We’ve extended our existing licensing agreement with the Associated Press that permits us to host its content on Google properties such as Google News. We look forward to future collaborations, including on ways Google and AP can work together to create a better user experience and new revenue opportunities.

A source familiar with the deal tells me the new deal isn’t substantially different from the original deal Google stuck with the AP in 2006. That deal came about after the AP made threats that it might sue Google, alleging copyright violations over how Google listed its stories. Google disagreed with those allegations. Indeed, the deal Google ultimately agreed to was specifically for uses that Google considered going beyond fair use — but the deal also conveniently made the AP threats go away.

The threats returned in 2009, as the AP’s contract with Google entered its last year. AP ramped up the rhetoric against Google’s usage, suggesting that the old deal wasn’t good enough and introducing the possibility of giving its content faster to players willing to pay more, such as Bing.

Bing didn’t bite. Neither did Google. In fact, the contract was allowed to quietly expire, and AP’s content was removed from Google for over a month, and Google users didn’t seem to care. Eventually, the two companies stuck a short term deal that put AP content back in Google.

My assumption is that the AP learned a lesson from this. Google News was clearly able to operate just fine without AP’s content, so any ideas of a major new revenue deal from Google was unlikely. Google didn’t need it.

But then again, AP content was still showing up in regular Google searches. AP content was also showing up via AP partners that the AP is unable to keep in control (those partners may not block Google as the AP might like). Google wasn’t really “AP-less.” And the AP potentially could have still made legal noise about copyright violations.

But in the end, they’ve decided to get along. That keeps the AP among the 11 licensed news partnerships that Google maintains. The full list:

• AP
• AFP
• UK Press Association
• Canadian Press
• EFE
• Lusa
• Keystone
• APA
• PAP
• MTI
• ANA

Some background on the lead-up to today’s deal.

August 2006: News Of Google & AP Deal Emerges

The deal with Google and the AP was never formally announced but rather leaked out and was then confirmed. It followed after AP threats of a lawsuit that got more muted as the deal was apparently being made.

Unlike the AP, the AFP actually sued Google. The case was settled with Google cutting a deal for “new” uses of content. AFP & Google Settle Over Google News Copyright Case has background on both the AFP and AP situations.

August 2007: Google Begins Hosting Wire Stories

Google begins hosting content from major wire services, something allowed by several deals. Google has said that in the case of the AP, Google didn’t actually want to host the content. It was the AP that wanted this, since the AP isn’t in the business of having a consumer-facing news site.

May 2009: AP Ramps Up Rhetoric Against Google

AP CEO Tom Curley threatens to take his content out of Google. Meanwhile, Google strikes back, putting a value on the deal for the first time: a “multi-million deal” says Google CEO Eric Schmidt. For more, see Sorry, Tom Curley: Don’t Expect A Google Ranking Boost For The AP.

October 2009: AP Suggests Playing Google Off Bing

Curley says that Microsoft and Google are at “war,” an “enviable” moment for content producers seeking opportunities — and that any deal he cut would provide “real time metrics” and AP’s content would be pointed at over those who might use it (or apparently cite it) plus support AP’s proposed tracking and rights system. For more, see: What The Associated Press is saying to Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo.

Today’s deal with Google makes mention of none of this. In fact, a source familiar with the deal tells me there’s nothing in the contract about providing real time metrics or supporting AP’s tracking system, though AP will get some aggregate data about how those on Google’s sites interact with its content.

The AP tracking system itself still doesn’t appear to be fully up. It’s hard for me to even report much about it, because the AP has consistently refused to answer my questions about it.

Meanwhile, the AP appears to have backed away from the previous ACAP system it has suggested was a solution for publishers concerned about Google & search engines. For more on ACAP, see Head-To-Head: ACAP Versus Robots.txt For Controlling Search Engines.

January 2010: AP Stories Dropped From Google News

AP stories disappear from Google News. No major complaints emerge.

February 2010: AP Stories Back In Google News

AP stories return to Google News after being gone for over a month, thanks to a short term deal.

August 2010: AP & Google Renew Deal

That’s today’s news, a new deal with few details revealed, but likely to be multi-year and would multiple millions of dollars.

Further Related Reading

Last November, I conducted an in-depth interview with Google News chief Josh Cohan on how his service makes use of the AP’s content, among other issues. See the article below for what the prior AP-Google was supposed to allow, what it did and didn’t actually do, plus much more:

• Josh Cohen Of Google News On Paywalls, Partnerships & Working With Publishers

I have sympathy that the AP might get frustrated discovering that Google may link to people who copy its content without permission (by copy, I mean well beyond fair use). But the AP also is the cause for much of its problems. These articles explain more:

• Hey AP! How About Running A Real News Web Site?
• How The AP Fails To Get Search & SEO (Again)

With both sides last year having talked about the importance of supporting journalism but debating Google’s role as supporting or hurting it, I suggested a cards-on-the-table approach. Now we’ve got the new deal, and I’d suggest again that both side should to explain what exactly is going on. My prior opinion piece:

• Open Letter To Google & The AP: Reveal The Licensing Terms.

There’s also a lot of misconceptions about how Google and news aggregators use news content. I’d recommend reading my primer to understanding more about this:

• How Search Engines, Aggregators & Blogs Use News Content, to better understand the myriad of uses out there.

For related coverage of today’s news from around the web, see Mediagazer.

Google Realtime Search has finally gained its own home page, as well as some new tools including “conversations view,” Google Alerts for real time content and the ability to see tweets filtered by geography.

New Home Page

Back in June, my Can Google Real Time Search Have Its Own Home Page Now? covered how frustrating it has been that there’s no way to point people directly at Google Realtime Search (the product now goes from being “Google Real-Time Search” to “Google Realtime Search” — one word — with this launch). Now we get it, a sign of the service growing up. You’ll find it here:

http://www.google.com/realtime

Well, you’re supposed to find it there. Right now, it’s not loading. As what appears to be a temporary fix, Google’s changed its blog post to point at this URL:

http://www.google.com/realtime?esrch=RealtimeLaunch::Experiment

Use that, and you can get into the service.

Realtime Alerts

Many people are familiar with Google Alerts, which allow you get an email whenever new content is found by Google matching your query. Existing alerts can be run to find matching news, blog, video and discussion content — as well as an “everything” option. Now “updates,” content from Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and other sources that Google Realtime Search monitors, can be added.

The screenshot above shows how on the Google Alerts page, you can use the drop down option to select “Updates” along with how often you want alerts (as it happens, once a day or once per week). You can also use the “Preview results” option to see what you’ll get.

Conversation View

When you do a search, there’s now a “Full conversation” link that appears to help you see a thread of discussion that may be happening between various people. Here’s an example with author Neil Gaiman, who replies to an amazingly large number of people. But what’s he replying to? Conversation view can help. Click on the link:

And you see the dialog:

Of course, you can also do this at Twitter. Whenever you see a “Show Conversation” link along a result, select that, and the entire thread nicely unfolds:

I like that better than how Google sends you to a different page to view.

