Well it appears that I’m just not going to be going to any sessions, and that’s a good thing. 
Today has been spent networking and interviewing some excellent guests. Let’s cover the interviews first:
Rand Fishkin From SEOMoz.com:
Anyone involved in SEO either does or should know the name Rand Fishkin. Whether it’s as one of the most notable SEO’s in the industry or as the man who ruined it for the rest of us by proposing to his fiance in arguable one of the most romantic manners every (come on Rand … how can us mere mortals top that?) his name has become synonymous with Internet Marketing.
For those who don’t already know, Rand purchased some commercial time on Veronica Mars (his fiance’s favorite show. Here it is:
Want to know how she reacted (gee, is there even a doubt whether she said yes? 
See? Now how the heck do we compete with THAT??!!!???
Congratulations Rand.
Other than a little lecture on toning it down a bit Rand and I discussed a number of SEO issues. We discussed the movement by Google towards personalization, the benefits this has for some searchers and the issues it’s causing (such as when you’re referring to a resource by it’s position in the results (“just enter “blue widgets” into Google and click on the first result” … “no, not that site” …. “ugh, OK – what do you see in position 4?” … and so on). it’s also an issue for SEO’s who send ranking reports for the same reason.
Rand and I also discussed Google’s 0.02% claim regarding click fraud (we agree, that’s a bit low Rand is also friends with a number of the fine folks from the major engines, I just had to ask him how he can openly state that purchasing links is alright when it is in clear violation on the engine’s guidelines. The the client is your client, not the engines. Again, we agree.
Of course we covered more. I was supposed to try to keep the interview to 5 to 7 minutes at the request of Webmaster Radio but it likely lasted closer to 15 to 20. Rand, you’re a great interview and thank you very much.
I’ll post the podcast as soon as it becomes available.
John Marshall From ClickTracks:
After Rand I had another great pleasure in chatting with John Marshall from ClickTracks. Despite being sick he was a trooper, showed up, and was great to chat with.
John and I discussed the future of analytics and some of the enhancements that were likely to come over the next year to ClickTracks and other analytics tools. The main point here was beginning to track individuals differently using scripts so repeat visitors and monitored and (I’l inferring here) patterns among types of users will be tracked.
We also discussed some of the recent enhancements to ClickTracks which I haven’t had the chance to install yet. The goal is to make reports easier to read for the layman. From the sounds of it, mission accomplished but most of our clients have no problems reading the current set.
We went on to discuss a variety of other issues (sorry WMR team, I just can’t keep it to 5 to 7 minutes when I’m interviewing people like this). You’ll have to wait for the podcast to hear it all. I’ll post a link as soon as it’s available.
Jon Kelly From SureHits.com:
Jon and I had some fun chatting about SureHits.com, and insurance and loans focused CPC agency. We discussed Click Fraud (it’s a CPC engine after all – I couldn’t resist), the processes they have in place for detecting it (I have to admit, they’re pretty good) and the hurdles they face as tey try to expand into the UK market with different regulations in their industries.
I’ll post a link to the podcast as soon as it becomes available.
The Party:
Last night I didn’t get to attend the party, I did however get to ride the bus to-and-fro (I’ll post pics as soon as I get them off my camera) complete with the Bruce Clay team, the Google Webmaster Tools presentation team (very nice folks though I couldn’t get a card out of them
After the party ended (that I only got to ride the bus to) I had the opportunity to hop back on it to head to a night club (Club 320 if you care) and then on for more resulting in a 4:30am bedtime and a sigh of relief in the morning that I switched to water at around 2am and stuck with that decision for the remainder of the night.
A picture is worth a thousand words an these pics might be worth more. The bus was amazing with TV’s, laser lights, music, beer of many varieties and great company. I had a great time with the host of the bus Ken Jurina and Epiar. Thanks Ken – it’s awesome and I’m glad I had a chance to chat with you and your team through the night.
So, that’s “it” thus far aside from business development and networking issues that don’t really need to be blogged about.
But stay tuned, there are more great interviews and parties to come. We’re only half-way through day 2 of 4.
SEO news blog post by
Dave Davies, CEO @ 1:28 pm
In what can only be considered a devastating leak of information from Google HQ in Mountain View, a confirmed but as yet publicly anonymous executive from Google has leaked papers detailing some of the key fundamentals to Google’s link value calculation system. The announcement by Google earlier today details some of the contents of this information as they work hard to minimize the effect that this will have on their algorithm as SEO’s around the world scramble get their hands on it. The news, first leaked by SEO-guru Danny Sullivan on 
