It started for me when my wife warned me that a storm was coming. I live in Utah, a state known for, or at least claimed by license plates, as “The Greatest Snow on Earth”. It snows here. A lot. I didn’t think much of it at the time.

A few hours later I checked Facebook and Twitter. One weather man in the area had referred to the oncoming blizzard as the “biggest storm in 7 years” which quickly turned into “the biggest storm of the century”. Obviously, the locals ate this up and went to town blogging, Hootsuiting, Woofing, etc. Soon, THE BLIZZARD was the only topic of conversation online and at the work place in Utah.

By noon things had escalated even further before a single cloud was visible. Warnings were issued. Flights were canceled. Roads were shut down. Schools sent out closing notices. Remember this is Utah, a place where nothing has ever shut down for snow in the 12 years I’ve lived here, unlike other places I’ve lived where a single flake shut down the city for days. The next thing I know my company sends out an email stating that we are expected to go home early and get a late start the following morning as a safety precaution. THANK YOU INTERNET.

From Antoine Dodson to the Old Spice Youtube videos, we’ve all enjoyed content that went viral. In most cases, it’s content intended for a good laugh – for entertainment. Most people reading this have used social networks for years, but some of us forget that we are early adopters. Do you remember when Twitter was almost exclusively tech talk? If you could filter out all of the spam we’d see all kinds of conversations on Twitter now. I’ve got some great lists setup where I get more timely news for marketing, sports, etc than the traditional news platforms could ever provide. I’m constantly surrounded by internet junkies so I expect friends and coworkers to know the lastest meme. My mom on the other hand has rarely been influenced by social media, except for the occasional email forward, until word of the end of humanity blizzard hit her on FB. (Note to self – make snopes.com her home page the next time I stop by). The number of people registering for social networks is still off the charts. The influence that SEOs and other marketers have claimed social media had is finally here – a few years later than many expected, but here.

By the way, for those of you not in Utah, there didn’t end up being a storm of any signifigance.

Does anyone else out there have any examples to share of when social blew something way out of proportion?

How have you seen social media used for eee-v-i-l?

How have you seen social evolve over the past few years?

I’m heading out to LA tonight for ILM 2007.  OrangeSoda will have a booth, so if you’re one of the many who emails me about our orange cruiser giveaways here’s your next chance ;-).  Also, if you’re interested in our small business internet marketing services please track me down.  Maybe this time I’ll actually get around to posting some conference notes about local search.

I found this kinda funny. I don’t support one over the other, but if you’ve ever read some of the comments on a social media site you know where I’m coming from.

Just my opinion, but the San Jose Convention Center could use a face lift. Maybe the 80′s have made a comeback and I missed it. If the building had a gift shop I’m pretty sure MJ would shop there.

Looking forward to tomorrow’s sessions and making my way over to the Googleplex.

So far I’ve only attended one session. It was regarding Universal/Blended Search.
Moderator:

• Chris Sherman, Co-Chair, SES San Jose

Speakers:
• Greg Jarboe, President and Co-Founder, SEO-PR
• Sherwood Stranieri, Search Marketing Director, Catalyst online
• Bill Slawski, Director of Search Marketing, Commerce360

Q&A Speakers:

• Erik Collier, Director of Product Management, Ask.com
• David Bailey, Engineer, Google
• Tim Mayer, Vice President of Product Management, Yahoo! Search

Mostly, the various search engines discussed how they see the future of blended search evolving. Obviously the engines want to include more and more content (video, images, etc) to keep users in front of their ads.

Some stuff to look for:
• Google News currently only provides text and images. Video should be available soon.
• Google Universal search will begin to shuffle features in the SERPs. For example, (as of 8/20/2007) a search for “Alex McArthur” returns 3 pictures of the actor and 10 standard web results. If a video or blog post about Alex McArthur became popular in the future, then a Google Onebox result may be added to the first SERP page.
• Third party videos showing up in blended search results.

Erik Collier, from Ask.com, reported a 30% drop of searchers going to second page as a result of blended search. Also, a 15% drop on searchers performing more than 1 query. According to Erik this means that people are finding what they want quicker.
*2nd page just won’t cut it any more. ;-)

Bryan’s site was started early 2007. He posted about random topics early on. Then, about a month ago he changed his title to “utah seo specialist” and was able to acquire some links. Now for the past few days he’s been ranking over firms that have put much more time into their rankings. Some of these firms were ranking well because of content (blog posts, age, good internal linking/cross site linking, etc – the guys at MWI always do well in these areas, especially blogs), while others are using purchased links plus the other stuff (check out the sponsored links at SEORoundtable. Utah firms have a strong presence there.

Will Bryan stay on top?
I highly doubt it. (Bryan, can we still be friends?)
In the past year I’ve seen many in the top spot including Vizad, Chris Sandberg, 97th Floor,MWI and UtahWebServices. In the end, the firms will knock Bryan down.

Which practices will win in the end?
Some of the search engines have come out and said they don’t like the paid link route and have even provided ways for others to report them. I personally don’t buy links for my own sites, but I’ve never reported anyone and never will.

I’ve enjoyed following the competition for the key phrase “utah seo”. It will be fun to see what happens next. For now Bryan Phelps is the champ. (Don’t let it get to your head or you could find yourself the newest member of the OrangeSoda link building team ;-) )

Update – 8/10/2007 – BryanPhelps.com fell to #2
HA HA

It appears SMX Advanced tickets are sold out, but SMX general Expo tickets are still available. Anyone else from Utah going? It’s always nice to go to a networking party with someone that’s not there only for the free booze. ;-)

Required skills:
Ability to work independently, to organize and prioritize multiple project responsibilities, and to produce quality work under deadline pressure.
Knowledge and demonstrated application of industry standards.
Experience and understanding of link building.
Strong understanding of website development techniques, SEO tools and site analytics principles.
Able to remain up-to-date with competition and industry trends through trade publications, blogs, etc to assess the potential impact of industry events on the clients’ websites.
Excellent oral and written communication skills.

Orange Soda was founded by a group of Pay Per Click industry pioneers in the late 90′s. We have managed tens of thousands of campaigns of all sizes, and in all industries. This is a full-time position in Orem, Utah.

Please contact me if you are interested.

Take a look at this image.

The HTML tips (mouseover text) show the link from “companies-of-interest” directing to http://www.google.com/searchhistory/lookup?q=label:%22companies-of-intereset%22. Interestingly enough, “companies-of-interest” is one of my bookmarks. Hmmm … those search junkies out there will probably catch on to the relevance.