Brian,

My comment was too long to leave on your article page. I added a track-back I hope it works.

I like the article. I do believe however it is missing some key points of “how” Google is assimilating its vast data base of user data. I personally believe there are at least five key tools Google uses.

The 1st is of course the SERP. They have the most control and the most time tweaking the code to get the data as accurate as possible for their search engine result pages. Results that are more clicked on than others are in my opinion more relevant.

The second is the purchase of Urchin and giving away “FREE” website analytics. I wonder just how much of the web Google is really tracking. I mean With website analytics we invite them to get more data then any other search engine. I think this is the ultimate user driven data source Google has at its finger tips.

The third is the Google Checkout system. The data is mainly for weighting is mainly for commercial keywords. Think about it with website analytics combined with actual revenue of a specific keyword they can actually judge how well your site converts, how much money you made from that customer, what keyword that customer used from ANY search engine, and thus could manipulate keyword ranks in this manner. A higher converting website with more traffic and more sales, that grosses more revenue than another is more relevant in my book. What if they started to base certain keyword PPC bidding prices based on this data. They know how much money your company grossed remember.

However, this brings up a thousand questions. What happens to startup companies, will they even be able to compete? Will the price of entering a market skyrocket? Bid prices really being “bids”? Shoot they even have an algorithm that gives a “quality score” on that. And many many other questions!

The fourth is the data gathered from sites like YouTube which you already mentioned. Don’t forget that Google is a advertising system company, thats where they make their money. They are a glorified publisher of user generated content. Yes the entire web is “Internet User” generated. They used to just publish our (Internet User) content, and label them as “search results” now they finally have websites that are not a search engines and have “real content”.

They also do advertising on TV and radio now. My point is simply they are a business. Many people tend to forget that they exist to make money. They are not a government entity nor are they a “non-profit” organization. I completely agree with you when you say they are trying to defend their algorithm and keep their user base.

The fifth all is all the rest of the data we actually just give to them for free because of the neat services they give us in return. These are the tools they give away for free just to keep us coming back and using their search engine. Or at least we thought thats all they were giving the tools away for free for. But come to find out in their TOS they can use my email for their business purposes. They can use my pictures, my blogger blog, my spreadsheets, text documents, notebooks, and etc. for enhancing their advertising system.

All of this Brian is where the user data is. I think explaining this would greatly enhance your personal position concerning the Google Algorithm(s) and its (their) new and future state.

Please note however, I do not believe all these systems are fully integrated. I am glad they are taking their time to make changes, if they do it right they will conquer the search engine space for another 20 years. Microsoft and Yahoo are so far behind in collecting data. Its ridiculous. Unless maybe Microsoft is collecting data via their IE browser and their Operating Systems. Wow, shoot that brings up so many many more questions.

If Microsoft did do that they would be able to compete with Google. That is their one and only current advantage over Google for user data in the search engine advertising world. Microsoft is not a advertising company. Which is one of the reasons why I love them. They actually produce their own products and services that people BUY! Google sells ads! in my opinion, thats their only product / service they actually sell. Where Microsoft actually produces products and hires advertising firms. It will be a long uphill battle for Microsoft. Its just not what they do best.

• Standards for Search Engine APIs
• The SEMPO Institute
• Collaborative Search Research
• Communication with Search Engines

Standards for Search Engine APIs
SEMPO went to bat for us about expressing our frustration utilizing each engines unique APIs. The engines support the idea, and will most likely support common fields and features among each others APIs. Does this interest you? It should, if you’re in my industry. Hasn’t the XML sitemap and robots.txt standards been extremely useful. Good, join SEMPO.

The SEMPO Institute
SEMPO offers training through their institute, http://www.sempoinstitute.com/, and they strive to keep their curriculum up to the standards of the search engines. Assuring the practices they teach truly are acceptable “best practices” by each engine. That gives you the warm and fuzzy feeling knowing you screw any of your clients over. I hope that interests you! It does. Good, join SEMPO.

Collaborative Search Research
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a pool of research all about search? Well shoot, SEMPO started working on partnerships with the engines at SES San Jose. The engines are now listening and are interested in supporting the idea. What research would you like to see from the search engines? (Insert request here or below in comments). Good, join SEMPO.

Communication with Search Engines
Tired of feeling like you have no influence or are at the will of the engines. Or perhaps you just want to express your opinions about search to search engines with more power and influence. Heck, this principle at the very core of SEMPO. Even the engines want to hear what we have to say. SEMPO provides us with that opportunity. Search Engines are looking forward to increase their two-dialog with SEMPO. Think you can get that alone, ya I didn’t think so. So, join SEMPO.

How to Join SEMPO
You’ll need some money, yes money. Between $300 and $5,000 depending on what level of membership you choose or are able to choose. It’s all broken down on their Join SEMPO page found at: http://www.sempo.org/join/. No, this is not an affiliate link. SEMPO does not have an affiliate program you silly blog reader, you. If I am wrong correct me and I’ll toss up my affiliate link insteadJ.

 

SMX Local Mobile was freaking awesome! I met Vanessa Fox, who wanted a t-shirt but we didn’t have any her size. And yes unfortunately we have not had many shirts that appeal to women in general because they all want like baby girl T’s or something. In jest, Vanessa said we could ship her one. I was hoping to get her biz card with the address, email, and phone and maybe cook up a biz dev deal but she was only joking.

Moving on the conference was awesome again. I was able to get six of the SMX backpacks, five Medio water bottles, 5 local matters mouse pads, could have gotten like 20 Marchex pens, footballs, writing pads but shoot who wants Marchex stuff. I did get a whole lot of other stuff like five mint strips, 20 pens, and at least 10 great business cards.

As far as information goes the local organic track really didn’t give me a whole lot of new tactics or technical information. I did get some great case studies and some killer biz dev contacts which I handed over to Cody Hunter, Derek Miner, and Sam Clarke at our sweet killer awesome no need to hire a union to take down and ship back home tradeshow booth.

For the mobile natural rankings track sessions there was tons of information and resources given in the power points (I still have not been able to download them arrrghh!!). But the funny thing is that the mobile technology is changing so rapidly I think that all the technical things to optimize a website for mobile search engines will just fade away. It sounds like the Search Engines are just waiting for more IPhone types of mobile internet connections (IPhone uses the safari browser which is a full internet browser) to become available, thus eliminating any need to create an industry standard for the “mobile web” as they have for search engine sitemaps found at www.sitemaps.org.

Sadly though this conference was held in Denver and was a smaller group of tightly related businesses. Almost all the IYPs (short for Internet Yellow Page Companies) were there, Yahoo! and Google were both there. I didn’t see an Ask or a Live representative there at all.