Of course, the challenge with Twitter Search is that you’ll only be able to find conversations going back about five days, while Google’s service has tweets going back through February. See these articles for more about that:

• All The Old Tweets Are Found: Google Launches Twitter Archive Search
• Topsy: Now Searching Tweets Back To May 2008

Geographical Filtering

Want to know who is tweeting about something near you or near a particular area? That’s another feature launched today. For example, I did a search for “lunch” and selected the “Nearby” option to get this:

This brings back tweets from those in Costa Mesa, the city next to me — but still pretty close.

Google makes an assumption about where you’re located based on your IP address, and that’s not always perfect for a variety of reasons. Plus, there are times when you may want to see what’s being tweeted by people in other areas. In either case, you can use the “Custom Location” option to put in a city or area you prefer.

Below, I did a search for “heat” with the location of San Francisco:

So any arrows! The one pointing left shows where I entered the custom location. The one pointing to the lower right shows how the tweets all come from San Francisco. The arrow going up shows how there’s a reverse bar above the results to indicate you’ve filtered them to San Francisco. And over at the end of the bar, the last arrow points to a checkbox. Click that, and the filter is easily removed.

You can go beyond a city. Below, matching searched for heat by using “california” as the geographic filter:

I also tested “united states” and got good results from across the country — similarly when I tried a search for “uk.”

Of course, Google lacks the visual geographic tool that Bing Maps offers, where you can see tweets on a map. For example, here are people tweeting about lunch near me:

Or here, people tweeting about heat across California:

The Bing Twitter app can be found from the Bing Maps Explore area. Use the “Map Apps” button at the bottom of the page, the pick the Twitter application.

Real Time Or Realtime?

Earlier, I’d mentioned there was a name change here. I emailed Google about this, and I was told that this is actually the first time the product has been given a formal name:

When we announced Google real-time search functionality last December we did not have an official feature name. With our new Google Realtime Search landing page, we’ve for the first time named the feature. We chose not to use a hyphen because we thought it looked cleaner and read more smoothly.

Movie Time

Want to know more? Google’s got a blog post up about the changes, which includes the video below about the new features:

For more about Google Realtime Search, see our past articles here. Also see these particular articles:

• Google Launches Real Time Search Results
• Google Real Time Search Now Shows Updates From Facebook Fan Pages
• Google’s Real Time Search Results Gets “Top Links” Section
• Google Adds Images To Real-Time Results

Postscript: I’ve now got some information to add from Dylan Casey, the Google product manager who oversees the Google Realtime product.

How about search commands, such as the ability to use from: to see all the tweets from a particular person, as place like Topsy and Twitter offer. Or even an advanced search page? Will that come? No immediate plans for this, Casey said.

What about expanding the size of the archive? Google Realtime Search only goes back to Feburary 2010. Casey said Google’s working with Twitter to go back farther and that this will happen. So stay tuned.

For related coverage elsewhere, see Techmeme.

Google’s actually had one of these booths on its campus in Mountain View for some time. They look like old British phone boxes. There’s double irony in that. The UK doesn’t actually use this style of phone booth any longer (you’ll still see old ones in various places, however), and Google Voice calls aren’t offered in the UK. Still, the booth is fun:

Inside, it looks like an old-style dial phone:

You pick up the handset, hear a little Google Voice greeting, then enter the number you wanted. It feels a bit weird to enter a # symbol at the end of your dialing. However, I didn’t realize this was required at first — and it worked OK.

The sound quality is very clear. The biggest issue is that you have to wait about 10 to 15 seconds for your call to be processed. That’s a switching delay that Google hopes to fix soon.

No particular airports are named, though the first university to get one of the phones will be likely be Arizona State University. How many booths? Google won’t say other than in the dozens.

Below, a video of the booth in action, where I’m talking with Google Voice product marketing manager Jason Toff:

Also see our Google Voice + Gmail = Free Voice Calls For Those In US story for more about the overall story about Google Voice getting a bit push by being integrated into Gmail.

Google’s holding a small press gathering today at 9:30am in its San Francisco offices. Topic? The ability to place phone calls using Google Voice integrated within Gmail. Anyone with a US Gmail account will get this rolling out today and over the next few days, along with the ability to make free calls to numbers in the US and Canada. Here’s the live blogging.

We’re going. There’s a British phone box that says Google Voice on it. Gonna be related to those Gmail & Google Voice news rumor that broke today.

New features that Todd Jackson is telling us about. Gmail related, and some history.

Way back, Google Chat introduced to let people doing IM in the browser. In 2008, added way to do voice and video chat, for free.

Now Google Voice mentioned, and Vincent Paquet is up.

A year ago, Voice rolled out, number tied to you rather than device. Number you can use to ring multple phones.

Does voice mail, does transcriptions of that, integration with phone, apps for BlackBerry, Android and a pseudo-app for iPhone [in the browser, because Apple's still taking over a year to decide on approving the Google Voice app].

Now more changes, and here’s Craig Walker. Wouldn’t it be great if you could do Voice in Gmail. Yes, now you can make phone calls from Gmail (as News.com reported would be announced today).

Fully integrated with your Gmail address book. Starting today, ther will be a call/dialer option for all Gmail users.

Great for those with terrible cell coverage, if you don’t have a landline. Now can place calls this way.

Prices they offer are super competitive, he says. How’s it work. Let’s say he’s about to fly to Paris. He clicks on call phone, calls travel agent. Hey, there’s Tina from Tina’s World Wide Travel answering the call. I suspect it’s not really Tina, but they’re talking. Call sounds clear. She says she’ll work on the room he wanted.

Says convenient and easy as she was in his address book. And the voice quality was good, with standard mike on the device. You have to have good echo cancellation, as their engineers have, he says.

Oh, Google’s got a blog post up on this now. Here’s a screenshot of the interface from that:

Now we’re calling France, and speaking French. Well, he’s got someone who does speak French helping. And two cents per minute to call France.

How about receiving calls. Oh, he’s getting a call. It rings on both his devices. But there’s a screen button. It’s Tina calling, and he’s listening to her talk like you would on an answering machine (you remember those, right?). He decides to pick up.

He tells Tina no thanks, don’t need the room. Now she’s being hostile with him. We’re having fun banter, so that he can mute her.

Back to calls. Screen, answer or ignore.

How to price this. Looked at cell pone plans, cost per month and minutes, that was like 5 cents a minute, seemed too much. Looked at other options, 2 cents per minutes. Still too much. So making calls to the US and Canada for free.

International calls very cheap. Now he’s talking about the red UK phone box in the room:

These will be place in airports and elsewhere so people can play and make free calls.

And that’s the conference. Q&A about to begin.

How many boxes? No set number.

US or worldwide. Just those in the US.

All calls end up in your contact database?

Yes [which gives Google some nice lockin, by the way -- take your contacts anywhere, to any device].

Will credits for non-free calls expired? If you don’t use account for a year, reserve right to expire them.

How many Google Voice users? “We don’t talk about the numbers.”

You have 100s of millions of users on Gmail? More specific numbers? We don’t give those.

Are Google Voice numbers considered mobile or landline? Many plans have free mobile to mobile, so would this count? No. Most of those plans are within network.

When does Google Voice get number porting? And blog post that suggest calls might not be free after end of year? Possible, but if people are using it much, should be fine. As for porting, letting you say take your mobile number over to Google Voice, they’re working on that “aggressively”

Where’s the revenue on this? Revenue comes off the international calls.

