An interview with SurfCanyon

That title is a doozy, but it does exist! I recently had the extreme pleasure of meeting the gang at SurfCanyon, one VERY personal search engine (and FF add on). I was first turned onto this groovy tool more than a year ago and it was a thrill to hear from them. When it comes to personalization (and social search even) these folks really do take it to a new level. If you haven't already, be sure to give it a try (search engine here and FireFox add on here)

The following is an interview that sprang from those chats. (more on SurfCanyon at the end).

Enjoy!

Your source for SEO and IR videos!

Hey gang… I just wanted to give a quick head’s up on a little project we’ve been working on the last few weeks. As you may or may not know I have an SEO Video Library over in the dojo which are the best of the best from the video section of the newsletter.

Which was fine for me really. But some folks suggested we create a dedicated YouTube channel to house them for the folks at are at YT a lot. Ask and ye shall receive!!

Yup, we have a YouTube channel!! We now have them sorted there into what we hope is a logical structure for your viewing pleasure. And no, this isn’t going to be about Dojo videos.. (which are coming) but it is more of a collection of some goodies we find in our travels. We will keep adding more each week as we come across vids of interest. Have a video to suggest? Feel free to leave a note in the comments.

Be sure to go check it out and subscribe to the channel for all the latest SEO/IR vids (hint; add to your RSS reader so you get notified).

Enjoy!

Are we there yet?

I thought we could spend a few moments looking at the value, potential and implications for the world of (real time and) social search. I prefer to think of them as;

• Social search – using explicit elements (voting, annotating) in conjunction with standard search functionality.
• Real Time Search – searching the fire-hose of the social world (Twitter, FaceBook, FriendFeed and so on)

But for the sake of this post, we’ll just go with RTSS (real time social search) to make things easier. While I personally believe there is a need for distinction, it would make things messy for this simple journey. For starters, a few examples….

Explicit data; Social Search

The Fire-hose; Real time search

While people tend to not make the distinction between social and real-time search, it is certainly important from an SEO standpoint, to do so. Now we have some associations in place, let’s look at the present state of affairs (from an IR standpoint).

Just for fun and because well, there are some many things that piss my off any given week, we ran a poll recently on the myths and crap out there. More tongue in cheek than meant as a serious study, it is fun to see what the SEO community feels about the whole thing.

Actually, we had more suggestions for myths to include (culled via Twitter) than we could fit in the poll. I shall certainly be putting a post together to wrap ‘em all up neatly for ye in the near future. For now, have some fun with the results (after 91 votes)

Which SEO myth/crap makes you laugh/scream the most?

1. 18.7% Submitting to search engines
2. 18.7% SEO is dead
3. 14.3% Keyword density X%
4. 13.2% PPC affects organic
5. 11%  Get indexed in a 24hrs!
6. 9.9%  U believe in ALL (aka smart ass)
7. 8.8%  LSI and Google

And there were more…. See the full results here.

It was interesting to see the ever-lovin’ ‘Submitting to Search Engines’ right up there with ‘SEO is dead’… some premo crapola to be sure. I for one would have liked to see the ‘LSI’ garbage higher… but hey, I would be like that. This week’s poll is about testing…. We’re curious what SEOs want to see researched so we can start organizing which things to work on first.

Take the poll in the SEO Training Dojo ; What would you like to see tested/researched first? (right hand side)

Looking for a kick ass SEO Community?

(the following is a guest post from Jennifer Van Iderstyne)

Depending on who you talk to, people are either highly predictable, or completely unpredictable.  Delving into the topic, will only get you entrenched in a centuries old debate of scientists, philosophers, religions and bar room drunks. No matter which side of the predictability of man argument you stand on, no one can deny the role of probability and predictability on internet marketing and the evolution of the web.

I mean after all, as we watch the growing predilection of search engines toward customized and personalized SERPS, what are those results based on if not, predictability? The tendency of internet users to be predictable in their likes dislikes and habits, is an internet marketer’s greatest weapon. We depend on those habits, we live and die with them, and when we are lucky we can be inspired by them.

I wish I was about to reveal some grand secret regarding the ability to predict behaviors but alas, I don’t have that information. In fact, if I did, I wouldn’t be sharing it. I’d be busy releasing the latest wave of sickly viral YouTube videos featuring veterans rapping about urban fashion and dancing bananas.

Instead, I want to share a story of an experience that really stuck with me. From a time when looking through a site’s back links led me to a discovery. A revelation which taught me about predicting what could work in the future, based on something that was already happening.