In essence, Prizes.org allows you to create a contest for tasks on nearly any topic you choose – not just graphic design jobs but anything from tips for hassle-free plane journeys with kids, help naming a company, new running route suggestions and so on.

Google Prizes.org homepage screenshot

The team responsible for the creation of this crowd sourcing site is a largely autonomous team that Google acquired last year called Slide. Before you create a contest you must purchase credits (1 credit costs $1 USD). At the moment the platform is in Beta and is only open to contest creators that have a “credit history” meaning they have to have participated in or created contests in the past, but this restriction will likely be lifted eventually.

The great social element of the site comes through the fact that competition entrants can receive votes from other users to aid contest creators when they come to select a winner. Social networks are likely to play a big part in encouraging others to participate and spread the news about the platform itself due to the fact you must sign up to the site using Facebook Connect or your Twitter account (strangely, no Google+ integration as yet).

Google Prizes.org activities screenshot

So how can YOU use social crowd sourcing for your business?

At the time of writing, the contest for helping to name a screen printing company in Cleveland has received 131 entries and 73 votes. Good going for day 1 of the site going live.

Google Prizes contest status

[If you're feeling generous, you can vote for my entry in the competition here: http://prizes.org/p/qBBMXit2DOhl ]

Granted, many of these people will be testing the platform and wanting to take part in a bid to gain an early invite to become a contest creator. But this also goes to show just how small the barrier to entry is for people to sign up and contribute to business ideas.

Imagine this:

• What if your company had a repository for innovative ideas or a solutions pool for suggested problems to solve?
• What if you incentivised contributions to this in a similar way and got everyone involved with voting?

Incentives needn’t be monetary, you could have another fun prize such as vouchers, free coffee from a local cafe for a week, or even team incentives in the form of a cupcake delivery to the winning team in the office! Who doesn’t like cupcakes?

Happy Fourth of July!

Have you used social networks or crowd sourcing to help encourage innovation or solve tasks within your company? Which schemes would you consider and which ones would you trash?

 

Essentially, this is a button very much like the Facebook Like button that Facebook launched about a year ago. If you like a web page, you hit the +1 button in Google search results. This applies to both organic search results and paid ads and means that when you are logged in you will see summaries of how many and who (if Google thinks you’re connected to them) +1d them. In a matter of months it’s likely that Google will roll out a button for websites to implement on-site, just like the Facebook Like button and Twitter’s Tweet buttons.

Now, I like Google +1. I’d look at the number of +1s when searching. I’ll probably even end up consulting on them and recommending on-site implementation on product pages, news, blogs and so on to make sure clients use the full arsenal of tools Google has available to them. But I wouldn’t use it myself as a consumer since my searches are just that, my searches, especially if it’s a public broadcast of everything I +1 and not filtered for topics like SEO versus say, travel. That means I’d effectively just be producing a lot of noise. The +1 tab on my Google profile page would just end up being an unfiltered mess of SEO pages, travel, maybe chocolate, wine, country pursuit websites…you get the gist, and maybe even that awesome site I visited to buy my best friend a surprise gift. Oh wait, they just found out. I +1d it didn’t I? There goes that surprise… [Lesson: think before you +1].

But that’s my point; I just want Google to be impartial. I log out of Google / switch browsers / use proxies to get that effect without personalisation butting in. Average Joes might be happily swayed by +1s and not be bothered by personalised search, but are they likely to contribute without any benefits to them? Really? Dean Cruddace summed it up nicely in 140 characters:

Oi granny Smith, what you looking for? “oh just knitting patterns”. Have you tried building a relevant social graph to connect the dots?

— Dean Cruddace (@DeanCruddace) March 30, 2011

Social networks like Facebook/Twitter reward sharing through conversations with your network. Marketers encourage contributions through the use of competitions. What does Google +1 offer?

