Disclaimer: You will not learn any SEO, CRO, SMO or Analytics in this post. You may however feel the urge to watch the Wizard of Oz and eat crepes.

As you may have heard, SEOmoz has moved offices (woo hoo!). So we thought it would be nice to take you on a tour of our new digs. We’re quite proud that we outgrew the old space and needed a bigger place. Please follow along as I take you on a tour of the new office.

We are just a block from Pike Place Market, and within walking distance of Bell Harbor which is where SMX Advanced is held. We have the entire top floor! But let’s look at the good stuff… the inside.

First, as you first step out of the elevator you may think, "Wow, this really is a cool space." But then…

You look down at your feet and exclaim, "Wow! I feel the need to breakdance!" [busts a move]

Next, as you make your way through the Operations department (who used to sit in a back, very dark corner) you too will be in complete shock at the sunny, openness of the space. Just like this guy:

Holy big, bright awesome room batman! Yes we even have a meeting room called the Batcave [see below]. (Ok, the bat cave is a bright, sunny, room that does not resemble a bat cave in any way. But that’s ok, cuz we have a bat cave. damnit.)

Oh wait. What’s this?! Crepes, yes my friends. On "opening day" at the new moz office we had a crepe guy! "I’ll have one with nutella, strawberries and bananas please."

But seriously, we really have a lot of work to do. See, we’re working! Well at least Ben Huff is (the dude on the left).

Nevermind. Oh look we also had fruit (and mimosas ehem), we’re not complete pigs you know. Remember Phil [dude on the left]? Last time you saw him he was wearing his PJs. #justsayin

Have I mentioned that Rand has an office… with a door… that he can close! This probably isn’t overly exciting for most people but for the developers who used to sit right outside his office (aka his desk) and listened to every phone call, webinar and Whiteboard Friday… let me tell ya, they’re cheering today.

Plus we have 5 meeting rooms now. We used to have one. Again… now there are F I V E. I was late to a meeting earlier because I couldn’t find Thunderdome. I thought it was in Spider Skull Island, but apparently those are different. heh. Boys named our meeting rooms if you hadn’t guessed that already.

Rand in sheer shock:

Plus really, who could resist having this right outside the window:

The only downside to getting a new office is that now we all have this silly dress code.

Wonder Twins… Activate!

If you’re going to be in town for SMX Advanced, we’ll have a few office tours set up. The dates/times will be announced soon, and we’d love to show you around in person!

Thanks to my husband, Rudy Lopez who provided the amazing photos (all except the obvious snapshots).

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Last week, a few of us from SEOmoz attended WebShare’s Seminar for Success for Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer training. All of us who attended have a decent grasp on GA but really wanted to get some advanced information and gain a better understanding of GA’s potential. Plus, actually getting trained on something is always helpful, even if you feel you know it well!

During the first day, which was an introduction to Google Analytics and user training, I quickly realized that there were a number of tips and tactics that I had NO IDEA about previously. I felt a little silly that I didn’t know that some of these things even existed in GA and got to thinking… if I didn’t know you could use these great tactics, maybe others don’t either.

Following are the tips that I’ll be using in Google Analytics from here on out. You may already be using some of these, but hopefully you’ll find a helpful nugget of information in here.

1. Date Range Made Easy

This actually made me the giddiest of all the features. It’s so simple, yet also so subtle that I had never noticed it before! When you use the date range drop down selection, you can select a month or a week easily by simply clicking on the week or month. WHAT?! I know, that’s what I said.

Month Selection

Week Selection

2. Overview Comparison Reports

This is another one, that I feel a bit silly I didn’t know previously! But if you do a comparison with the past month (or whatever date range you choose), it will show you all the data in the overview. My favorite part is that it will calculate the difference for you and give you a quick overview of the comparison. Pretty dang cool! Plus if you take that information and export it to PDF it’s super easy to send it on to anyone or set up a scheduled email (see below).

3. Regular Expressions FTW

Coming from the dev world, I’ve used regular expressions in the past for many things. I was really excited to learn more about using regular expressions when performing searches, setting up filters, and all other things. Here are a list of the regular expressions you can use. Don’t laugh if you’ve been using these for years, some of us are excited over here!

Wildcards

• . = match any single character
• * = match – or more of previous
• + = match 1 or more previous
• ? = match 0 or 1 of previous
• | = logical OR

Anchors

• ^ must occur at the beginning – ^/order\.php = everything that starts with /order.php
• $ must occur at end

Grouping

• () create match on an item – grand(ma|pa) – (.*) = match any chars
• [] create match on one ofe list of items

Escaping

• \ escapes any special character – OK I actually giggled out loud in the training because the trainer, David Booth, said "When in doubt, escape it out” [see! hehehehe]

This regular expression allowed me to search for all guides within the /article section of the site

4. Show More Rows

If you have a large site, I’m sure you’ve come across the issue of trying to export all your data but you can only download 500 rows at a time! That can be super annoying if you’re trying to pull data when you have 10,000+ rows you need to get into one spreadsheet. This little trick can save you hours of time
Just add this to the end of the URL: “&limit=”. Then when you export it to CSV (this is the only option it works with), you’ll get the full number you’ve added in the limit. The view on the page will still only show 500 (or whatever it’s set to) but the actual download will have everything you need. There are limitations with the number of rows you can get in Excel but it’s more of a problem with Excel 2005 and earlier.

1. Normally you can only select 500 rows at a time.
   
    
2. But add "&limit=#" in the URL
   
    
3. Then Select Export to CSV
   
4. And voila! You have all your data
   

A few notes about this feature that came from the comments: 1. You have to use the &limit feature before the # in the URL for it to work and 2. The max you can get using this is 50,000 (Tom Critchlow recommends looking at Excellent Analytics, an excel plugin to get more).

