Search Headlines – SEO Haters to the Left

Danny Sullivan Schools Jason Calacanis in SEO

I don’t come across too many blog posts that make me want to stand on my desk and throw my fist in the air, but this is definitely one of them. Danny’s open letter to Jason Calacanis entitled Why The SEO Folks Were Mad At You, Jason is huzzah-inspiring awesome.

In his post, Danny responds to statements made during yet another one of Jason Calacanis’s SEO-hating blog post, as well as statements he made during his SES Chicago keynote with Danny. You know, when he declared to a room full of SEOs that search engine optimization was bull and worthless. Yeah. I’m not sure if this is to his credit or not, but Jason seems genuinely perplexed as to why people were upset.

Danny shows he’s a nice guy and clears things up for Jason.

"They got upset because about 90 percent of the audience you were speaking in front of made their living doing some type of SEO work. And the vast majority of them were not snake oil salesmen — or women, for that matter."

As someone who was in the room when Jason began to fly off the handle, I can tell you that the reaction to Jason’s monologue was stunned silence. Todd Friesen says he almost shot coffee out of his nose, which I think was the collective feeling of pretty much everyone in the room.

Danny spends the rest of his beautiful post clearing up common misconceptions to search engine optimization, the challenges facing social media optimization, and ultimately just putting Jason Calacanis in his place. Which, let’s face it, we’ve all been waiting for someone to do. If you haven’t read Danny’s post yet, please, please go check it out.

Personalized Search, Revisited

Michael Gray had me giggling at work today with Personalized Search – The Feature No one is Asking For. Michael, like me, is not a fan of personalized search, especially when it’s forced down his throat. Actually, I think this quote sums up Michael’s views pretty nicely:

"Let’s see what other services can be improved with personalized results … maybe your bank statement, 17 is your favorite number right so why don’t they put some extra 17’s in there because personalized results are always better aren’t they? What else … hmm … I use the letter "M" alot according to my keyboard history log so why not mix in a couple of "M"’ grades on my kids report cards that should make me happy and improve my end user experience."

Hee!

While I agree with Michael personally, I don’t think personalized search is just a concoction of the search engines like he argues. There actually are people out there who like having their results skewed based on past searching behavior. And we all know them. They’re the people who go to the same restaurant and order the same entrée every singe time. Personalized search is great for these people who view "options" as "clutter".

YouTube Founders

We knew the Google/YouTube deal made YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen a whole lot of money in Google stock, but we didn’t know just how much. It turns out, based on today’s prices, Chad Hurley made $346 million, Steve Chen made $326 million, a third co-founder Jawed Karim made out with $65 million, and YouTube’s chief backer Sequoia Capital, that would also be the company that employs our friend Jason Calacanis, received shares more than $442 million.

What do you even say to that much money? Thank you? Huzzah?

I just feel bad for poor Jawed. He left the company early to go to grad school for computer science. That’s like the most expensive degree ever. [Are you kidding? He started a new company with a couple friends and then went back to school and without doing a day’s more work for YouTube, made a cool 65 million while still getting his degree. I wish someone would give me $65 million for going to school.–Susan] Yes, but had he gotten his degree two years later he’d have an extra $300 MILLION laying around. I like that scenario better. Don’t argue with me; go edit something.
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Lisa Barone is a writer, content marketer & VP of strategy at Overit Media. She's also a very active Twitterer, much to the dismay of the rest of the world.

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