The last few months have seen a tremendous amount of activity in the Search-sphere by all of the major players in the space. It seems like more has occurred in the last 6 months than the last 3 years put together. Because of this I am excited for SES NY next week. There are several topics I am interested in, and I am curious to get feedback from the larger search community on the potential impact of some of the more recent changes.
First, I would like to hear feedback on Google’s universal privacy policy and the impact this update will have. For those of you not keeping up at home, in January Google announced that it would be consolidating its vast array of products under a new simple single privacy policy. This also means that all data captured under a user’s credentials now can be tracked across multiple platforms (Gmail-YouTube-Search).
Second, what impact if any did/will Google’s masking of organic search queries have on webmasters? Google stated that for security reasons it will be blocking organic search queries for any user logged into a Google product via HTTPS. This data will be blocked for organic searches but still available for those leveraging SEM. So, I’m not totally sold on the whole security angle.
Third, where is Yahoo headed? I had an opportunity to meet with the company’s new CEO Scott Thompson in late January. The PayPal alum was impressive in person as he spoke to our group. Mr. Thompson absolutely seemed positive on the direction Yahoo was headed. Of course any new CEO would hold such a perspective, the question is, where exactly are they headed? Can we even consider Yahoo in the search game or are they strictly a content channel again?
Finally, I’m interested in finding out whatever happened to the gTLDs? It seemed like the second half of last year every major organization was debating how to proceed with the new generic top level domain assignments. This was a major undertaking and costly to say the least. And while the window for submissions is all but closed, I have not seen a lot of press coverage around this topic as of late. So I am curious to see how many actually proceed with application process and what type of impact this would have on SEO.
So starting March 20th, I will be attending SES NY in an attempt to perhaps gain some insights into the above topics as well as many more. And as always it will be nice to see some old friends, get some good advice, learn something new, and reconnect with old friends.
The post SES NY 2012 appeared first on Resolution Media.