5. Schedule a Report to be Emailed

I’ve actually seen this used previously and was on the receiving end of these reports, but honestly hadn’t thought about how we could use them on SEOmoz until now. These are extremely useful for reports you send often (daily/weekly/monthly) and/or reports you send to users who don’t have access to GA. Also use the “add to existing” feature so you can send multiple reports to one person rather than 2 separate emails.

Another nice feature is that the date range you set up is sticky, so if the report was set up to show the last 30 days, the next email sent out automatically will also pull the last 30 days. Mhmmm woot!

I personally plan on testing this out starting in June with YOUmoz posts. So if you get a YOUmoz post published in June, watch for a follow up email from me with your post analytics.

Bonus Tips!

 Here are a couple additional tips I couldn’t leave out. They’re not specific to GA, but work nicely with it!

Search based keyword tool – http://www.google.com/sktool

Rand has talked about this in the past and I’ve used it as well, but I didn’t totally understand the potential! The part I didn’t realize was that if you log in, you’ll get customized suggestions based on your site and your Adwords account. I’ve gone in and used the tool previously but didn’t realize that by being logged in, and having all your accounts hooked together, that you’d actually see data based on your account. This is probably a bit “duh” on my end, but still in case you didn’t know… well now you do.

Google URL builder!

Setting up a campaign is much easier than I realized! There’s actually a simple tool that helps you easily create the campaign URLs. Just fill out this form, and it pops out the URL for you to use in your campaign. Pretty nifty!
 

There you have it! Some cool tips I learned in the Seminar for Success. We learned quite a bit and Danny is going to have another post probably next week with some more advanced tactics. If you’re interested in taking these classes as well, here’s the upcoming schedule.

I’d love to hear about any other tips or tricks like these that you use. If you’re looking for more advanced GA tactics, tomorrow Casey Henry will be posting about using Event Tracking to monitor Calls to Action.

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Who is the one person (or group of people) that you can’t live without? Your developer. [Don't tell that to your spouse though.. eh?] As an SEO your life revolves around making changes to your site/application and getting all the pieces to fall into place. If you live in a perfect world, you have the ability to change all your on-page optimization including URL, Title tag, meta description, set up redirects, etc. But how many of us live in this fantasy la la land where everything is perfect? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say not very many of us.

We need our developers. As tough as it may seem some days (the feeling is more than likely mutual), it will make your life just a little easier if you can find a way to work with your development team. Whether that means just one person, or a team of 20 people, getting along with them will allow both of you to do a better job. (As a consultant you may not be able to get the same availability to talk to the client’s developers but if you give your client these tips on how to work well with the dev staff, they’ll thank you for it.)

So what are some things you can do to build a better relationship with your dev team? Here are 5 tips, in no particular order.

1. Show Them the Data

Remember the first time you showed your boss that traffic increased by 500% and the revenue for the month went up 200% just by removing those silly frames on the site? Well show that information to your development team as well! When a developer sees that a change that took a total of 2 hours including the push to production, brought in such an increase in revenue, he/she is going to see the value in their work. When you feel like the work you’re doing, actually makes an impact on the company, your boss, your salary… you’re more willing to help make additional changes in the future.

With a little digging, you’re sure to find something on your own site where you can show the developers exactly how much of an impact their work has had on the company’s success. Heck, throw them a party for reaching that monthly traffic goal that your sales team has been working towards but that your dev team knows nothing about. Data, data, data, that’s where it’s at!

2. Have Them Do it Themselves

I really love this one. Ask your development team to “SEO” their own websites. Most developers (or really anyone these days) will have some sort of website. Whether it’s a personal blog, they manage their aunt Betty’s jewelry store or they have their own business on the side, they usually have something.

As a developer when I was asked to make URL rewrite changes and create landing pages, etc. It bothered me that I felt like these changes were for nothing, just some marketing fluff that wasn’t really going to help much. But then I took my husband’s website and started to implement some of the same changes. I also did my own research and started learning SEO on my own (which is the way many developers work) and voila I drank the Kool-Aid quickly. As soon as my husband’s site started ranking really well for different terms, I wanted to learn more at work. I knew that the changes I made on this small site were fairly easy and I was targeting local and very long tail searches.

Show them the tools in your SEOmoz PRO account (or buy them their own!) and the other tools under your belt and let them learn on their own, with their own sites. Once they understand the basics (or the more advanced depending on their skill levels) and do their own research, you’ll find that it’s easier to 1) talk to them about SEO in general and 2)  get them to make the necessary changes to the site.

3. Let Them Teach You

Sure, you’ve read all the blogs, you’ve done all the research, you’ve been to the conferences and you’ve seen it work on many websites. But you’re not the one changing the code (in most cases). When you go directly to a developer and ask her to set up seventy five 301 redirects because of xyz reason and you give them the code to do it… they’re going to laugh at you (I know I did… sorry Lindsay). Don’t tell a developer HOW to do something.

Help them understand WHY it needs to happen and ask them to figure it out. Remember they’re the expert when it comes to the technical side. Obviously there are many SEOs out there who are also very technical, and this puts you in a great position! You can use that to your advantage, but I’d still recommend letting the person in charge of making the actual development changes, figure the majority of it out on their own. If they seem to be running into roadblocks, point them in the right direction.

Let them teach you about the issues with your current platform, why certain SEO “best practices” simply can’t be done. Let them come up with relevant alternatives and figure out how to solve the problem without doing it the “normal” way. Your developer is wicked smart, let him show you just how well he can find a solution!

4. Find an Advocate

All you need is one. One person on the development team who has the ability to sway others as well. This doesn’t mean that you want someone who can persuade people into doing something that doesn’t make sense. But you want someone on your side, who understands SEO as well as the infrastructure of your website and the development team.

If you see one developer who seems to be somewhat interested in SEO, try to send them to a conference, preferably one with developer specific sessions. SMX often has a “Developer Day” or “Technical SEO Track” these are super valuable for your technical staff. (I went to SMX Advanced Developer Day a couple years ago and now I work for SEOmoz! Word.)