How about ads? Google Voice has no ads now, goal is to monetize it off international and enough margin to make things off of that.

This is designed for consumers you said, not businesses. Not ready for them yet? No, definitely not Google business ready.

What if you don’t have Google Voice? What number shows? A generic one they don’t recall off top of the head.

When to roll out elsewhere? Will work on localized versions in future.

What exactly do you call this? Voice calls in Gmail.

What’s the hold up on porting? It’s a complicated issue. To make it a very smooth process, which is our goal, and you don’t want a nightmare support issue of people losing numbers. To do it right takes a lot of time, and that’s all there is to it … even today with mobile operate, to port takes someone on the phone for 10-15 minutes, Google wants better than that.

What’s up with the Google Voice app for Apple still not being approved? Has Apple formally denied it? FCC looked into the issue, everyone responded with letters, and not much has happened since then.

Question on landline calls being cheaper than mobile internations. Looking at charge. Google voice is 18 cents per minute to landline in the UK, 25 cents to mobiles there. Hmm, that’s expensive.

Could I call from my potential future Google profile that is rumored to come? Today there is no integration with existing profiles.

I’m asking why the cost is so expensive say compared to IDT’s calling cards, 10 cents to the UK regardless of landline or mobile (see here). I’m being told there’s like a 49 cent connection fee. I reply well no, there’s not. Then I was told that well, these companies come in and out of business all the time, the quality is poor and so on.

Um, no. Like really no. I’ve used IDT for over a decade to call to and from the UK. That’s over a decade, same company. It’s cheap. It works. If I call from a registered phone, I don’t need to enter a huge pin code. Frankly, there’s no way I’d use Google Voice to make UK calls at these rates. I did check, and there is a $1.50 per month account fee. So that should be factored in, if you’re not doing a lot of calling.

I’ve also got a Skype account that gives me unlimited calls for $143 per year worldwide, Unlimited World (info here). I use it mostly for the UK. Hey, the call quality is often really bad. And you get dinged if you call the UK’s “non-geographical” numbers or mobiles. Still, that’s worldwide for a pretty low price.

I’m a real junkie for getting the best calling plans, however. Those who are comparing Google Voice to the high rates their usual provider gives might feel like it’s a big savings. And Google argues it’s simple, which from the demo does seem true.

By the way, tip for those feeling denied outside the US. Set your Gmail account to US English. Surprise, you now have a US Gmail account that should get this new feature. Enjoy your free US/Canada calls.

And that’s the press conference. Also see the Google blog post and related coverage on Techmeme.

Postscript: Also see Inside The Google Voice Phone Booths for videos and pics and how the booths work.

Topsy will be sharing the news itself later today, on its blog. Beyond being comprehensive, another nice thing about Topsy is the ability to restrict a search using special “operators” or commands — such as “from” — to find tweets from a particular user or the ability to see tweets within a particular date range. Topsy has an advanced search page that makes it easy, as well as a list of commands.

Google lacks this type of filtering; Twitter has it, but only for going through tweets back for about a week or less. Of course, the Topsy tweets don’t always work as advertised. More on this, and how Topsy measures up against Google and Twitter, below.

Show Me The First Tweet By…

What was the first tweet from Ashton Kutcher? Heck, what was my first tweet? That’s a good test of comprehensiveness, if you can find the first tweet from well established Twitter accounts.

Using Twitter’s advanced search page, I can search for all tweets by Kutcher — from:aplusk – but the results only take me back 5 days.

How about Google? When Google’s Twitter archive search launched, it touted having tweets stretching back through February 11, 2010. That’s further back than Twitter search goes, but it won’t get me to Kutcher’s first tweet, not by a long shot. (A regular Google search for ashton kutcher first tweet, however, takes me right to his first one on Jan. 15, 2009).

Worse, there’s no “from” command at Google that lets me find tweets just from Kutcher. Instead, at best, you have to search for @aplusk, which brings back tweets from him plus anyone mentioning him. In addition, there may be non-Twitter updates mixed in with Twitter’s archive search, since other sources such as Facebook or MySpace also feed into it.

At Bing Social Search, the “from” command does work, so that I can see all the tweets by Kutcher it has indexed — and just tweets, nothing else mixed in. However, those only go back for six days

At Topsy, I can get the nearly 4,000 “All Time” tweets posted by Kutcher listed:

That sounds great, but getting to the last tweet is difficult. If you sort those tweets by “timeline,” so that the oldest tweet comes last, you’ll find that you can’t actually “page” your way back to it. Only pages 1 through 10 of search results are shown, currently getting you back to May 2010.

A trick is to search by specific date range. For example, here’s a search for all of January 2009, narrowed to those from Kutcher. The problem is that that his first tweet, which happened in this period, doesn’t actually appear. Switching the two pages of results from “relevancy” to “timeline” view makes things worse, listing only links that may or may not have been from Kutcher (it’s hard to tell).

The only way I could find his first tweet, in the end, was to search for the text “dropping my first tweet,” which listed his first tweet in the top results at Topsy. However, it was listed without a time stamp, which doubles as a way to click directly to the actual tweet, making me suspect that Topsy has some database issues.

Behind The Scenes

Despite this, Topsy clearly has a lot of tweets that go back in time. I suspect that when the bugs get worked out, doing a search to find someone’s first tweet — or tweets made within a particular data range — will be really useful.

Topsy knows things need to improve and is working on it. In the meantime, it emphasizes the fact that the date range feature can be used to view “highlights” for a particular period, telling me:

Reverse chronology is not well supported in the current user interface, which focuses on relevance, but we plan to introduce option for this in an upcoming release.

When you choose timeline sort on Topsy, the results are sorted by newest first but filtered by quality — it’s the top 100 results in a given time period, by newest first and a good way to track new, high quality results on any query. Think of it as the highlights for a given time period.

As for how far back the archives go and how the data was gathered, Topsy told me:

We started collecting tweets in May 2008 by polling search.twitter.com for all tweets with links. Our first index was built this way.

Topsy became the first search engine to start indexing native retweets via Twitter’s retweet streaming API in December 2009. The index contains every native retweet since. We’ve recently signed a contract with Twitter to index the entire firehose [firehose is jargon for the ability to tap Twitter's full stream of tweets].

The firehose does not contain all historical tweets (not for Topsy or Google). We do plan to work with Twitter to complete our index some day. Since the number of tweets per day has grown dramatically, the historical tweets will actually represent a pretty small part of the index.

By the way, while Topsy says you can go back through at least May 2008, I found some tweets that were older than that. I also could find data stretching way back through Dec. 2006 (by doing a date-restricted search for the word the). However, the further back you go, the more likely you’re getting only tweets associated with a link — and tweets that might not let you click from the date stamp to the actual tweet.

How They Stack Up

How do the major Twitter archive search services stack up? It’s really only Topsy versus Google, in this department. Twitter itself isn’t currently focused on trying to create a huge, searchable archive of tweets.

Make no mistake. Twitter has all the tweets people have done over time. They haven’t been lost. But when I spoke in June to Mike Abbott, Twitter’s vice president of engineering who oversees search, he explained to me that Twitter is focusing on building search products that others aren’t doing. With Google then, and Topsy now, focusing on comprehensive searching, Twitter is looking in other directions.

