Archive: December, 2008

2008 started on a promising note however it quickly descended into a chaotic nightmare that can easily be characterized as the harshest, stupidest, good-for-no-one, waste of a year in the short history of search. 2008 sucked on virtually every level imaginable. The past twelve months have produced a few triumphant highlights but they are grossly over-shadowed by a slew of extraordinarily unfortunate events. Entering the last two weeks of the year, conditions in the search marketing industry are ripe for contrition, a dark and unkempt path we’ve never traveled down before.

The extraordinary events of the past year drained a lot of life and talent out of the industry. Ironically, these events happened just at a time when the search and digital marketing sectors are being widely considered and understood by the greater advertising industry. Having managed to grow the search marketing sector from what was essentially a miscellaneous line-item on corporate marketing budgets to a multi-billion dollar advertising industry, 2008 and 2009 were supposed to be the hyper-breakthrough years. Now the industry feels like it is stuck at the nozzle of an aerosol canister with enormous propellant force behind us but stopped by an untimely blockage near the top of the tube.

I was party to an interesting conversation outside the Hilton Hotel in Chicago last week. I was standing beside a friend who is another Search Engine Strategies speaker, talking to a half dozen or so conference delegates, two of whom had specific instructions to seek out the other speaker as a potential vendor. He was turning himself inside-out trying to explain what I had meant when I made the seemingly dismissive comment, “Rankings are so dead dude,” to a potential client of his a few moments earlier.

These sorts of conversations are usually pretty interesting and though each of them is unique, they tend to follow a similar pattern. People attending search marketing conferences are there on their company’s budgets or pay thousands out of their own pockets. They are expected to return with a lot of fresh info that will build their online businesses. When talking to speakers, smarter conference delegates tend to pry as much information as they can.

“I read the news today oh boy…”

Actually, I haven’t read the news today. I haven’t wanted to. I don’t have the stomach for the Dow today and having spent a week talking with CEOs, SEOs, Social Marketers and most importantly, CFOs, I don’t have the strength for another download of economic downturn stories. Except for one…

The chill running down my spine is very real and that’s not because I have spent the last week in Chicago attending the final Search Engine Strategies Conference of 2008. Though the temperature was low the caliber of the conference was high. This event was arguably the most interesting and well organized Search Engine Strategies show ever produced but that’s not going to be the story of the show. The predominant story of this show will (unfortunately) be the economy. The chill running down my spine is a shared sensation amongst most of the people I spoke with loosely referred to as “THE FEAR”.

Shares of Yahoo! surged upwards by 7% yesterday on news the former CEO of AOL, Jonathan Miller was mounting an independent take-over bid. As reported in yesterday’s Wall St. Journal, Miller is actively trying to acquire Yahoo! with an offer in the range of $20 – $22 per share.

While many commentators in the financial and marketing sectors cast doubt on Miller’s chances to mount a successful take-over, favourable interest in the attempt demonstrates a belief Yahoo! could be a viable operation under the right leadership.

Virtually everyone, including folks at Yahoo! has conceded dominance in the search space to Google. What tends to be forgotten when people write-off Yahoo! as a second ran in search is that Yahoo! remains the world’s largest content network and the most visited domain on the Internet. Yahoo! is still an online superpower but it has languished under its current and previous leadership for over half the decade.