Sometimes pulling yourself out of the limelight of always being the one telling them what to do, and letting an "expert" (in quotes, because you’re more than likely also an expert but they might not see that) explain the world of SEO to them, will help them to see the light.

However you can get that person on board, do it. Once you have an in, they can be your advocate. Believe me on this one, I was that developer!

5. If All Else Fails…

Buy them beer! Or coffee, or Jack Daniels, or pizza or whatever the heck it is that they like. Make friends, be nice, and go give your developers a hug. Tell them J.Lo sent you. Unless of course that is just too creepy and you could get sued for sexual harassment, in that case, stick with the beer.

Every organization has a different set of obstacles and each one should be treated distinctly. I’d love to hear how you’ve worked with your developer or technical team to work on SEO solutions together. What worked for you and what didn’t?

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Whew! The Spring conference season is in full swing, and the mozzers are coming soon to a city near you. You’ll find us anywhere from Charlotte, NC to Munich to Singapore in the next couple months. The coolest part is that we’re attending and speaking at some conferences for the very first time. It feels good to get out and stretch a bit! Plus, the developer in us will be attending conferences like Chirp and CCGrid 2010 which will both enhance our geek factor!

As always, if you’re attending any of these events, please say hello! We may never get to know you if you don’t wave, nudge, or kick us. Ok, you really shouldn’t kick Joanna, she’d probably pull a ninja move on you. Included in the list below are both SEOmoz employees as well as associates. Come… take a peek and join us!

SMX Toronto – April 8-9

You definitely don’t want to miss SMX Toronto! Not only will Gillian be moderating several panels, but she is also organizing a Search Spam Party (of PubCon notoriety). RSVP now!

Joanna at PubCon 2009

PubCon South – Dallas – April 13-14
20% discount tickets. Get ‘em while they’re hot: rc-2080720

We have quite the crew heading to PubCon South this year. As always, PubCon has tons of great sessions and speakers to knock your socks off. We’re excited to be speaking and attending this excellent conference with gusto.

Check out where to find Gillian, Joanna and Kate Morris:

Chirp – San Francisco – April 14-15

Twitter is having a first ever developer conference, called Chirp. Nick will learn about their new ad platform (hopefully) and what they’re doing with their API. This is super interesting to us for both our tools and our API businesses. Sounds like an awesomely, geekified conference! Be sure to say hello to Nick if you’re there.

Danny at SEOmoz training in London

SMX Sydney – April 22-23

We’re all quite excited about SMX Sydney this year (ok we are every year… but still). This year Danny will be helping run the Developer Day (filling in for Vanessa Fox) as well as speaking about using rich applications and search. Gillian will also be speaking at this power-packed event on post-click optimization.

Pacific Conference – Singapore – April 27-28

"This will be my first time at Pacific Conferences. I’ll be running a power-packed two day workshop that covers everything from the basics of search marketing to integration of social media into marketing plans and tracking ROI from the multitude of search marketing opportunities available to us. I’ll be sharing the stage with Dennis Yu, CEO BlitzLocal, who will be covering PPC, Facebook advertising, social media marketing, and more. In truth, I expect this will be one of the most valuable conferences in the region this year. If you’re in the area, don’t miss this one!"
- Gillian

You can still get a 20% discount on your ticket by mentioning this blog post when you register.

SEMPO event planned, too. Stay tuned for tweets with specifics on a SEMPO event to coincide with Pacific Conference Singapore.

Tom at SEOmoz training in London

SAScon – Manchester, UK – April 28th

Two of our esteemed associates, Tom Critchlow and Richard Baxter will be speaking at SAScon. Reading over the session topics and seeing the list of speakers, makes me jealous I won’t be attending!

Pacific Conference – Hong Kong – April 29-30

"If you miss the Singapore Training event, you can catch us in Hong Kong the same week! Dennis and I will provide the same presentation. Again, if you go to only conference in the region this year, come to Pacific Conference. This will be one amazing show."
- Gillian

Search & Social Spring Summit – Tampa – May 3-4

The Search & Social Spring Summit is pretty much the place to be in May! Really… Florida in May just sounds like perfection! Plus with topics like "Outsourcing Secrets: Cut Costs & Spend More Time on the Beach" and "In-House SEO : Tactics for Managing Multiple Sites & Headaches" it will definitely be hot! Lindsay and I will be attending and blogging from the event. [Plus I get to meet the Wassell babies YAY!]

Conversion Conference West 2010 – San Jose, CA – May 4-5

International Search Summit – Innovations – London – May 13-14

A4U Expo Munich – May 18-19

"I was so surprised by the depth and breadth of the speakers and presentations at A4U Expo London, I’m really looking forward to being a part of this conference in Munich. Focused on affiliate marketers’ needs, this conference covers everything from SEM to SEO, analytics, and on page optimization. Our friends at Distilled will be there and Ben Jesson who helped us with our own conversion rates will sharing secrets. I’ll be speaking on the convergence of Local-Mobile-Social marketing and how to grab this tiger by the tail."
- Gillian

Rand giving an interview in London

eMetrics & SMX London – May 17-18

Both eMetrics and SMX London are happening at the same time, in the Grand Connaught Rooms, Covent Garden. You can get a combo pass for both conferences, then you don’t have to decide between the two! Sounds like the best of both worlds to me.

CCGrid 2010 – Melbourne – May 17-20

Chas will be attending the 10th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Grid Computing. It’s a great opportunity to be exposed to new ideas/methods in high performance distributed computing. (That’s geek talk for kick butt!)

Search Exchange – Charlotte, NC -  May 17 – 19

Search Exchange will consist of keynotes and panel discussions on search engine optimization, social media marketing, pay per click advertising, and web analytics.

