Amusing personal search robot thingy, called SearchBot.

The SEO conferences attract thousands, but it occurs to me that most webmasters into search don’t attend, for one reason or another.

They’re fun, and for some people, the networking and information exchange more than pays for the cost of attending.

So, for those who don’t make a habit of conference going, what are your reasons for not going?

Here’s mine:

After a life spent circling the globe, I’ve grown to loathe air travel. It takes a lot to get me on a plane for longer than three hours. Anything longer than five hours and I want Business Class, and, given the fact I’m quite far away, that puts the cost of tickets, plus accommodation, plus conference fees, plus the most expensive item - my bar tab - well over $10,000.

Worthwhile? Dunno.

What’s your reason?

What is the difference between SEM conferences and Web 2.0 conferences?

One appears to be about hot air, and the other is about an advertising channel that actually works.

“The audience at WebmasterWorld is not so concerned about the newest and coolest, nor are you going to see all those people who run AOL, Yahoo or Google. Who you are going to see is a cross section of the foot soldiers of the web. All those people who buy Google AdWords? They’re here….they’re hungy…a little scary. Nobody is dialing it in at this place“.

Less bull, in other words.

On a related note, it will be interesting to see what becomes of Search Engine Strategies. They had Danny Sullivan filling in the gaps between conferences by…well…just being Danny. There appears to be a void now that we know he doesn’t appear to be closely associated with Incisive Media any longer? Also, Danny is starting up his own website in the form of Search Engine Land.

Thx Andrew Goodman

YouTube succeeded where Google Video didn’t because users were able to see their videos posted immediately, says Google’s Marissa Mayer.

Google Video, on the other hand, can make viewers wait anywhere from two to four days for the video to be vetted and posted for public consumption.

Editorial, eh. It just doesn’t scale.

Other interesting bits:

• The reason Google sets the default at 10 results on the first page is that having more results slows down the display time, resulting in less searches overall.
• The key motivator for Google developing Gmail in AJAX was speed.
• Mobile devices suffer from slow data transfer, and it takes too long to input data and interact with Web applications on the devices.

There’s been some hype about Powerset, a supposed Google-beating search engine of unimaginable brilliance. I have no idea if that is true or not, because all we’ve really got to go by is a review by a reporter. Named Bambi.

Putting aside the unanswerable, and unlikely, can-it-beat-Google-question, analyzing the hype is somewhat more fun:

“Since Powerset indexes a fraction of a fraction of what Google currently handles, we confined our test of Powerset to searching the The New York Times and Wikipedia sites and then checked how Google stacked up when doing the same“

What a meaningless test. I’m sure a boutique version of Google, or even MSN, could easily produce stunning results over such a tiny dataset. And let’s not even get started on the infrastructure requirements needed to run a full-scale, worldwide search engine.

“We’ve got a better search engine than Google! It’s going to be huge!”

“Can we see it?”

“No. But it’s really, really good. Bambi thinks so.”

“Is Google really that bad?”

“Well, no but….”

Is Powerset the next big thing? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Whatever.

It has been a quiet day…

These things keep the RIAA awake at night. A good list of bit torrent search engines.

Here’s the top five:

• Isohunt.com
• Meganova.org
• Torrentscan.com
• Torrentreactor.to
• Torrent Portal

I’m off to Tokyo for a few days to meet up with John for a beer or two.

If anyone reading this blog is in Tokyo over the next week or so, let me know, and I’ll try to meet up!

YouTube, and others, are becoming the destination of choice for home movie content:

“Pure Digital Technologies has announced a new $129.99 camcorder that works with Macs and PCs and features built-in software that can upload its content to video sharing Web sites, including Google Video and Grouper“

These digital camcorders are getting pretty cheap, eh. I recall my first one cost me thousands, but these days you’re in very real danger of losing one down the back of a couch.

If you ask Google, the answer would be…..AltaVista!

Heh.

Ballmer doesn’t think the numbers add up:

“[You've got to ask] could Google do whatever it is they’re hoping to buy without paying $1.6 billion? Is YouTube really some permanent, long-term thing, or is it a fashion?….Right now, there’s no business model for YouTube that would justify $1.6 billion”

He seems to be saying not much at all, hedging both ways.

The real issue appears to lie with content. Microsoft have pursued a DRM strategy with content producers, and perhaps YouGoogle may derail that to some extent. Many people hate DRM, and personally, I think it’s an antiquated model. The Google Adsense model of paying a high share of revenue to content providers may well appeal to the content providers once they see the numbers, thus making copyright and control issues a bit of a non-issue.

If the advertising is embedded, then it makes sense for the content provider to encourage copying and widespread distribution, which is the polar opposite of a DRM model.