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The honor of interviewing a world-renowned Web Analytics expert such as Avinash Kaushik doesn’t come along every day, so I’m pleased to present a little preview into what marketers can expect at SES San Jose in August.  Avinash’s official title of “Web Analytics Evangelist” at Google really beguiles his true dedication to our industry:  he’s author of a best-selling book Web Analytics an Hour a Day, his blog Occam’s Razor is a first-stop on my daily online reading list, he speaks at countless conferences across the globe, and manages to sustain a frantic pace on Twitter.  Plus he’s a really approachable and helpful guy. Read more…

There will be a new Firefox to grace desktops everywhere, maybe as a knee-jerk reaction to the increasing amount of outcry regarding Mozilla Firefox’s increasing bloatedness, increased awareness of Google Chrome, and Internet Explorer 8.

Whatever the case may be, there wasn’t necessarily anything broken with the browser, it just needed a few of the features both Google and Microsoft already employ.  What will these features mean for marketers?  Find out. Read more…

With all the talk lately about new and emerging technologies, social spheres, and potential easy wins in online marketing, it’s hard to decipher the signal from the noise.  A shaky economy doesn’t help matters, because many companies are moving to either increase short-term gains or foster long-term strategy and right the boat.  Fragmented advice is easy to come by, so I present to you one cohesive strategy of online marketing with a few tactical real-world examples of how you might implement change. Read more…

As a precursor to SES San Jose, Charlene Li, author of “Groundswell” and keynote speaker at the upcoming show and Matt McGowan of Search Engine Strategies will be offering a free webcast entitled “How to Integrate social media into your business strategy”.  If attending sessions at Search Engine Strategies in Toronto two weeks ago taught me anything, it’s that most businesses don’t “get” social media… at all.  So I expect everyone to sign up for the free webcast, which is scheduled for Wednesday July 8th at 1PM EST/10AM PST.  Click here to register.

If you haven’t already done so, sign up for the main event of all search marketing shows, SES San Jose 2009 right now.  I’ve been to New York, Toronto, and San Jose last year, and although all have their respective merits and local experts that can teach you a ton of tactics and valuable insights, SAN JOSE is the place to be.  If you go to one show and one show only, go to SES San Jose.  Okay, enough with the shameless, albeit honest, plugs for SES.

On the heels of a relatively productive first day at SES Toronto, day two delivered more of the same.  With an impressive keynote address, and more sessions packed into a somewhat busier trafficked day, business certainly did pick up.  As some of you probably noticed, yesterday I finally caved and relented to the hype that is Twitter, and actually started using it and <gasp> kinda like it. Read more…

You know: given the current economic crisis, turn out for SES Toronto is actually better than I suspected, and so is the production value.  Granted, it’s no San Jose, but it’s pretty good for an extremely niche Canadian/Torontonian online marketing conference.  Sticking mainly to the affectionately named “Geek Track” (others were categorized “Nuts & Bolts” and “Corporateville”), opened my eyes to several new trends and strategies. Read more…

On the week leading up to Search Engine Strategies Toronto comes news from Hitwise of their entry into the Canadian market.  Obviously, they must have struck a deal with one or two of only three major ISPs in the country, finally giving Canadian business the opportunity to keep an eye on competitor movements.  With comScore amping up their web beaconing effort to normalize their panel-based results, Hitwise seems primed to become a quick favorite, if they can take hold of decent market share.

It’ll be interesting to see whether their announcement includes the full bevvy of reports available to US marketers, such as search marketing traffic, both natural and paid, and other juicy segmenting features.  I’ll cover more news as it becomes available.  Needless to say, Hitwise has already reached out to larger online web producers well in advance of this announcement.

Am I the only one that isn’t too excited about Google Wave?  What’s promised as the next big thing in social media and online collaboration definitely sounds interesting, but it’s definitely still a pipedream.  Will it be a flashy new Google Docs-type platform, or will it fall flat, like Google Knol?

One thing is for certain, the technology is pretty cool.  Think of all the internet was promised to be, and think of what it is today.  Now think about the possibilites of actually working from home, across business units, and from across the world.  Now you’re getting closer to Wave…

Read more…