“Google doing it [archive search] takes some of the pressure off. Where do we want to innovate in this world and drive unique set of experiences?,” Abbott told me. He said such items would be finding ways to better connect Twitter users together with others of similar interest, or to do a search on Twitter that just shows tweets from your friends and followers.

Indeed, since I spoke with Abbott, Twitter’s released new ways to find people to follow when searching or when browsing your Twitter home page. The “Suggestions For You” feature, I’ve found to be incredibly useful. Our past articles below have more about these features:

• Twitter Adds Usernames To Search Results
• Twitter’s “Suggestions For You” Helps You Find New People To Follow
• Twitter Expands Social Connections With New Features

So when I do the stack-up chart below, keep in mind that while I’m listing Twitter, it’s only to provide a benchmark to compare how Google and Topsy go beyond standard Twitter Search on the comprehensiveness of searching front.

Note the last row — the ability to search for tweets containing photos. Topsy makes it especially easy to find images that have been tweeted and says it has over 300 million images indexed. It even has a special page just for photo searching, Topsy Photos. For other services that let you find photos shared via Twitter, see our Google Adds Images To Real-Time Results post. Topsy also says it has indexed 2.5 billion links that have been shared on Twitter.

In the future, I’ll expand the table above to include some other services. In the meantime, here are some past articles that cover Twitter-related searching in various aspects:

• Where Have All The Old Tweets Gone?
• All The Old Tweets Are Found: Google Launches Twitter Archive Search
• Can Google Real Time Search Have Its Own Home Page Now?
• The Origin Of #nickcleggsfault & Getting To More Relevant Tweets
• The Twitter Search Landscape

Topsy

Before the Q&A, some further background. Each month, comScore releases figures that show the number of searches that happened on the major search engines in the United States and the percentage of share each service has of the overall total. The figures first go out to financial analysts and other clients, usually mid-month. Then a public press release with the figures follows the next day.

Since March, Yahoo in particular has been gaining notable share by generating searches that many probably wouldn’t consider an an actual search. For example, someone might be viewing a photo slideshow. Clicking to advance the slide causes a page reload in a way that is counted as a “search” under comScore’s traditional metrics.

To understand this more, I recommend reading the first article below. The other two articles give important context about how even though a search engine might see its share rise, that doesn’t mean competitors have less searches, when you look at the actual number of searches happening:

• Time To End The Bull Search Engine Share Figures?
• When Losers Are Winners: How Google Can “Lose” Search Share & Yet Still Stomp Yahoo
• Bing & Yahoo Search Share Up, But Google Has Little To Fear

What are you reporting?

We will be reporting two distinct views of the Core Search market. ” Core Search,” which includes all qualified searches, is consistent with previous months that we’ve reported. Alongside this, we will also now report “Explicit Core Search,” which excludes contextually-driven searches [such as slideshows].

Why make this change?

We are changing how we report Core Search to include a breakout that captures Explicit Core Search and does not include the influence of contextually-driven searches. We’re providing this breakout to provide transparency into how the search market is changing.

We’ve provided a general definition about what qualifies as a search. A search result page must present results, provide the opportunity to refine the query, and it must be clear that the user is executing a search. This has been the basis of qSearch reporting for many years. Over time, some search engines with content networks have developed services that qualify for those rules but have a different level of search intent than is the case with a traditional search.

A few months ago, we saw a significant spike in the volume of these non-traditional searches. We called this out directly in the release notes we provide to our clients and mentioned it our press releases and blog posts.

The increasing volume resulting from the engines leveraging content experiences to provide search results led to quite a bit of confusion over what the “true” share positions were in search. Debate continued regarding what should and should not be counted, and so we’re modifying the way we report to provide additional transparency.

So now you’re reporting the true searches?

We are not redefining what counts in Core Search. Instead, we’re classifying contextually-driven search as a different type of search and allowing the end users of our data to decide if or when to include them in their analysis. Moving forward, we’ll be publicly reporting market share with and without contextually-driven search.

Wall Street analysts use our data to help measure the search industry. They need a benchmark that is consistent with respect to their understanding of monetization [searches that are more likely to result in a click on a paid ad or contribute to a search engine's bottom line, in some way].

While contextually-driven searches have proven to drive volume, it’s still not clear how they contribute to the bottom line. Are these “true” searches, or not? We don’t feel it’s our decision on whether these matter [contextually-based searches versus traditional ones]. We believe it’s our obligation to measure the market, and do so in a way that lets all stakeholders make their own decisions about how to value different parts of the market.

Shouldn’t “Explicit Core Searches” really be “Core Searches?” And the core searches plus the contextually-driven searches called something else? Why not just issue one number with the contextually-based searches removed?

We’ve reviewed this with all the engines and with a number of scenarios, and in the end, transparency and granularity won out. Our experience is that the market is savvy enough to figure out the differences. While it is simpler to have a single figure, it’s better to have transparency and to be able to look at it in multiple ways rather than one ruling on what is a true search and what is not a true search.

How exactly are you defining “Explicit Core Search?”

We are defining Explicit Core Search based on the legacy search definition with an additional qualification around user intent. Explicit Core Search requires user engagement with a search service with the intent to retrieve search results.

We are applying this qualification to any new implementations, to make sure that Explicit Core Search continues to reflect what’s historically been reported in Core Search. These are searches where users are interacting with results. Where there’s an explicit, direct intention to interact with a search engine to receive results.

There are some “real” searches that core search, and even the new explicit core search don’t include, right? Such as maps?

Yes, Core Search does not include map-based searches across any of the engines.

So a search on maps.google.com or maps.yahoo.com wouldn’t be counted?

These searches are counted as a part of our expanded search reporting, but do not contribute to Core Search.

How about a case where you search on regular Google, get a map “blended” in the results, then click on the map to get even more results. You’ll count the first as a core search but not the second, right? Isn’t that odd?

Yes, we would count the first search as a search but not the map-based one that comes as a result of the blending. There’s a lot of discussion about this type of situation. Clearly both are part of search marketing. But IYP [internet yellow pages] monetization is the fundamental difference between the two. The map data is available as part of our expanded search reporting.

Yes, but that makes it hard for the public to measure. For example, you’ll break out Mapquest in your total search figures, but Google Maps gets consolidated into “Google Sites,” so you can’t tell how important the mapping site is.

Our clients have the ability to drill down more deeply. We must always balance what we provide to the marketplace for free and keeping value for our paid clients.

Beyond maps, searches on other vertical properties like news would be counted as part of core search?

Yes. Yahoo News will return results in the Yahoo News channel and get counted, despite the fact it doesn’t happen from the Yahoo home page or web SERP [search engine results page]. The same is true for Google, though most searches at Google are largely good old Google search.

YouTube isn’t counted as part of Google’s core search traffic, but there’s a huge amount of “true” searches for information that happen there. Why not fold those into the explicit core search figures?

Yes, there are a lot of searches on YouTube. But this would be a modification of how we already report Core Search, and YouTube has previously been excluded from those figures.

What about suggested searches and new navigation options. Both potentially generate new searches off an original query, raising volume but not necessarily indicating more answers are being sought or given?

