No prob. Glad to do it.

very much. I had a great time last year. Got to meet a lot of new people who I've stayed in contact with since.

Yea, Barry likes to make you work. :) This is the only show I do a ppt for. :)

I don't think we'll ever be to the point where links aren't the most important component of SEO. But the details with links is ..

Absolutely. In a lot of ways, Twitter has replaced blog posts and rss as the primary distribution method of new links. So for d..

Of course. That's how we roll. :)

Sites Positioned Above Mine

At least that is the opinion of most of my consulting clients. :)

I've been trying to do more on the software side because we are planning on launching some new things with the release of WP 3.0

For the most part, we only take on performance based projects, so that helps trim it down a bit.

It hasn't been a big deal for us because we saw it coming quite awhile ago and have been preaching performance to all clients.

There are definitely some pathetically bloated sites that will (and should) take a hit, but most shouldn't notice it right away

yea, and I also think it's something they'll play with over time. a year or to from now it might have much more weight.

Well, it certainly can be. It's definitely more scalable.

Yea, it's pretty much a time issue. Plus, everytime I feel a rant building @aaronwall writes it first. :)

in the near future, I'll be posting more but mostly in a private environment for clients.

I wasn't ever one that felt they would always be easily gamed. They certainly have the resources to win the war.

It's hard to say. The current product is pretty weak. I'm hoping that they will hire the few smart people left at Yahoo.

Yea, but the circumstances were much different. The old guard let quality slip for cash. G's not there yet in mos people's eyes.

The problem now is any competition is coming from another large and hated company.

And that's just not going to get the same kind of traction as the genius college kids thing

To be honest, I don't/haven't given mobile much thought. But the ipad/tablet thing might change my opinion on that.

But the cool thing about those two is they conform to the web rather than the other way around.

Yes. G is force feeding local results for a ton of non-geo queries now. That is the game changer I've been waiting for

The biggest thing that I think most people are overlooking right now is all the assumptive filtering G is doing now.

There's a lot to be learned playing with the "more options" button. :)

We're seeing a lot more competitive phrases getting labeled as either informational or commercial. Once that happens u r screwed.

If G decides your top query is one that should be informational and you are tagged a shopping site it's very tuff to fix.

G's assumptive filtering. :) I can't stand that they do shit like that.

Exactly. We've run into that with a few sites lately.

It wasn't too hard. I just told him what a great time I had last year. Other than the freaky bat thing, it was an amazing tri..

I'll take you up on that beer. :) Thanks. it was fun.