2 Minutes with Matt Cutts

At a evening networking event at PubCon I had the chance to chat with Matt Cutts about some rumors I was hearing about things under development at Google. He was able to proved a clear and precise answer. So here are my questions Matt's answers:

1. What's with the indexing of Flash, what works and doesn't work? Matt was able to confirm what I had hear from Adobe last month, but that Adobe wasn't 100% sure. Google is only capable of finding links within the Flash file and unraserized text.

2. Is Google working on OCR for graphics and imaged pdfs? Matt - Google is now successful (at least to the limits of OCR) processing PDFs that were converted to images (you can't select text in these), but they are not yet working on trying to apply OCR (optical character recognition) to page images. Matt mentioned, that he has asked out this and even suggested it to the team, but so far no traction with the Google development team.

We went on to discuss how even if they got this working, the issue of OCR and different typeface would pose a huge issue and be very open to major mistakes.

So for now as I always state in my presentation we are still left with the 3 things that search engines value for our SEO projects - "words, words and words"

PubCon Day 2

Day 2 at PubCon turned out to be another inspiring day. It all started around 9:00 am with an truly inspiring keynote by George Wright from Blendtec. His keynote focused on how he took a $50 branding budget to purchase a few items video tape the owner of the company testing the company's blenders.

While it the story may sound simple, the video went viral and before they knew it this small blender company for Omaha was being featured on national news shows, and late night television. The resulting impact on sales were almost through the roof. A the legend of "Will it Blend" was born. Before long who knows, perhaps "blendtec-it" will become a verb of the likes of "google it".

As for the rest of day, there was a great session on web analytics despite the rep from Google pushing Google Analytics a bit too much. However between the pitches there was some good info.

My session on Organic design went well and we had nearly standing room only in our vast room. I didn't like the microphone they were using, but it was clear that the attendees were impressed with what all the panelist had to say.

PubCon Day 1

It's still the early hours here in Las Vegas and just a few hours before the start of PubCon, but I've already learned something. While in London last week for SMX, many people kept asking me if I'm twitting. To which I had to say no.

Given that numbers I realized that Twitter was starting to come to age and I better start Twitting. So I set-up my Twitter account and loaded my Blackberry with Titterberry. Didn't do much with it except link it to my Facebook account and thought so what. Who really wants to follow what I'm up to and how will I take advantage of it. Well then I headed to PubCon in Las Vegas.

I quickly started following the PubCon Twit and from there as they say the rest is history. All major social activities having anything to do with PubCon are being delivered via Twitter. Quickly several people started following my Twit and before I knew it, I had dinner plans with people I had never met before.

It got so crazy I was getting upset that my Twitterberry utility wasn't giving me live feeds like others around me that I realized the importance of the need for live feeds at least from a social aspect. So will I keep it up once I'm back at home, only time will tell - but my gut feel says yes and just another utility grabing more of limited time.

PubCon 2008

The dates for PubCon (http://www.pubcon.com) 2008 have just been announced. This years PubCon is happening November 11-14 and once again will be held in Las Vegas.

While the speakers list and agenda haven't been finalized, it looks highly likely that I'll be speaking during at least one session at the conference. If this year's conference is anything like last years conference it promises to be highly informative, a great networking opportunity and one great time.

So block off these dates and get ready to say hello to Vegas. One word of advice, don't plan on leaving early on the 14th. This has traditionally been the day of the big networking event and something you really don't want to miss.

As always as I know more, I'll post more on this event.

Another Las Vegas Web Conference

This year overlapping with WebBuilder in Las Vegas is Pubcon. Pubcon is an all encompassing web conference run by WebmasterWorld.

Pubcon will run Dec. 4 - 7, 2007 at the Las Vegas Convention Centre.

I've also just been confirmed as a speaker at this years Pubcon as well. The exact topic my address has not been finalized, but will most likely be focused on either Web Analytics or SEO. More on my address as the details are worked out.

For more information on Pubcon visit the conference web site at www.pubcon.com