A couple of weeks ago I spoke at the B2B Marketing Forum on the changes we are seeing with the SERPS and how we should act on it. The subject was all about the future, where are the search engines going. After that session I got interviewed by a Dutch people search engine, 123 people. You can find the interview below. They also wrote out the entire interview here. The interview is in Dutch so if you want to understand it and are not Dutch, here’s te version which is translated using Google Translate (which has its usual quality so you are warned…).

Google is the ‘best’ search engine out there, at least that is what most people believe. Why? Because Google gives back the most relevant results. Or do they? Sometimes even Google ‘messes up’ so to speak. When looking for an image to go along a post about blogging I wrote today on State of Search I found these remarkable results:

Quite remarkable is it? There must be a logical explanation, maybe its personalized search, but most probably its because there are so many people blogging about their cats.

Of course I also checked this search on Bing Images (which looks much better than Google’s by the way) and to be fair: they didn’t give me the results I wanted either, but they didn’t find that much cats as Google did… It’s time for search engines to implement the user intent they have been talking about lately.

Next week SES returns to Amsterdam. After a very succesful first episode last year the conference returns to the Dutch capital with an impressive line up. Next to several great Dutch speakers we also welcome more international speakers like Bill Hunt and Dixon Jones.

I myself will be leading the panel “News and Search”, which features Brent Payne and Julian Sambles (of the Daily Telegraph). The session will have a Q&A in it in which we will discuss the combination of news and search. I’m very much looking forward to this session because we can really dive into the subject. A subject which is very near to me.

I’m preparing the session now, so if you have any input, please let me know: what are your issues / questions when it comes to news and search? What would you like to hear from these two big names in the industry? Let me know!

Last week I was invited by Andy Atkins Kruger of Webcertain to talk on the International Search Summit in London. He organizes this event to give people a better view on international and multilingual Search. The event was very well organized (credits to Gemma Birch) and also had a very good line up of speakers. Amongst others Bill Hunt, Motoko Hunt, Dixon Jones, Will Critchlow and Kristjan Mar Hauksson made their appearance. I was very impressed with the quality of speakers and especially liked the talks of Motoko Hunt and Ching-Yun Huang about search in the far East, Japan and China.

In the afternoon it was my turn to do a talk about Search in Holland. I took a little different approach then most other speakers. The angle I took was somewhat cultural. I took the audience by the hand explaining them what Dutch are like and how that translates to the web and search. It was somewhat of a detour but that was intentional because I believe that if you don’t know who you’re optimizing for you won’t succeed. Continue Reading »

Next week its A4U Expo in London. A4U Expo is probably one of the best organized events in Europe, if not in the world. The Expo is organized by Matthew Wood and his team. The event is special, amongst other things because it brings together affiliates and search marketers. This unique combination is a guarantee for learning a lot.

I am going to be one of the speakers at A4U London this year. In the session "You want to Tweet What!? – Social Media, Twitter and Affiliate Marketing" I’ll be speaking about brand building by using social media. In the past year Searchcowboys has gone from virtually unknown to a very well known brand in the industry. I’ll be telling how I did this using social media. With that I’ll try to ‘learn’ the audience how they could be doing their brand building via social media. It’s gonna be a very interesting session!

If you want a last minute chance to see my presentation live (before I put it on slideshare next week) at A4UExpo you can now book with a 10% discount at A4UExpo by using the code "SPKD10" or "COWBOYS10". Be sure to do so! Continue Reading »