Networking Event Discussion: Paid Links, Universal & Blended Search, SES San Jose

When we originally envisioned our networking events, we wanted to add a little value with some search industry news & discussion. We have sinced moved our networking events to Paddy’s and they are great, but we can’t really pull off a group discussion in a reasonable or fashion. So, here are a few recent search industry items that we encouraged our attendees to talk about. My hope is that you will use the comment feature to further the discussion.

1. Paid links have been demonized recently as a way to unfairly gain PageRank and violates Google’s quality guidelines. Matt Cutts (Google) even put up a blog post asking people to report paid links to Google and told them how. Controversy has erupted around this subject.
   1. Do you use paid links as a part of your SEO strategy?
   2. Do you think there’s anything wrong with buying links?
   3. What about the fact that Google accepts advertising from text-link brokers?
   4. Don’t know what we’re talking about? Here’s a few links to get you up to speed:
      1. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/text-links-and-pagerank/
      2. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-report-paid-links/
      3. http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3626945
2. Universal & Blended search
   1. Has it had an impact on your search campaigns? For better or worse? (in other words - do you have more content in the rankings? Or has your best stuff been pushed down the page?)
   2. How have you adapted your strategies to contend with universal search results?
   3. Don’t know what we’re talking about? Here’s a few links to get you up to speed:
      1. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/universal-search-best-answer-is-still.html
      2. http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/014535.html
3. SES San Jose just took place last month
   1. Did you attend? If not, did you read any coverage of follow along online somehow?
   2. What content/topics/stories intrigued you the most?
   3. Would you recommend SES to a colleague?
   4. Don’t know what we’re talking about? Here’s a few links to get you up to speed:
      1. http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/sew/sj07/
      2. http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/014612.html
      3. http://www.seomoz.org/article/ses-san-jose-2007