my vote, sites have to do more than just dazzle me with flash eye-candy.

People’s Voice Voters: please don’t vote just for the sites you are familiar with. Take the time to visit the other sites. Sometimes the best site for a given category isn’t one you are familiar with. Use the awards as a way to discover some great new sites.