While these do produce some additional searches, that’s offset by the refinement people would normally do. In other words, people traditionally tried to refine their queries on their own. These features make it easier to do what they were already doing It appears to be a bit of a wash, and the engines themselves are doing this to try to direct people to the information they want and improve the user experience.

Chitika is an advertising network similar to Google AdSense. The company receives data about visits to the 80,000 sites in its network, which are mostly US based, though a handful are in Canada and the UK, it tells me.

Bing Takes #2

The stats show that Google remains the top driver of search-related traffic to sites in the Chitika network, followed by Bing, which overtook Yahoo in January 2010. The chart below shows the share of traffic that each of the three major search engines drive to Chitika’s North American web sites stretching back to January 2009:

This chart drops Google, so you can more clearly see Bing’s overtaking of Yahoo. It also shows stats for the smaller search engines of Ask and AOL:

The first leap for Bing is in June 2009, when Bing was formally launched. It was a rebranded, revamped version of Microsoft’s prior search engine, Live Search. (Traffic shown for Bing in the chart is actually Live Search + Bing combined, which is why you see a “Bing” line from before the Bing brand existed.

Bing’s launch was accompanied by a huge marketing effort by Microsoft to get the word out. That’s continued on over the past year. In June 2010, Bing reached an all-time high over the period shown, driving 11.3% of search-related traffic to the Chitika network. My guess is the spike was helped by renewed attention about Bing as it had its one-year anniversary. Those 40 mentions of Bing by Stephen Colbert may also have helped.

Benchmarking Bing

Chitika’s reported the overtaking earlier, such as in these stats from last month. I was on vacation when these came out and didn’t really register the Yahoo-Bing flip-flop until reviewing the latest numbers this month.

FYI, the figures in the charts I’ve shown above are different than those Chitika reported earlier. The earlier figures were based on worldwide traffic and each “month” was really traffic for the first two weeks of each month. The figures above are for the full month shown, and for North America.

The latest stats for July 2010 show Google way ahead of the others with an 81.6% share, followed by Bing at 10.6% and then Yahoo at 6.5%. Here’s a sample of data over the past two years, including the latest from July:

Chitika also will report on the figures later today on its research blog.

Why’s Chitika Different?

In contrast to Chitika, most of the US rating services show that Yahoo is still ahead of Bing. For example, last month comScore reported that Yahoo was ahead of Bing by about 6 points of share; Hitwise had Yahoo ahead by about 4.5% of share. Nielsen had Bing behind Yahoo by only 0.3% of share, but that’s still much different than the 3.5 point lead over Yahoo that Chitika gives Bing.

One key differences is that the ratings services named generally measure activity at the search engines themselves, the number of searches happening at each of them. In contrast, Chitika is measuring how many visitors leave a search site and come to web sites in its network.

It could be that Yahoo remains having more searches at its site, as the major ratings services find, but that less of that traffic is “escaping” out of Yahoo and to third-party web sites such as those in Chitika’s network.

Indeed, it’s long been the case that many webmasters commonly report that they receive far more traffic from Google than the searches the ratings services report happening there — and far less from Yahoo. My own suspicion has been that Yahoo is very good at recycling people who search at Yahoo back into Yahoo’s own properties.

It could also be that some sites on the Chitika network are simply more successful in generating traffic from Bing that ordinary web sites, though I’d find that surprising as a major factor. Ads could have an impact. The traffic measured is for both paid and unpaid traffic from the search engines. So if some sites in the network are doing major advertising on Bing and not Yahoo, that might also contributed.

This is all we know so far:

We’ll be unveiling a couple of cool new mobile features at the event, and Google mobile product management director Hugo Barra will be on hand to help demonstrate the features and answer your questions.

There’s plenty of speculation you’ll find over at Techmeme. Well know soon enough. Coverage begins below at 10am Pacific.

And we’re off. Mike Nelson from Google PR is telling us this will be like a “Show & Tell” with demos. And here comes Hugo…

Hugo is responsible for mobile applications and services. Two new products … but before he tells us, time for some reflection on the evolution of mobile computing. Joy.

A slide, showing millions of instructions per section (MIPS). Mobile smart phone today has computing of what some computers just in the near past (think he said).

What will happen in future, will smartphones get as smart as computers. Might not matter. Wireless connectivity might be more important.

Put a 4G phone and connect with a cloud computing structure and suddenly the MIPS kind of don’t matter. Get it. The cloud is great. All hail the cloud. We’ve got, he argues, “mini super computers in our pocket.”

Now we can do things not possible. The computing happens in the cloud. Google Goggles, the computer vision application that lets you search by taking pictures (it’s pretty amazing, by the way).

Navigation is another example. Cloud-based GPS. Phone sends the location data, Google sends the nav (which usually works well, but last week kept me going in a U-turn. It was weird).

Voice recognition is another example. Almost two years since first voice app lauched. Showing us how it works by speaking a query, which it gets correctly. And another one, that was recognized correctly. His voice goes in real time to data centers, then answer sent back to the device.

Just added a bunch of languages. Warns this is risky. Has four devices, going to say query in Spanish in one, French in another, Italian in another and then Japanese. And it works!

Already does German, two dialects of Chinese, Korean, goal is to support every language out there. 1 out of every 4 queries from Android devices is by voice. 25% of search traffic from Android devices is from voice, higher than they ever expected.

And first announcement, wouldn’t it be great to do a task in one go.

He speaks to send a text to the phone, and it does it. “Voice Action” and there are a whole bunch of them in the new voice search application in Android, avaialble today. Hmm, sounds like Google’s going after the potential threat that Apple has when they bought the Siri task application

Now Mike LeBeau comes up to do more demos, sorry, didn’t catch his name. He speaks to call a bakery, and it does. “I can say the name of any business I want, and it will call.” Now we’re calling London, to say hi to the Queen. No, some business out there. And it’s really, really fast. Like much faster than calling 411.

Voice Actions works with Google Nav. He says navigate to Rockefeller Plaza. Boom, we’re navigating.

Also ability to find and play music on your phone. It goes out online to find. Say any music you want, then any number of apps try. He says listen to Decemberists. Gets lists of apps like Pandora. Now it’s making a Pandora station on the phone automatically. Cool.

But we’re not done. You can send a complete email.

Now he’s speaking a complicated email, and there it is. I’m waiting for him to go “Computer, On” like Scotty. You know. Star Trek IV. Go rent it.

Now he’s saying to set the alarm for 8:30am. There it goes. And I’m picturing the aimless crowds of people walking down streets with their heads stuck in their phones now enhanced by leaning in and talking to them

Now he’s doing a map search. Getting directions and so on.

And he’s doing “Note to self” which will send email to you. Um, I wish it would make real notes. I have enough email.

And more, you can speak to have a contact looked up and called.

Hugo back, it’s available today, if you have Android 2.2. Search for voice search in the Android Market.

By the way, Google has a post up now with more about Voice Actions here. Voice Actions are only for US English.

And on to the second announcement. Dave Burke, an engineering manager coming up to tell us more about something he build in his “20%” time Google allows for personal products.

Chrome To Phone, bridge gap from desktop to mobile. A Chrome extension and today availalble widely to Chrome and Android users. Search from Chrome to Phone on Chrome extension gallery, then do the same in the Android Market.

Say reading an article, click on the mobile phone icon in your browser, link gets sent to the device.