"I am so excited for Search Exchange, its the first conference of its kind down in Charlotte. It’s tackling the trifecta of marketing channels–organic, paid and social. Not to mention the lineup is top-notch with industry all stars like Chris Winfield, Rae Hoffman, and Chris Brogan."
- Joanna

International Marketing Conference Copenhagen – May 19-20

Gillian will be speaking on New Social Media Oppportunities.

We look forward to seeing you on the road! Oh, and just for fun I thought I’d throw in a wordle image based on this post. Enjoy!

Joanna’s photo courtesy of Andy Beal

Danny and Tom’s photos courtesy of foliovision.com.

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Note: This post will make you smile, possibly even laugh. It won’t however teach you much about SEO. You’ve been warned.

Last week I attended SMX West in Santa Clara, California and took a couple flip video cameras along. I thought it would be fun to do "man on the street" interviews, somewhat along the lines of Jay Leno’s "Jaywalking" episodes on The Tonight Show. Another great idea I had was to employ the help of Dana Lookadoo from Yo! Yo! SEO to help with the interviews. Little did I know she’d be so great at it (ok, I lie. I knew she’d do much better than I would!). She did so well in fact that our video editor, none other than my (awesome) husband Rudy Lopez, mainly only used Dana’s interviews. A rockstar in the making!

Rather than keeping you from this awesome video any further… I present to you: SEOmoz "Man on Street" – A Who’s Who in Search Marketing.

Thanks to all our great participants!

I also had great intentions of getting several Whiteboard Friday’s with some of the speakers. Unfortunately I ended up just toting a mini whiteboard around with me all week instead. I’m sure I looked like quite the winner with my whiteboard in hand. I wonder if people think all mozzers are required to carry a whiteboard around just in case they get the urge to record a Whiteboard Friday. heh.

Thanks for watching along! I hope you had as much fun watching, as we had putting it together. Again a HUGE thanks to Dana Lookadoo and Rudy Lopez for all their help.

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SMX West 2010 kicked off with quite a bang (or was that a yell?). Since Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer was the keynote, people arrived early to ensure good seats. The music playing before it started was amazing, it helped to create an excitement in the room that I really had never felt before a keynote before. I had attempted to save a seat for someone up front, but there was just too much demand and had to give it up. That’s the sort of thing that happens at a great concert, not a conference keynote.

There were quite a few live blogs of the event, but I had a few favorites from the interview that I wanted to call out.

1. He made it very clear that Microsoft is focused on the big picture and not just immediate goals. He spoke about continuing to move forward with a positive momentum and a differentiated point of view.
2. When the question came up of "Can you be #1 in the U.S.?" he essentially said "YES!" [and yes he said it with that exclamation] However he made it clear that it was a tricky question. If you say yes, you sound arrogant but if you say no you sound unsure of yourself. You don’t do things to come in second!
3. Danny asked "Is Yahoo! going to survive as a search player? You want to beat them aren’t you just going to kill them?" Ballmer could really only answer one way "No." He stated that they wanted Yahoo! to do a good job, that there was lots of flexibility written into their contract and there was advantage to having the power of 2 as opposed to the power of 1.
4. When asked whether he was going to get on Twitter he said "I’m more of a webpage than a bunch of short tweets." But then acknowledged that he did have a stealth Twitter account however only the people in his neighborhood followed him.
5. His favorite thing on Bing are the Bing maps. [completely agree here... the maps are amazing!]
6. What he thinks is the biggest opportunity in search: to "Help people get done what they’re trying to get done."
7. Oh! And he gave us all his personal email account. You’ll have to watch the video to get that though.

All in all it was quite enjoyable to watch, although I was a bit unprepared (although perhaps I shouldn’t have been) for the yelling. Ok, I don’t think in his mind he was yelling, he was just talking VERY LOUDLY. But sitting right up front, I think we all sat back in our chairs a bit when he got excited and started to get louder. You can see the full video of the keynote below.

Google’s Personalized Search Revolution

Now that personalization has become an opt-out rather than an opt-in, I was really interested in what this session had to offer. The only speaker, Brian Horling who works in Personalized Search at Google, first gave a very informative presentation, then fielded quite a few questions from the audience. I really enjoyed having just one speaker who was focused on the topic at hand. The top takeaways that I got were some of the differences between a logged out user who gets personalized search versus a logged in user. Let me break it down a bit.

First of all, both types of users are thought of as two different identities to Google. Let’s say you’re logged in, and then log out, they don’t view you as the same logged in person. At that point they do look at the cookies set on your computer which tell gives them information on what you’ve searched for previously, which results you’ve clicked on, etc. For signed in accounts, your web history is saved indefinitely, but your non-logged in identity is only saved for 180 days.

Every user using search has the potential of seeing personalized search in some way whether it’s geo-location, web history, social search, etc. Personalization occurs about 1 in 5 queries for a user and the changes tend to be restricted to only a few results.

How can you control the personalization of your searches?

• Use search details
• Disable it by appending &pws=0 on searchs (you can find the bookmarklet to do that here)
• Edit or disable your web history

If you haven’t looked at the "view customizations" link I highlight above before, you should definitely check it out. Pretty interesting what’s going on there.

One thing that came up in this session was how do you explain to a client that the results they’re seeing aren’t the same as what everyone else sees. Although in some cases that would probably be a good thing since they’re seeing better rankings since they search and click on their sites more often than the average user.

How do you feel about personalized search? After this presentation I found that I was much more open to the idea than I was previously. I think because I felt like I finally understood a bit better where the data was coming from and how to turn it off. But what about you?

And so on…

The other session I really loved was "Supercharging Your Descriptions With Sitelinks" but as I was putting this post together I realized that should really a be a post in and of itself. It was great to hear from a Google rep about how certain sitelinks show up and ways you can enhance your site to ensure proper sitelinks. I have tons of screenshots and examples, so I’ll put them into a full post. Plus I’d really like to get Jerry Dischler (the Google guy) to answer a few of my questions. So watch for that one!

