It has been a crazy week this week. It started with a “day off” on Monday because of a national holiday here in The Netherlands. Somehow we have adopted the idea of “2nd holiday days”, we celebrate an extra day of Eastern, Christmas and in this case Pentecost, or as we call it “Pinksteren”.

Now for somebody who works for a boss these days are great, an extra “free” day off. For somebody who works independently it is horrible. You lose a day. And the work you are supposed to do doesn’t wait. It just becomes more so an ‘extra’ day is just a postponement of what you were supposed to do that day, which you then have to do the days following. You lose time, it is as simple as that. Continue Reading »

It’s that time of the year again: SES London is this week! It is the biggest search conference in Europe and I always love going there. I’ve only missed one show in the past years because my youngest daughter was born.

For the second time I will be speaking at SES London. On Wednesday morning (11am) I will be speaking on the panel “Marketing to the European Union“. I will be in the panel with some very big names in the industry: Mikkel deMib Svendsen, Ciaran Norris and Kristjan Mar Hauksson. The panel is lead by international search expert Andy Atkins-Krüger. Continue Reading »

Last week I got a message, if I was willing to talk to a reporter from the Czech newspaper the Prague Post. Eh Prague…? Czech..? That is not really my area, I live in the Netherlands. I did speak in Prague a few months ago, maybe that is why?

It turned out to be a short interview about the ‘dispute’ which is going in Czech between the Czech leading search engine, Seznam, and Google. You have to know that Czech is one of the few countries world wide where Google is NOT the dominant force. In Czech Seznam is the biggest. An Internet search company, Toplist, however gave out some numbers indicating that Google had surpassed Seznam. Seznam disagreed.

The newspaper wanted to talk to me about the dispute but also about local search engines in general. I do a lot of writing about European search, both on State of Search as on Searchengineland. Therefore they came to me. That was fun! I was interviewed next to friend and organizer of the SES Conferences Mike Grehan.

See an extract of the article below. The entire article you can read here. I wrote a bigger article on the matter on State of Search to describe what is going on in Czech.

State of Search, the website I founded only two months ago because I wanted to write in depth content, has been nominated for best SEO Blog!

It was kind of a surprise for all of us I think, but last week I noticed that at the Search & Social Web Awards there was one nomination among the 22 nominees for best SEO Blog who had never been there before: State of Search! We are ‘battling’ with great sites like Searchengineland, Dave Naylor’s blog and Searchenginepeople. All great blogs so we are first and foremost very proud of the nomination! Only two months in and then this, its a recognition for all the efforts we have put in there. Thanks to the bloggersteam at State of Search we made this nomination. But… off course we would like as many votes as possible to at least take a shot at victory. And for that we need you help!

What can you do? First of all, go here: and vote for us! You have to fill in quite the questionnaire (but a tip: you can skip things ). Second, you can spread the word! Retweet, mail, use Facebook, get your friends involved and help us get the votes! Much appreciated!

Some of the best State of Search posts are:

10 Ways to Increase your Twitter Followers & 10 Essential Tools to do it

As you know I have been working on Searchcowboys for the past 1,5 years. Only a short while ago I announced that I would stop doing that. After building up the brand to where it is now I wanted more time for all my other initiatives.

Last week I launched one of these other initiatives: State of Search. A website (blog) about the world of search. I launched this site with amongst others Lisa Myers and the help of other friends like Roy and Louis. At State of Search we try to take a look at the “why” in search. It’s not a news-site, its about the why of the news and how to react on it.

It might suprise some that I started a new initiative this soon after leaving Searchcowboys. After all, one of the reasons I left Searchcowboys was that I wanted more time. Let me explain.

Continue Reading »