Google Maps, say searched for hotel, want to push address to phone, highlight mobile phone icon, then directions sent to Google Maps on your phone.

Now doing a business search, highlights number on the web search in the browser and sends it to your phone, which is ready to call. Which as I think about it, would be kind of cool.

And that’s it.

One last thing, gifts for everyone in the audience, Droid 2 devices. Hurray! My collection grows :)

Oh, and Google has post up about Chrome For Phone out now here.

Question Time

Question: How well’s this stuff work in real life, as opposed to demos. Dave says well.

Question: Is Chrome to Phone stuff bookmarked for future use? Dave says it depends on the app, looking at adding a centralized version in the future.

Question on what Google picks from list of results. Google says selects top editorial listing, not the first ad that appears.

Question (from me): How many voice actions are there, and how’s that compare to Siri. Hugo says 12 voice actions plus ability to search, so 13. Not sure how it stacks up against Siri. Believes it might have a wider range of actions than Siri but not sure.

Question: Work on any phone or is the mic an issue for some. Answer, mic can have impact but thinks most shouldn’t have a problem. They also have a set of tools and compatability checks they do.

Question: How big will voice search become. Dave says multimodal, you wouldn’t use voice in a library or a rock concert. But you wouldn’t want to expend in other places. Thinks they both will always coexist.

Question: Google has voice search on the iPhone in its app, right? What’s the activity like there. There’s a significant difference see when it’s handy to do voice search. Can’t comment and tell specifics on how much voice search happens on iPhone, where Google also offfers voice search, but only within its app. But he confirms my suspicion that it’s lower.

And that’s it, all done.

Postscript: I talked with Fernando Delgado, a product manager with Google Voice Search, after the event with some follow-up questions:

In some instances, Google Voice Search pulls out the top “free” listings that you’d see in doing a web search. That omits advertisers from appearing in some of the related displays. An issue? Delgado said largely no, that things are still developing to the degree that this isn’t currently an issue.

How do you get Voice Actions? You have to have an Android 2.2 device, first and foremost. Some Android phones out there aren’t running the latest version of the OS, so it’s up to the carriers and whether they’ve pushed it out.

Assuming you have it already, chances are you’ll still need to go to the Android Market and download Voice Search in order to upgrade the existing version on Android 2.2 to the features introduced today. If you have a brand new Android 2.2 phone, like the Verizon Droid 2, you don’t need to. Future updates of Android 2.2 and beyond will include this, so downloading the app is mainly a way to get existing 2.2 users up to speed.

Will voice actions come to the iPhone, via the Google Voice Search integration within the Google app? Potentially it could, but not immediately, and this is hard to do. Apparently the Apple developer tools make it harder for third-party developers to get the device to perform certain actions.

You might also have to download new applications that are Voice Action enabled. For example, Jason Kincaid from TechCrunch couldn’t initially get Pandora to work. He had an older version, as it turned out, that needed to be updated.

Of course, I’m used to cell phone revolutions being cut short by the carriers. Apple ushered in a revolution of its own with the iPhone, making smartphones acceptable to the masses for the first time. But to get those smartest of phones, you had to live with AT&T. That’s the deal Apple cut, and it stopped a real transformation.

All this has really crystallized for me over the past month or so. I jumped to the new iPhone 4. Then I returned my shiny new device, because it was still crippled not by Antennagate but by AT&T’s lousy network. I’d have gone to the iPhone on Verizon, but the Apple-AT&T deal doesn’t allow that. In the meantime, I continue to use my iPhone 3G while I wait for Verizon to decide at its leisure to release the Samsung Galaxy device that I probably do want to jump to.

End result? I’m frustrated. In the six months since Google launched the Nexus One, sure, there are plenty of new Android devices. Android itself is a revolution, in that it has quickly gained adoption in a world that was feeling more and more iPhone-dominated (even if RIM devices were selling even more).

Still, I don’t feel my choices are that dramatically different. In the end, we’re still largely buying a device for a particular carrier and then living with that carrier for two years. It’s an absurd situation that we’d never tolerate with our computers.

Let me say up front that I’m not a cell phone expert. I dive deep into search and ponder phones primarily from a search perspective. So my observations here are more from a personal perspective as a cell phone user. But I think there’s still a lot of validity to them.

Would You Buy A Carrier-Dependent Computer?

Let me go back to the computer analogy. I have two laptops. One’s a Mac. One’s a PC. Neither is “carrier-dependent.” If I change my broadband provider from Time Warner to Comcast tomorrow, the laptops still work just as they always have. If I no longer need one of my laptops, I can sell it, and anyone can use it with ANY internet service provider of their choice.

Choice. That’s what this is all supposed to be about, right? Consumer choice. But what’s my consumer choice with cell phones?

Sitting on my desk, I have a Sprint EVO that I was given during Google’s I/O conference earlier this year. I can’t use that phone with T-Mobile or AT&T, because it uses the CDMA cell system. I should be able to use it on Verizon, but that would probably depend on Verizon solely deciding if it wanted to activate it. I should also be able to use it on Virgin Mobile, which is simply Virgin renting out time on Sprint’s network. But Virgin won’t activate it. I know. I asked about it.

Also on my desk is a Nexus One, another phone I was given, this time during the Nexus One launch event. That only works with T-Mobile, at least if you want 3G. If you wanted the Nexus One to work with AT&T in 3G, you had to buy a different model. And the Nexus One wouldn’t work with Sprint or Verizon, because it only had an antenna that worked with the GSM network.

Another phone on my desk is my iPhone 3G. This one, despite being out of contract — all totally bought and paid for — remains stuck with AT&T because AT&T refuses to unlock iPhones so that they can be used on other GSM networks, like T-Mobile.

Choice Means Devices That Can Move

Sure, I have a choice of mobile devices, but unlike computers, those devices will largely work with only one carrier. Even if you buy your smartphone without a contract, it’s largely a smartbrick if you change carriers.

Some smartphones are more expensive than computers, going for more than $500 out of contract. We’d never tolerate buying a “carrier-locked” computer, but with cell phones, we’re stuck. And some of that blame goes back to Google and Apple.

Apple, for its own business reasons, locked up with AT&T. You can have that iPhone in any color you want, in the US right now, as long as it’s colored AT&T. When the exclusivity finally expires, you’ll be buying a new iPhone, if you want to jump networks. And if you want to jump again, you’ll be buying yet another again.

It didn’t have to be that way. Apple could have decided anywhere along the iPhone product cycle that its phones should be capable of working on ANY network in the US. Then, if you wanted to pay the full retail price, you’d have really had choice. But it didn’t.

Oh, but the extra antennas needed would make it more expensive. Sure, a little. But if I can have a choice between a WiFi and a WiFi/3G iPad, why can’t I have a choice between a carrier-specific versus a carrier-independent iPhone? I can have amazing FaceTime, but the hardware geniuses at Apple can’t make a universal phone?

As for Google, same thing. The Nexus One came out only supporting one of the four major carriers in the US. Crazy. In addition, the idea of an ad-supported phone was nowhere to be seen. Google did nothing new or exciting in the space. What a wasted effort.