The best swag of the conference goes to Yahoo! for not only giving away these awesome coffee mugs, but for setting up a full-on coffee shop with baristas to make us our much needed lattes!

I really wanted to show the videos from the SMX Ignite as that was one of my favorite parts of the day. But unfortunately the videos aren’t live yet. Here’s a link to where they should be. Maile Ohye’s "DateRank: PageRank for singles" was my personal favorite, although all the speakers were exceptional.

Dana Lookadoo and I interviewed a number of people in sort of a Jay Leno "man on the street" sort of way. We hope to have the interviews up tomorrow.

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SMX West 2010 kicked off with quite a bang (or was that a yell?). Since Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer was the keynote, people arrived early to ensure good seats. The music playing before it started was amazing, it helped to create an excitement in the room that I really had never felt before a keynote before. I had attempted to save a seat for someone up front, but there was just too much demand and had to give it up. That’s the sort of thing that happens at a great concert, not a conference keynote.

There were quite a few live blogs of the event, but I had a few favorites from the interview that I wanted to call out.

1. He made it very clear that Microsoft is focused on the big picture and not just immediate goals. He spoke about continuing to move forward with a positive momentum and a differentiated point of view.
2. When the question came up of "Can you be #1 in the U.S.?" he essentially said "YES!" [and yes he said it with that exclamation] However he made it clear that it was a tricky question. If you say yes, you sound arrogant but if you say no you sound unsure of yourself. You don’t do things to come in second!
3. Danny asked "Is Yahoo! going to survive as a search player? You want to beat them aren’t you just going to kill them?" Ballmer could really only answer one way "No." He stated that they wanted Yahoo! to do a good job, that there was lots of flexibility written into their contract and there was advantage to having the power of 2 as opposed to the power of 1.
4. When asked whether he was going to get on Twitter he said "I’m more of a webpage than a bunch of short tweets." But then acknowledged that he did have a stealth Twitter account however only the people in his neighborhood followed him.
5. His favorite thing on Bing are the Bing maps. [completely agree here... the maps are amazing!]
6. What he thinks is the biggest opportunity in search: to "Help people get done what they’re trying to get done."
7. Oh! And he gave us all his personal email account. You’ll have to watch the video to get that though.

All in all it was quite enjoyable to watch, although I was a bit unprepared (although perhaps I shouldn’t have been) for the yelling. Ok, I don’t think in his mind he was yelling, he was just talking VERY LOUDLY. But sitting right up front, I think we all sat back in our chairs a bit when he got excited and started to get louder. You can see the full video of the keynote below.

Google’s Personalized Search Revolution

Now that personalization has become an opt-out rather than an opt-in, I was really interested in what this session had to offer. The only speaker, Brian Horling who works in Personalized Search at Google, first gave a very informative presentation, then fielded quite a few questions from the audience. I really enjoyed having just one speaker who was focused on the topic at hand. The top takeaways that I got were some of the differences between a logged out user who gets personalized search versus a logged in user. Let me break it down a bit.

First of all, both types of users are thought of as two different identities to Google. Let’s say you’re logged in, and then log out, they don’t view you as the same logged in person. At that point they do look at the cookies set on your computer which tell gives them information on what you’ve searched for previously, which results you’ve clicked on, etc. For signed in accounts, your web history is saved indefinitely, but your non-logged in identity is only saved for 180 days.

Every user using search has the potential of seeing personalized search in some way whether it’s geo-location, web history, social search, etc. Personalization occurs about 1 in 5 queries for a user and the changes tend to be restricted to only a few results.

How can you control the personalization of your searches?

• Use search details
• Disable it by appending &pws=0 on searchs (you can find the bookmarklet to do that here)
• Edit or disable your web history

If you haven’t looked at the "view customizations" link I highlight above before, you should definitely check it out. Pretty interesting what’s going on there.

One thing that came up in this session was how do you explain to a client that the results they’re seeing aren’t the same as what everyone else sees. Although in some cases that would probably be a good thing since they’re seeing better rankings since they search and click on their sites more often than the average user.

How do you feel about personalized search? After this presentation I found that I was much more open to the idea than I was previously. I think because I felt like I finally understood a bit better where the data was coming from and how to turn it off. But what about you?

And so on…

The other session I really loved was "Supercharging Your Descriptions With Sitelinks" but as I was putting this post together I realized that should really a be a post in and of itself. It was great to hear from a Google rep about how certain sitelinks show up and ways you can enhance your site to ensure proper sitelinks. I have tons of screenshots and examples, so I’ll put them into a full post. Plus I’d really like to get Jerry Dischler (the Google guy) to answer a few of my questions. So watch for that one!

The best swag of the conference goes to Yahoo! for not only giving away these awesome coffee mugs, but for setting up a full-on coffee shop with baristas to make us our much needed lattes!

I really wanted to show the videos from the SMX Ignite as that was one of my favorite parts of the day. But unfortunately the videos aren’t live yet. Here’s a link to where they should be. Maile Ohye’s "DateRank: PageRank for singles" was my personal favorite, although all the speakers were exceptional.

Dana Lookadoo and I interviewed a number of people in sort of a Jay Leno "man on the street" sort of way. We hope to have the interviews up tomorrow.

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Over the past few months, we’ve announced a number of exciting changes here at the mozPlex. Some of those include becoming focused on our software, new SEO tools and a cultural change with our TAGFEE Tenets. With that, we’re committed to being transparent and authentic and feel we’ve done a great job keeping the SEOmoz community up to date on many of these changes.

However, one area we’ve been slacking is in ensuring that our community knows who we are, as a team. There are many mozzers who mainly work behind the scenes building tools, or providing excellent customer service to our members. Along with our shift from consulting, we’ve had a few organizational changes and people’s roles have changed. Additionally we have a number of moz Associates that help contribute to the blog and provide expertise in Q & A.

