Just a quick shout-out to all the people that I had the pleasure of chatting with down in Seattle a couple weeks ago!   Was a great conference and although there wasn’t a TON OF earth-shattering stuff that we don’t already know about and preach, the networking amongst peers is always worth the price of admission 😉

Also cool that I managed to wrangle down Matt Cutts from Google for a quick pic!  😉

Perhaps a little “distorted” view of what SEO is all about – but funny nevertheless!  (*and I have to say, I don’t think the “what we really do” pic is an accurate representation lol – is that a knife sitting beside his keyboard?!)

This is definitely going to be a game-changer in the realm of search results and the fact “social proof” is going to be more important for search than just algorithmic results. I would rather see search results that show links and resources that are recommended by my friends as opposed to results that Google’s “mathematizing” believes I want to see 😉

Google announced this week that Google+ shares would start showing up in Google search results. Is this a game changer?

Obviously this could give Google+ the edge over Facebook — websites would be incentivized to integrate +1 buttons more than Like buttons if they provided a boost in search results.

What’s not to clear to me is the exact effect a +1 or a Google+ share has on search results — I thought it would just provide the same results and append a friend’s avatar if they had shared that link … but some testing suggests that Google is actually rearranging search pages based on what your friends share.

Does anyone have insights into how Google+ is changing search results? What have you seen? And is this a BIG DEAL or not?

An example of this is with this very site (image below).  Where my listing appears in the SERPS is different when I am logged in under my Google account vs when I’m not logged in. If you are in one of my circles / vice versa, your results will also be influenced by that fact – pretty cool huh? Here is an article from Mashable about this as well: http://mashable.com/2011/08/12/google-plus-social-search/ – would love to hear your thoughts!

Just returned from San Diego CA where I was fortunate enough to rub shoulders and pick the brains of some of the absolute brightest minds in the online marketing and application development industry.  Presenters included notable IM heavy-weights such as Christian Weselak, Ed Dale, Gauher Chaudry, Amish Shah, Mike Koenigs, Trey Smith, Chad Mureta, Josh Bartlett, Andy Jenkins and THE Frank Kern (Just to name a few).    Bob Proctor and David Asharaf from “The Secret” also spoke and both of their presentations were unbelievable.

In any case, what does this have to do with SEO and SEM?   Well, everything…  The amount of knowledge gained at these conferences is absolutely amazing as well as the networking of “brain power” that goes on – as one of several Vancouver SEO consultants that was in attendance, I had the opportunity to network and brainstorm with some brilliant people – each of us are always striving to stay on top of “all things SEO” in every possible way; and every,  single,  day…  Needless to say I learned a few tricks and have added even more knowledge to my ever-expanding arsenal of Search Engine Optimization tools and techniques.   Feel free to subscribe to my “Smartest Guy on The Net Monthly Newsletter” at the very the top page (“subscribe via email” to the left of RSS, Twitter, & Facebook badges) where I’ll share with you some of the “tricks of the trade” and how Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing using Social Media and Mobile Marketing can help grow your online presence and business.

Here’s a few pictures of myself and some of the heavy hitters down in San Diego:

Related Blogs