Traditional SEO is dead with intelligent search results

Just saw this video interview on YouTube with Bruce Clay. With the growth of smart and targeted search results based on user behavior and site history keywords and rankings will be a thing of the past. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have already begun to introducing smart search results technology with localized search, but results based on your behavior will change everything. In fact Bruce use's the term "ranking is dead". This will have a huge effect of the SEO industry and the role of web marketers in site optimization. Essentially the rule book we need to be rewritten. Check it out:

Google to take on Facebook by more open API

It was only a matter of time before one of the top three: Google, Yahoo or MSN did something with respect to Facebook.

Google is apparently working on opening up its API's for existing services even more than Facebook. See this article for more detail.

Education And The Future of Technology

Today it seems to becoming increasingly challenging to hire and find qualified workers in the web and new media field a co-worker sent me a link to the following video. Some interesting facts I extracted from it were:

"... the top 10 jobs that will be in demand in 2010 didn't exist in 2004.We are currently preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist... using technologies that haven't yet been invented... in order to solve problems we don't even know are problems yet."

Definitely some interesting statistics on the future of education and technology! One thing I’ve learnt about one of the webs leading company's Google recruitment doctrine is that they hire their programmers and engineers to be agile. For instance you may be hired to work on Gmail, but could also be tasked to work on Google Maps. They believe in hiring workers with skills and aptitude that don't pigeon hole them into a specific job or career path. Add to that the 20% time they give you to work on R&D which has given birth to Google Transit among other amazing projects and you can see why they are the leader. So maybe Google is ahead of the curve here! They realize that hiring people with a broad base of skills and the ability to learn quickly and multi-task is an asset to their organization.

Loving Google Analytics

I just got notified of the upgrade to the new and improved version of Google Analytics. After logging in and checking it out I've got to say i'm impressed. The new version has some killer features, and a bold new interface that uses a line graph for most overviews in favor of the old 3D horizontal bar graphs.

Having worked with a number of analytics packages and vendors over the years including Deepmetrix, Urchin (before Google bought them), Webtrends and Omniture i'm amazed at features in Google Analytics. Granted everything ties back to their ad network but name another analytic provider that current offers so much for free?

I recently attending a Webex demo with an Omniture sales rep and has show their stat's system. They definately have an amazing interface, and some great feature including the ability to customize your stats to the nth degree. However their package is not cheap.

At my former employer I was looking at upgrading from our hosted web analytics package Urchin 5.7 (after Google bought them). I really liked Deepmetrix from my experience with version 6 of their Livestats product. It was funny to see then (in May 2006) that Microsoft acquired them. Now it seems we are only months away from seeing the release of "Code Name Gatineau" a similar offering in the free analytics space from Microsoft. It's a little bit of history repeating!