We’d like to take this opportunity to introduce you to our team, and ask you to get to know us a little better. There are a few new mozzers that may even surprise you! This is an exciting time for us and the community and we’re excited to introduce ourselves. Each mozzer was asked to provide their title, social media accounts, top moz moment (tools created, blog posts written, etc.), then I asked them to answer a few fun questions. So without further ado, I’d like you to meet the mozzers.

Development Team

Every team plays an important role to the success of SEOmoz and our tools, but the development team is key. Without this group we wouldn’t have the suite of amazing tools that we have to offer our members today. Browse through the developers and see who has worked on your favorite tool, and learn more about the people behind the scenes.

Ben Hendrickson Sr Software Engineer @bhendrickson  moz Moment "From the day I started building the Linkscape prototype to the day we launched the first version was about 10 months. I think that project went well."  I am proud to answer questions like this in a confusing and self-referential way.	Chas Williams Software Developer  moz Moment "I work mostly on Linkscape these days. I wrote the code for anchor text distributions and the new views for OSE, so the OSE launch was a proud moment for me " My favorite Youtube video.	David Joslin Systems Engineer David on LinkedIn  moz Moment "Since starting in August I have worked to improve our uptime significantly through monitoring, tuning, and application fixes. " On Saturday morning I hang out with my kids until my wife gets her beauty sleep and then I try to get a mountain bike ride in before working in the yard and other chores.
Jeff Pollard Lead Web Developer @nFluxx Jeff on LinkedIn moz Moment "I make sure your website experience is a wonderful one! " On Saturday morning I like to catch up on sleep.	Kate Matsudaira VP Engineering @katemats  moz Moment "Helping bring SEO tools and technology to the next level" Why is the sky blue? Because of Avogadro’s number – the number of molecules in a mole determine the wavelength of light reflected (I learned this in my physical chemistry class when we had to derive Avogadro’s number if the sky was yellow — as a result I will never forget this bit of trivia).	Ken Woodruff Senior Architect Ken will have to remain a mystery for another day because he did not get me his bio information in time. To be continued…
Nick Gerner Senior Engineer @gerner Nick on LinkedIn   Nick on Facebook  NickGerner.com  moz Moment Nick Leads SEOmoz API development and is currently working on solutions for historical Linkscape data tracking. On Saturday morning I go for a run, then chase my cats Garrison and Ira until my wife Susan wakes up.	Phil Smith Developer @philhsmith  moz Moment "Working on sooper-top secret project" The funniest job I ever had was… In high-school during the summer I would be the guy-in-a-foam-costume mascot for the local mall I worked at. Think giant purple dinosaur (but not barney.)	Roger Mozbot Needs No Title @roger_mozbot  moz Moment Standing on a crate in order to be as tall as Googlebot. Raised by a protein-rich, startup-obsessed race of robot aliens. Can’t stand paying per click.

Marketing Team

Now that we are focused on our SEO tools, the consulting and marketing teams have been combined. There have been a number of changes in roles and we’re now more focused than ever on getting our products launched, participating and leading our amazing community, and creating excellent content for our readers. Take a peak at our new Marketing team!

Danny Dover SEO Specialist @DannyDover Danny on LinkedIn  moz Moment Danny is at least half full of SEO know-how Rock, Paper or Scissors? Paper. On Saturday morning I…Kick ass and take names. Want to be on the list?	Jen Sable Lopez Community Director @jennita Jen on LinkedIn  moz Moment Having worked remotely for 9 months, I LOVE being in the office. The funniest job I ever had was… in college one summer I tasted beef. It paid well, but was really disgusting!
Joanna Lord Director of Customer Acquisition & Engagement @joannalord Joanna on LinkedIn  moz Moment "My focus is on introducing new audiences to our awesome resources and SEO tools. " My favorite Youtube video is… The Sunscreen Song On Saturday morning I… wake up, make coffee, check analytics, and then go explore my new home–Seattle.	Scott Willoughby Director-Conversion & Retention Marketing @great_scott Scott on LinkedIn  moz Moment Whiteboard Fridays Rock, Paper or Scissors? Rock! \m/ On Saturday morning I… wish cartoons were still as cool as they used to be.

Product Team

The product team leads the path to ensuring that the products being built meet the needs of our customers and they manage the projects from inception through deployment. Essentially they make sure we’re all doing our jobs.

Adam Feldstein Director of Product Management  moz Moment Current Focus: 1) Ship a new version of the mozBar. 2) Something much bigger (that I can’t talk about yet) Funniest jobs: I once played a rock/punk gig at a high school party. Ended up being extra fun when the lead guitarist locked his keys in the van with the engine running (fortunately I think we had already gotten the gear out).

Ben Huff Product Manager Ben on LinkedIn  moz Moment "I focus on herding cats. Recently that included getting Open Site Explorer out the door, safe and sound. I’m currently working on doing the same for the new Keyword Difficulty tool." The sky is blue because blue light waves are the shortest visible waves coming from the sun, and scatter off of molecules in the air the easiest.

Matt Heilman Art Director  moz Moment "I make SEOmoz look good"

Operations Team

Who keeps the company working like a well oiled machine? That’s the Operations team of course! They jump in and help with any aspect of the company as needed and are often our customers first point of contact. Without their magic touch the office would be running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Thanks for keeping us from running into each other!

Arden Turnbull Customer Service Manager / Office Coordinator  moz Moment Arden keeps our customers happy!

Christine V. Director of Operations  moz Moment I do my best to increase the staff’s level of happiness and productiveness, much like Tattoo on Fantasy Island. If SEOmoz was a Lifetime movie, I would be played by William Hung.

