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Search Engine Marketing at PubConference IV Boston
WebmasterWorld’s Search Engine Marketing Conference

Backbone Media attended the fourth annual WebmasterWorld Search Engine Marketing PubConference at the Wyndham Tremont Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts on Saturday April 26, 2003. The conference is based on the WebmasterWorld discussion forum. The forum is dedicated to exploring the issues faced by professional webmasters and practitioners of search engine marketing.

The PubConference tradition started when a poster on WebmasterWorld wrote that he was going to London and asked if anybody would like to join him and talk shop. In a few days many others decided to skip the pond and the PubConference tradition was born.

Pub Conference IV drew white-hat, black-hat and gray-hat marketers as well as top sponsors and speakers from the major search engines - Google, Fast, Overture, and Ask Jeeves / Teoma. In addition to the informative presentations given, a highlight of this search engine marketing conference was the dynamic jabbing between speakers on whose search engine was the best.

The first presenter, Dan Boberg from Overture, spoke about maximizing revenue and provided a very cogent strategy for identifying and segmenting customers by nuances in their search phrases. For example, a hypothetical searcher in the 'browsing' stage of the buying cycle might use a phrase like "tv" where as a searcher in a more advanced 'buying' stage may use more specific language like "Sony Trinitron TV" and include model details. All the presenters spoke confidently that their search engines were the best, and that their engines provided most relevant results.

An official count was not given but there were easily over 200 people at the conference, including many attendees from Europe. Many of those attendees arrived earlier in the week and met for serious search engine marketing discussions the night before the conference. The soggy day's events started with a full breakfast, Extra Strength Tylenol and then it was underway with the day's presentations.

The conference is unique for its laid back atmosphere and opportunity for webmasters and search engine marketing professionals to gather with search engine professionals in an informal atmosphere for serious discussion and later over drinks in a pub setting.

Many questions from the audience were directed at the presenters ranging from privacy issues, new features in the works at search engines, strategies for users to improve their page rank, how page rank works, and many others.

Page rank was a popular subject as many search marketers try to master it (page rank is the value that Google gives to a site in its index) - some of the page rank questions included selling and buying links to improve one's page rank. Most of these PR questions were directed at Matt Cutts, a software engineer from Google.

If there was any doubt the conference was an indication of how popular and valuable Google is to search engine marketing professionals. After the presentations and the question and answer period was over, the rock star from Google was overwhelmed by people bidding for some quality time. I supposed they were seeking honor graphs and asking specific questions about Google's secret inner workings. I'm sure he did his best to sign and answer without giving up the sauce. In fact he almost didn't get the chance to eat. While Cutts was blogged down with fans, the rest of us search engine marketers gobbled down fine cuts of roast beef accompanied by a tasty horseradish sauce (sorry no pictures of the feast). I had no need to personally queue for a one-on-one with Cutts because the secret of Google was right there before all of us. I understood that the Blogger tee shirt that Cutts wore was a sublime code to all the savvy search engine marketers in the room -- hey if you really want to get your site a top position in Google, blogger is the holy grail. I'm only half kidding about the Blogger revelation, but that is a whole other article.

All kidding aside for a second, the panelists offered many helpful tips and there was an atmosphere of fair treatment - that everyone was on equal footing with the search engines. I particularly enjoyed chatting with some of search engine marketing's hall-of-famers. Well, there is no hall of fame for search engine marketing yet, but I'm sure that these fine folks will be in it if there ever is one.

After the public Q&A, we talked with Greg Boser from WebGuerilla (that's him with the glasses - what a sport), one of the WebmasterWorld moderators for the very popular Google News forum. We also sat with Paul Gardi, of Ask Jeeves / Teoma and managed to pry the story of how he broke his arm single handedly close-lining a vandal on the streets of New York City.

And then it was off to the Top Secret Pub Location - Elephant Castle Pub on Devonshire street in Boston. There we also got to chat with Barbara Coll, a.k.a. Webmama.com, and Jill Whalen from HighRankings.com. Barbara (who's one of my favorite search engine marketing speakers) reminded me why I came to the conference in the first place and referred to the Piper Jaffray white paper on the search market that was highlighted in the SEMPO discussion forum called The Golden Search. Jill Whalen is another search engine marketing expert that is always full of great insights about SEM but what I remember most about our chat is the Green Apple Martini. The drinks flowed as the discussions of search marketing went on into the night.

The next PubConference is planned for 2004 in London.

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