Archive: March, 2007

Meanwhile, over at the Enquisite Blog, Richard Zwicky posts another of (what I’m calling), his Enquisitive Minds interviews, this time with the brilliant Andrew Goodman of Page-Zero Media.

Andrew is one of the more interesting people in the search sphere. As Richard points out he is, “… one of the most educated SEM’s out there.”

After noting his potentially limiting and injurious comments about hedgehogs, I too share Richard’s observation that Andrew is obviously a few courses short of the doctorship. Putting that highly personal issue aside, I think the guy is amazingly smart and try to catch all his writings at Traffick.com.

Over at Search Engine Watch, Eric Enge does a long interview with Ask.com director of online information resources Gary Price. Gary is widely considered one of the smartest people in an industry overflowing with genius. A conversation with Gary is a whirlwind experience, which might seem strange to those who’ve only met the man.

Talking with Gary is literally like walking through the Web. His encyclopedic knowledge and ability to match seemingly unrelated points are uncanny and might even be unnerving if he carried or showed even an ounce of pretension in person. He does not, making him one of the most intellectually challenging but delightful people to speak with.

When Gary starts to explain even a small facet of the numerous search resources at Ask.com, it can be difficult to fully keep up with the rapid flow of information and ideas. That’s ok. You know he is guiding you to a most interesting place. By the time you get there, the maze of ideas he has guided you through will be lit by the light bulbs left floating above the places he took your head. Like I said, a conversation with Gary Price is an intellectually elegant, unforgettable experience.

Enquisite CEO Richard Zwicky has conducted a series of email interviews with several search marketing specialists known for their strong opinions. The first of these interviews with SearchEngineLand.com excecutive editor, Chris Sherman is published on the Enqusite Search Metrics Blog.

Much of Chris’ interview focuses on the enormity of personalization.

Q. What do you foresee as the biggest change coming to the search industry over the next 18 months?

Personalization. It’s going to change everything, and I don’t think most search marketers will realize how big an impact it will have. Gord Hotchkiss has written some great columns on the coming impact of personalization on search results for SEL, and as good as his analysis is, he’s just scratching the surface of this massive sea change.

Chris also makes a subtle point when giving his best advice on SEO/SEM,

“The most important thing is to understand your goals before you do anything else. Search marketing needn’t be rocket science, but it can seem that way if you’re not sure what you want to accomplish.”

Richard says he has received a great response from the people he interviewed.  Tomorrow, Richard interviews Page-Zero founder Andrew Goodman.

Last Friday, a group of 10 met in the Metamend boardroom for the first of what we hope will be a regular series of brain-jams. Staff from Metamend and Enquisite gathered to share our thoughts about Google’s introduction of personalized search. It was a fun session that appears to have generated a lot of discussion in the offices of both companies.

The afternoon opened with a 34 slide Powerpoint presentation designed to offer a background on what personalization is, how personalized data is collected and from which areas, and what Google might be doing with that data to create personalized result sets. Towards the end, it drops a bombshell quote Gord Hotchkiss drew from Marissa Mayer about the development of personalized pagerank values for individual users. That’s when things got interesting…

This was our first session as a growing team but after my admittedly lame PPT was complete the room buzzed with discussion and ideas including a cool behavioural curve outlined by Enquisite statisticians, Raphael.

The items on where Google is drawing info from are well documented. There is one piece of information about personalization that sort of flew under the radar of most analysts though. A Gord Hotchkiss interview with Marissa Mayer from last month contains some of the most interesting snippets about how Google developed their personalization plans. Marissa Mayer is the head of product development at Google.