Sarah Bird Chief Operations Officer @SarahBird  Sarah on LinkedIn   moz Moment I own legal, financial, HR, and generally help make everything run smoothly. I also champion the Marketing Department and the SEOmoz API. I love my job. On Saturday morning I… Sleep in and then go for a long run around Lake Union.

moz Associates

This is an amazing group of experts from across the search marketing industry. We’re priveledged to have this group contributing to the blog, helping with Q & A and providing insight for new products. It sorta feels like we’re showing off… because we totally are! 

Cindy Krum CEO & founder of Rank-Mobile – Denver, CO @Suzzicks Cindy on LinkedIn   Cindy on Facebook  moz Moment Cindy is a mobile marketing evangelist. She’ll be providing help in Q & A on mobile topics. Why is the sky blue? Because that is the way Google wants it? (We’re not sure if it will stay blue though – its still in beta and hasn’t officially launched.)	Duncan Morris Founder and CEO, Distilled – London, UK @duncanmorris  moz Moment Given that I always drone on about information architecture I guess I should really point to this post though at the time it came out this was my most interesting post. On a Saturday morning I travel around the south of England to the coldest and wettest playing fields in existence to play field hockey for Wimbledon Hockey Club. Of course in the UK we just call this hockey, but that would give you all the false impression that I’m rock hard and can ice skate.	Jane Copland SEO Consultant, Ayima Search Marketing – London, England Jane on LinkedIn Jane’s Personal Social Media Profile  moz Moment "I’ve written a couple of successful blog posts for SEOmoz (I worked as a full-time employee at SEOmoz from 2006 until 2009). My favourites are: Don’t End URLs in .0, What Rand and Jane Write When They’re Drunk, the follow-up and  A True Story. It’s about hookers." The funniest job I ever had was… I used to work for Rand
Kate Morris Kate Morris, Search Engine Marketing Consultant – Austin, TX @katemorris Kate on LinkedIn  moz Moment "My favorite blog post on YouMoz was Paid Search: Detaching From an Agency, which is what got me speaking on my first panel at SMX East 2008." I’m proud to be an … Army Brat. My favorite Youtube video is … Louis CK – Everything is Amazing, and Nobody’s Happy	Lindsay Wassell Q & A – Tampa Bay, FL @lindzie  moz Moment This post: Rethinking Duplicate Content On Saturday morning I… am awake before dawn caring for my newborn twins! I’m proud to be a… SEO	Michael Cottam Principal, Michael Cottam SEO Consulting – Portland, OR, Canada @Michael512 Michael on LinkedIn  Michael on Facebook   moz Moment I like this one, and it seemed to generate a pile o’ comments: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/its-a-feeding-frenzy-for-keywordrich-domains I’m proud to be a member of the downtown Portland Rotary Club and on the Ambassador Board of the Children’s Cancer Association.
Peter Meyers President, User Effect – Chicago, IL @dr_pete  moz Moment The post: SEO Cheat Sheet: Anatomy of a URL My most popular post on my own blog (by a longshot) is 25 Point Website Usability Checklist.  The funniest job I ever had was… Stuffing photo envelopes with a pot dealer and Christian survivalist. Why is the sky blue? … because The Flying Spaghetti Monster made it that way.	Richard Baxter Director / Founder SEOgadget.co.uk - London, UK @richardbaxter  moz Moment Hmm. I like writing about tools you guys do – Like this and this and pretty charts on ranking factors using Linkscape data like this.  And I really like talking about Microformats. My favorite Youtube video is… Eric Clapton Shreds – is pure awesome and always puts a smile on my face. One day match this level of guitar genius…	Rob Ousbey Search Marketing Consultant, Distilled – Seattle, WA (soon to be) @RobOusbey  moz Moment People seem to like my how-to and link building posts.  On Saturday morning I: often wake up to the smell of bacon The funniest job I ever had was: watching petrol drip down an inclined hot plate to measure the amount of residue. I won an award for it. Hotplate Rob they called me. Ahh, good times, good times.
Sam Crocker SEO Consultant, Distilled – London, for now! @crockstarltd Personal Fashions & Trends Blog  moz Moment I’m pretty new to the moz crew but I was pretty pleased with manning up to take on a "doozy" for my first Q & A and think I found a good solution to the problem I’m proud to be a… n Uh-merican, where at least I know I’m free! The funniest job I ever had was… working at McDonalds when I was 14 years old. My mom said "you can work for me for free 6 hours a day or you can get a job" we all know that Macky D’s is one of the few places that will hire 14 year olds and the rest is history.	Tom Critchlow Head of Search Marketing, Distilled – London Baby. @tomcritchlow  moz Moment My most loved SEOmoz post was this one, mainly because of it’s sensationalist headline… Headlines ftw. My proudest SEOmoz contribution was speaking at both the Seattle and London pro seminars in 2009 and getting some really positive feedback and comments. Rock, paper scissors? After years of playing poker I can now comfortably crush Will at rock paper scissors despite him claiming it’s a game of chance. I will gladly play any game of any sort for money.	Will Critchlow Co-Founder of Distilled, UK & US – London, UK. Though anywhere rainy appears to do. @willcritchlow Will on LinkedIn  moz Moment Taking credit for lots of things done by our team, I’m probably most proud of the London PRO seminar in October last year. My personal favourite post, mainly for the title (just google "space monstering") is this one. Rock, Paper or Scissors? I always lose this to Tom. Rock.

Boss Team

Last, but definitely not least we have our co-founders Rand and Gillian. They may very well be the most well known of the bunch, but I bet you didn’t know Rand used to be a black market Pokemon dealer! Without these two, we wouldn’t be the team we are today.

Gillian Muessig President/Co-Founder @seomom Gillian on LinkedIn  moz Moment "I’m the corporate evangelist and international voice for SEOmoz. My role is to connect the the SEOmoz community with the SEOmoz team and to spread the SEOmoz brand to new audiences and markets." I’m proud to be a… Mozzer. Nothing feels quite so good as seeing the fruition of a life’s work. I couldn’t have asked for more.

