SES San Jose 2009
We just returned from the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose. This is our second year of taking the whole web marketing team out there. It probably is one of the best investments we make all year.
It is amazing just how rapidly this space is evolving. While social media was an important topic last year, this year it was everything. Last year, it seemed like the discussions were more about how Google would own everything and this year, in the very first panel discussion I went to, the moderator opened with ‘Is Google dead?’ It’s not and it won’t be but that really set the tone for many of the following presentations.
Along with the launch of Bing and its joining with Yahoo for search, the social media websites are starting to assert their presense. All of these present challenges to Google and the status quo. My feeling is that Google is staffed by a lot of very sharp people and like other successful companies will adapt and most likely succeed quite well.
It seemed that the Bing team was very excited about their future. I can only guess how they felt in years past where there product really wasn’t that competitive. They don’t feel that anymore. Bing is focusing on the entertainment, travel and shopping spaces initially. From the data we are seeing with our customers, it seems they are doing quite well in this area. We even have one customer where Bing is driving a higher number of visitors to a site. Last year, nobody but Google was really even on the radar for search referals.
I’ll put together a number of posts on this show. As a team, we attended over 35 presentations, panel discussions and lectures.