Life doesn’t have to be this way. I know, because I lived for 12 years in Britain, where all the major carriers use GSM. Want to take your expensive smartphone from T-Mobile to Orange. Take our your T-Mobile SIM card, slot in an Orange one, and you’re done. But in the US, our hybrid cell system allows carriers to restrict our choice. And the two companies that could fight to make that system more universal, Google and Apple, don’t seem to care to.

The Google Sell Out

Back to Google, it gave up on the Nexus One altogether. It no longer sells it to consumers, quitting back in May. Coincidentally, the number of Google-backed Android devices pushed by the major carriers have exploded, as Google backed off pushing its own device.

Is it any wonder that some feel Google sold out? That by giving up on its own phones, much less ad-supported ones or less expensive, carrier-interchangeable ones, it secured the support of the carriers?

Today’s great post by Ryan Singel, Why Google Became A Carrier-Humping, Net Neutrality Surrender Monkey, is the latest in many analysis pieces like this that I’ve seen recently. Be sure to read it.

Yesterday’s announcement by Google & Verizon that they both support net neutrality on wired networks but not on wireless ones is only inflaming the idea that Google’s sold out. From its sixth point:

We both recognize that wireless broadband is different from the traditional wireline world, in part because the mobile marketplace is more competitive and changing rapidly. In recognition of the still-nascent nature of the wireless broadband marketplace, under this proposal we would not now apply most of the wireline principles to wireless, except for the transparency requirement.

Are you kidding me? The mobile marketplace is MORE competitive than landline internet access? Where providers unilaterally add on $10 surcharges just because you’re using a smartphone, regardless of you actual data usage? Where you can’t take your expensive device and go elsewhere? Where they deliberately cripple parts of a smartphone’s OS? Where they decide to charge you more for using your device as a modem even if that usage still comes under the same data cap as allowed by native use of your device?

Google’s backing that? Seriously? We’re supposed to swallow that and not assume that Google’s making nice with Verizon, and by extension the other cell phone networks, in its quest to beat Apple in the cell phone operating system space?

Forget Porting Your Number

But hey, let’s ramp up the conspiracy even more. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could port your cell phone number over to Google Voice, and then in turn make it ring whatever cell phone you might currently be using?

Sure it would. In fact, Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch wrote exactly a year ago about how amazing this service was, when Google Voice enabled it for him. Google apparently promised that everyone would have access to this great feature. From the article:

Want to port your mobile number to Google Voice and do what I’ve done? You can’t just yet, but porting will be released later this year publicly. Prepare yourselves, and don’t sign any new long term contracts with your carrier. Life will soon be good for you, too.

It didn’t happen in 2009. An entire year has gone by, and it hasn’t happened. I messaged Google yesterday to find out why not. I’m still waiting to hear back.

I think it didn’t happen because it makes the carriers nervous. It’s another way that Google could help free up our dependency on them. So it seems to sit, going nowhere. Kind of like the cell phone revolution itself.

Postscript: Google spokesperson Randall Sarafa sent me this about Google Voice:

To your question: there’s no conspiracy. We’re currently working on number portability and hope to offer it to Google Voice users in the near future.

SMX East isn’t just for search marketers, though there’s plenty for the SEM folks! There’s also ample content for web designers, developers, public relations people and traditional marketers. Anyone who is even remotely involved with gaining visitors, customers or sales should be attending. Search is a crucial marketing medium that you ignore at your peril, that you embrace at your gain.

Below, a virtual tour of what to expect and why you should attend.

Something For Everyone

First, an overview of what SMX East is all about. This is one of the two “big” SMX search engine marketing conferences that Search Engine Land’s publisher Third Door Media runs each year in the United States (SMX West, held in San Jose during March, is the other).

The event is large enough that we offer multiple tracks filled with sessions for people of all interests and experience levels. Beginner, intermediate or advanced — in PPC, SEO, or social media — there’s plenty for you.

To make your sessions choices easy, we have “ski run” icons on our Agenda-At-A-Glance page that indicate which sessions are suitable for anyone versus those with intermediate and expert skills. You can see which sessions are focused toward search engine optimization (working with “free” listings), PPC (paid search ads) or both combined (SEO+PPC = search engine marketing).

For The Newbies

Search engines are one of the major ways people locate information. That means search marketing isn’t just a big online marketing thing. It’s a huge marketing activity period. If you are in a position that helps drive sales, visitors, customers and so on, you need to understand the search space.

Our SMX Boot Camp will get you up to speed. It happens on the first day of the show, Oct. 4. In it, you’ll learn the fundamentals in these sessions:

• Keyword Research & Copywriting For Search Success
• Link Building Fundamentals
• Paid Search Fundamentals
• Search Engine Friendly Web Design

To encourage newbies to learn more about search, you can attend all of these sessions through a special low-cost SMX Boot Camp ticket, which includes admission to the afternoon keynote and the Expo Hall reception at the end of the day. You even get a certificate of completion! If you decide you want to learn more, you can upgrade your ticket to a full pass and attend sessions on the second and third day of the show.

For The Experts: SMX Advanced Track

SMX Advanced is our show especially for advanced search marketers held during June. It sold out once again this year. Missed it? We’ve got a mini-version running on the first day of the show, in the SMX Advanced Track:

• Retargeting: The New Behavioral Ads
• Inner View: Google’s Keyword Research Tools
• Tapping Into Google’s Love Of Freshness
• Double Serving, Trademarks & Other Tricky Issues

Even if you made it to SMX Advanced, the SMX Advanced Track at SMX East features all new, all fresh sessions. In addition, there are plenty of expert-level sessions happening on the second and third day of the show, too.

Search Marketing Beyond Search Marketing

We know New York is home to large numbers of traditional marketers and advertisers. That’s why we’ve got a special track on the second day of the show designed to focus on search as part of the overall marketing activity. In the Marketing Track, sessions include:

• Search & Diapers – A Tight Fit? Search Marketing & Consumer Packaged Goods
• Search Marketing For CMOs (& Those Who Work With Them)
• It’s Not Multichannel Marketing If You Don’t Include Search
• Search, PR & Reputation Management

Get Your Facebook Tweeting Socially In Real Time, YouTube-Style

SMX keeps the focus firmly on search, so that you can dive deep into this important area. But social media is so closely tied to search that search marketers need to be up-to-speed on social as well. That’s why we have two tracks on social. On the first day, there’s the Social & YouTube Track. On the second day, there’s the Twitter & Facebook Track. Sessions include:

• The Real Time & Social Search Landscape
• Twitter, SEO & Search
• Twitter & Real-Time Ads
• SEO & User Generated Content
• Maximizing YouTube Visibility With Organic SEO
• YouTube Ads For Fun And Profit
• Facebook Ad Tactics For Search Marketers
• Facebook SEO: Free Ways To Be Found On Facebook

Local & Mobile Search

The smartphone revolution continues, driving up the mobile search activity happening. Our Local & Mobile Search Track, which runs on Day 1, keeps you up to speed on the latest in the mobile and local search space. Sessions include:

• Mobile Search Ads
• Mobile Apps & How They’re Revolutionizing Search
• What’s New With Local Search
• Location Services: The New Local Search?