Rand Fishkin CEO @randfish Rand on LinkedIn  moz Moment The Beginner’s Guide On Saturday morning I … am hopefully sleeping in (though perhaps a more accurate answer would be that I’m at an airport). I am proud to be a … husband. (Geraldine: Awwww!)

Thanks for taking the time to get to know us!

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The holidays are long over, 2010 is well underway, we’ve already launched a new product, made a big announcement… and it’s barely February! While our amazing development and product teams are busily building new tools as I type (and I’m not even kidding, those guys work a lot), some of us are hitting the road.  For the next couple months, the SEOmoz team will be galavanting across the globe attending, speaking and even keynoting (yea.. is that a word?) at multiple Search Marketing Conferences. Essentially, in the next 45 days there’s an opportunity to see one of us at a city near you… or somewhat near you… or at least in the same country… or possibly the same continent. Anyway,  you get the picture.

Following is a detailed list of where you can find us over the next couple months. Being a part of such an amazing community means the world to us, so please if you’re attending any of these events, stop by and say hello. We’d really love to meet you. (Unless of course you’re a stalker, then make sure to look for either Sam Niccolls or Danny Dover… They’d LOVE to meet you.) Without further ado, here’s the list!

OnlineXcellence – Glasgow – February 12

Kicking off this international tour, Rand will be presenting to business owners and CEOS during a day of SEO training at OnlineXcellence.

Let me tell you something…

SES London – February 15-19

This is the first of many trips to London this year for the mozzers.  SES London is known for having great content, and this year one of my favorite speakers, Avinash Kaushik is giving one of the keynotes. Rand will be attending and speaking at the following sessions:

• PPC or SEO? The Ultimate Search Marketing Battle
• Social Media Best Practices for Marketers Inside the Brand

OMS San Diego – February 22-25

At OMS San Diego, Rand is organizing a panel of Search Marketing leaders who will be discussing advanced tactics at the SEO 2.0 Leadership Forum. Rand will also be speaking on the panel, "PR, Social Media and Search".

Miva Merchant – San Diego – February 24-26

The mozzers will be camping out in San Diego for a few days! For the Miva Merchant conference, Gillian is speaking on three sessions while Rand is keynoting about SEO on the second day.

SMX West – Santa Clara – March 2-4

This will be my first SMX West and you’ll find me volunteering in the In House Track on day 3. Rand is speaking on the Link Building Fundamentals panel, which looks pretty awesome. I’ll have the flip video camera, so be sure to hunt me down, maybe you’ll make it onto a Whiteboard Friday.

Use the code "smx10seomoz" to get a 10% discount at SMX West!

Gillian Speaking in India Last Year

SphinnConn – Jerusalem – March 4-7

SphinnConn Jerusalem is the first of it’s kind. It sold out quickly and is sure to be an amazing event. Gillian will be speaking at the SEO Fundamentals panel and the Link Building Clinic.

MVIXcon Dubai & Cairo – March 8-11

Gillian is looking forward to addressing a Women in Business group at MVIXcon in Dubai and to a meeting with members of the Royal Family during her visit.

SearchFest 2010 Portland – March 9

Just a skip, hop and a jump from us, we’ll be heading to SearchFest 2010 which has an amazing lineup of speakers. Rand will be speaking on SEO Tools panel and covering both SEOmoz tools as well as others.

Get $30 off Searchfest by using the coupon code "MOZ-SEMPDXSF1020"

InfusionCon – Scottsdale – March 10-12

Scott will be presenting on SEO to this group of small to medium e-businesses at InfusionCon. Also, we’re always interested in learning more about how to most effectively reach new customers, optimize our payment systems, and get better at customer service. Sarah will also be attending!

MountainWest RubyConf – Salt Lake City – March 11-12

The  MountainWest RubyConf is an excellent Ruby conference, which is our preferred dev language at SEOmoz. It will be a good opportunity to meet others doing cool things with the language and to get to know the community more personally.

SXSW Interactive – Austin – March 12-16

Danny Dover will be at SXSW Interactive joining and talking with the literally 10,000s of other attendees. The technology conference is aimed at all things interactive (Websites, Video Games, Movies). It will be a good opportunity to meet website creators who operate outside the sphere of the SEO industry. (Yes they exist, yes they are in Texas)

IMC Calgary – March 16-17

As part of Gillian’s world wide tour 2010, she’ll be speaking at IMC Calgary on the The Power Triumvirate of 2010: The Convergence of Social-Mobile-Local.

Use the code "imc-speaker" to save 15% on any IMC event in 2010!

SES New York – March 22-26

SES New York is jam-packed with training workshops, sessions and brilliant keynote speakers. Really, who wouldn’t want to spend some time in New York City in March? Rand is speaking on a panel plus Adam and Kate will be attending as well. This might be Kate’s first Search Marketing Conference, so go easy on her folks.

Get 50% off SES NY with the purchase of 1 Year of SEOmoz Pro. Go Pro Now and Save on SES NY!

IMC Stockholm – March 22-25

Gillian will be keynoting at IMC Stockholm, a broad group of entrepreneurs, affiliates, and search marketers.

Use the code "imc-speaker" to save 15% on any IMC event in 2010!

SMX Munich – March 23-24

Our own rockstar developer Ben, will be speaking at SMX Munich on both a ranking factors panel, as well as a spam issues panel. (Wow, I didn’t even know Ben spoke German!)

The Freemium Summit – The Business of Free – San Francisco – March 26

The Freemium Summit was recommended by Dharmesh Shah as a good conference for folks who have free offerings as an important part of their business plan. Sarah will be attending and it’s a great opportunity to learn and network with other entrepreneurs.

The craziest part is… once all these are over, we have another round starting in April. We hope you’re planning on attending some of these events and look forward to meeting you, or speaking with you again. Stay on top of our activities by following us on Twitter, or being our fan on Facebook. Happy Conferencing!

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