Notes from SES Day 3

Please know that these notes are in raw format. Some may not make sense to you, but they do to me. This is a recap of last weeks events.

Executive Roundtable
with each major search engine

Cragg Silversteen (sp?) – Google
Gerry Campbell – AOL
Jim Lanzone – Ask Jeeves
Bradley Horwits (sp?) – Yahoo
Ken Moss – MSN Search

Google is on year 295 of it’s 300 year plan. And right on target.
Search Engines (SE’s) like tagging
Tags-
Flicker is smart by making people do it
Regular people should decide what’s important / social aspect
Flicker users keep the system clean
Flicker now has interestingness and groups
Maps-
MSN now has virtual earth
Google Maps is a great time waster
SE’s like freshness, relevance and presentation
Index size doesn’t matter.
Bigger index, more junk?
Google believes in happiness over relevancy. Just like talking to other people.
Google is trying to add new features without complexity or having instructions involved
Ask stats that SE’s don’t copy each other necessarily. You can’t make a desktop search app in two weeks. Just because Google released one doesn’t mean Yahoo didn’t have one in the works.
MSN things competition is good for users
Failure is good. Can’t succeeded if you don’t fail.
AOL like the iPod. Not innovative but packaged perfectly

Pimp My Site

Title tags important
Tracking clicks very important
Content re-wiriting
Don’t link out to often
Usability – no big images at the top
Order a product to see how it works
Put popular products at the top
3 main products on homepage
Categorize product pages with content and categories
See where people are coming from besides search engines
Google Site Map
301 other domains
Move away from Yahoo Store. They claim it’s big and unfriendly to SEs
Creative PR angle
Try new things and track results
Wordtracker
Monster Commerce vs Yahoo Store
Analitics

Site ECG

Digital Point Network Risky?
Sand box effects every site
Google Site Maps
Why your rankings change?
    Internal/External links
    Algorithms
    On Page Changes
Link internally/externally the same way each time. .htm or /
Duplicate Content – Supplemental Index Google
Slow Death – Google link that is just url?

Usability Clinic

Don’t tell user to sign up for an account or put in personal info w/o telling them why
Buttons should look clickable
Different text/message for demographics
Banner Blindness – top 60 to 100 px
Eyes go to movement or face. Yellow also
Privacy Policy linked on form pages
800×600 standard
Solutions or Products in nav is to generic
Capture internal search words
Pop-Out menus that pop out more than once to hard to use
If links are on two lines, use bullets : People are stupid
Links shouldn’t blend in
Breadcrumbs
Legends at top
In-Stock text is helpful
Add to registry is good marketing
Rollovers
Keep menu items highlighted when you are in that area
3 Column layouts
Add to cart in color and reversed out in middle of page
Call/Contact on right
Google ads in center of top is call to action
Add availability area
Bottom nav should match top.