When SEO Meets Design & Development

Working with designers or developers? Are you a designer or developer? Or are you an SEO who wants to ensure you’re up-to-speed on the latest technical aspects that can impact your SEO performance? The popular Technical SEO Track, programmed in conjunction with Nine By Blue, returns to SMX East. It has these sessions on the second day of the show, Oct. 5:

• Solving the Big URL Issues
• Actionable Metrics and Diagnostics
• Industrial Strength SEO
• Build It Better: Site Architecture For The Advanced SEO

Paid Search, This Track’s For You

Really interested in sessions on paid search? There are plenty of sessions on this topic throughout the conference, but we also have a special Paid Search Track on Day 3 just for you. Park yourself in one place and enjoy! And tired of PowerPoint? Our two “Ask The…” sessions are PowerPoint-free. Put your questions to panel of paid search reps, then to a panel of paid search buyers. The sessions:

• Search Meet Display; Display Meet Search
• Industrial Strength PPC
• Ask The Paid Search Reps
• Ask The Paid Search Buyers

SEO, This Tracks For You

Don’t worry, SEO types! We’ve also got a track devoted to you. Aside from SEO-only sessions throughout the conference, Day 3 features an entire SEO Track, including two PowerPoint-free “Ask The…” sessions. The panels:

• SEO Myths, Mistakes & The Madness Of Crowds
• Ask The Search Engines
• Ask The SEOs
• Ask The Link Builders

Analytics & Conversion

Getting people to your web site via search and social media marketing is only half the battle. Are they converting, when they arrive? And are you attributing the visit the right way? Plus, what can you learn from your competitors. Our Analytics & Conversion Track on the third day of the show has sessions on all of these topics:

• Credit Where Credit Is Due: Demystifying Attribution
• SEO & Competitive Analysis
• Analytics For Social Media
• Conversion Optimization Science

In Housers & Retailers

Involved with doing search marketing in house, for a company or organization? We’ve got two special sessions for you on the third day of the show, in our In House & Specialty Search Track. The In House sessions will be posted soon, so stay tuned. As for specialty search, our Ecommerce & Retail Search Marketing Tactics is designed for those especially focused on online retail.

The Big Picture

While much of SMX focuses on how-to tactics, we also look at strategies. Where’s the space going and what issues does search marketing face? That especially happens in our Big Picture Track. Sessions include:

• Content Farms Or The Smartest SEOs In the World?
• Microsoft + Yahoo: Together At Last
• Search Ads: The Next Generation

At the end of the second day, I’m also hosting our Evening Forum, where we talk about any topics, issues big or small, with lots of audience interaction.

Get Help At Clinics!

Looking for some specific advice from experts. See the doctor! On the second and third days of the show, our popular clinics return again in these areas:

• SEO Site Clinic (twice on Day 2, once on Day 3)
• PPC Tune-up Clinic with the SMX Mechanics
• Link Building Clinic
• Social Media Clinic

Post-Conference Workshops & Training

Looking for even more advice in particular areas? Stick around for an extra day, and you’ve got a choice of optional workshops and training to choose from:

• Bruce Clay SEO Training
• Google Analytics Training
• In House SEO Exchange
• Paid Search ROI Training

Over 50 Editorial Sessions!

Having covered the sessions, it’s worth a word on how we program our events.

All the SMX sessions I’ve described above are what we call editorial sessions. That means people are speaking on them because we feel they have great information to offer. No one bought their way onto a panel.

Each session is developed by a “session coordinator” who reviews speaking pitches and reaches out to knowledgeable people, to assemble a panel. The session coordinator then works with their speakers to create a session where presentations support each other, rather than overlap. In most cases, the session coordinator is also the session moderator.

I and my co-chair Chris Sherman oversee all the sessions. We’ve been organizing search conferences longer than anyone in the industry (this is my 12th year of doing it, myself!)

The attention to programming is part of what we call the SMX Content Difference, and it’s why we’re able to guarantee the quality of our events.

Freebies: Expo Hall, SMX Theater & Sponsored Sessions

Of course, the SMX East sponsors & exhibitors do have great information to share with SMX attendees. That’s why we provide some ways for you to hear from them.

On the first two days of the show, we have a Sponsors & Partners Track. Unlike editorial sessions, these are created and produced by the company sponsoring them. That’s why we mark them as “Sponsored Sessions.”

Despite being sponsored, they have lots of great information. Sponsors know they’re competing to attract attendees who are also considering high quality editorial sessions. That causes them to want to match the “high tide” of content being provided. Before some editorial sessions, we’ll also have a few very short “Solutions Spotlights” that are also offered.

The Expo Hall runs for both days of the show. In it, you can get information from exhibitors and sponsors about many products and services available to search marketers.

On the Expo Hall floor, SMX Theater Presentations are mini-sponsored sessions that are offered, lasting 20-40 minutes. They’re a great way to learn quickly about a company, product, service or topic. The full list of theater topics will be posted later this month to the SMX East site.

An Expo Hall is free for anyone, as long as you register in advance. The Expo+ Pass allows you into the Expo Hall and the sponsored sessions. And naturally, those with full conference passes can enter the Expo Hall, go to the SMX Theater or Sponsored Sessions, plus have access to all the editorial sessions.

This is also a good time to thank our major sponsors: Bing and FOX Audience Network, our premier sponsors; iProspect, our platinum sponsor, and our two gold sponsors, Covario and Bruce Clay.

Network Like You’ve Never Networked Before

Beyond the conference sessions, there’s networking. At SMX, we don’t leave networking to chance, where you hope to randomly encounter the right people. We’re organized!

Even before you arrive, our SMX Connect networking system will allow you to meet people. Think of SMX Connect as an easy-to-use, disposable Facebook for just this event. You can find people with common work or personal interests, plan sessions to attend and see others who say they’re going.

The night before the show, we have our SMX Meet & Greet reception. It’s another easy way to meet people before the show starts.

During lunches, we offer special Birds of a Feather lunch tables, where attendees can network with each other and discuss specific topics. Being grouped with people who share a common interest is a great icebreaker. And in the evening of the first day, we have a reception in the Expo Hall.

Don’t be worried about meeting people. You’re going to meet plenty of them. Come out, and when you’ve registered, don’t forget to tell the world using one of our I’m Going badges.

Good Food, WiFi & Backpacks

We want you to really enjoy your SMX experience. That’s why we don’t do boxed lunches at our shows. You’ll get a great lunch, on a real plate, and you’ll want seconds. You’ll also get refreshments during the day. People take pictures of the food we serve at our events, they’re so amazed and pleased. Honest!

We’ll also keep you connected, providing free WiFi in the conference rooms. Twitter and Facebook and Foursquare email to your heart’s content – though consider shutting that laptop or turning off that iPad, lest you miss a great point one of our speakers is going to make.

Among the little touches, we’ll also give you a conference backpack. It’s a real backpack, not a bag, that you’ll take home and use again and again.

Still To Come: TBAs & Keynotes

Could there be more? Yes! Two sessions are marked TBA, which gives us a chance to add in any late-breaking topics. In addition, we’ve got two keynotes that will be announced shortly, so stay tuned!

Go. Now. Register!

I sure hope you’re ready to attend! You’ll find more details on the SMX East web site, including the Agenda-At-A-Glance. You can register online or by phone at (877) 242-5242. Do it by Sept. 10 to get the best “Early Bird” rate on your ticket.

See you in New York!