Let’s look at the benefits to the three core parties that are involved when using Google +1:

• Benefits to Google: dare I say it, easy [you could read: lazy] way to aggregate data to improve search results, but also encourage publishers to improve their websites to encourage genuine positive feedback. Oh, and increased revenue from the extra clicks encouraged on Google’s PPC ads. Now that’s a handy plus.
• Benefits to publishers: publishers with audiences willing to engage will benefit from an additional boost to click through rates from search results thanks to +1. Publishers with different audience behaviours unlikely to contribute by +1ing or to hang around long enough to engage in this way may struggle. Smaller publishers may lose out on clicks in search results, regardless of rankings, to the bigger publishers. All publishers with a verified Google Webmaster Tools account will get to see stats related to +1.
• Benefits to users: seeing endorsements from others will be welcomed I suspect, and may even encourage clicks where they wouldn’t usually have clicked. [Hurrah to Google's bank account!] But the step before that – being encouraged to +1 something without an immediate reward – will probably leave them feeling irritated, or developing a kind of ad blindness to the +1 buttons so that they’re ignored entirely.
  Let’s not forget here that users have to a) have a Google account and b) remember to sign in. Are you always signed in? If so, are you always signed in to YOUR account, your company’s account or your client’s account?
  [Lesson: again, think before you +1. Don't +1 a NSFW site while logged into your client's account!]

My social networks are also targeted to some degree: I post to Twitter when I want my wider network – largely consisting of people I know, but haven’t met yet – to see. I post to Facebook when I want just those I’ve met or know a lot better to see, plus I can even select the exact members of the audience here. LinkedIn uses the RSS feed of my blog and a couple of other sites for strictly work-related content. But what use have I to broadcast, unfiltered, to everyone? More to the point; what benefit would I gain as a consumer from broadcasting, unfiltered, to everyone?

If +1 automatically Tweeted or created a Facebook or LinkedIn post, then perhaps we could see an interesting integration take place across the social media networks, but then I probably wouldn’t hook Google up to all those personal networks …and Google’s not the sharing type anyway.

Actually, Alex Rainert, a Foursquare exec, made a great point about when users are expected to +1 a web page:

Why would I “+1″ a link to a page before I’ve seen whether I like it and why would I go back to the results if I’ve found the best result?

— Alex Rainert (@arainert) March 30, 2011

If +1 fails it’ll be because a barrier exists getting users to +1 web pages in the first place. I suspect take up will be slow after the initial novelty and curiousity factors have worn off.

As any marketer knows, consumers are always thinking “what’s in it for me” so you have to make sure you’ve got a carrot to dangle. I’m not seeing that carrot for consumers here, and marketers aren’t encouraged to game +1s. Although, admittedly it’d probably work better if it was chocolate in my case.

There’s my two cents on +1. What’s yours?

SES London is one of the largest search engine marketing conferences in Europe and is taking place between the 21^nd and 25^th of February at the Queen Elizabeth II conference centre, in Westminster. Over 1,500 search marketers will descend on London for three days of SEO, SEM, and social media marketing strategies and tips from a variety of industry experts. We are pleased to announce the conference networking party, supported by SES and Incisive media will be something a little different thanks to our venue sponsor, Raven SEO Tools.

The essential SES London 2011 networking party details are as follows:

• DATE: Wednesday 23^rd February
• VENUE: HMS President, Kings Reach, Victoria Embankment, City of London, EC4Y 0HJ [Google Map]
• TIME: 7.00pm – 11.30pm
• ENTRY: To conference attendees only and you must show your conference pass at the door
• CAPACITY: 350 is the maximum capacity, therefore you must arrive early to be sure to be admitted

Thanks to the generosity of our two sponsors, Raven and Linkdex SEO Tools, the evening will start with a free bar, though given we search marketers are a sociable bunch it would be best to get to the venue as early as possible to take advantage of this.

This party has been brought to you thanks to the awesome Nichola Stott of theMediaFlow and Lisa Myers of Verve Search who have done a fantastic job helping to organise the event and details.

One final message of thanks…

Of course I can’t finish this blog post without a huge thanks to SEO Chicks for holding a competition to win a free SES London conference pass – the winner needed to have the worst Christmas gift and I’m proud to say that was me with my clothes pegs! Thanks to all who voted for me!

So if you’re heading to SES London, make sure you get yourself over to the networking party on the Wednesday evening and you never know, you might just spot a cameo appearance by my winning Christmas clothes pegs!

Once you’ve followed people in your usual networks like Twitter and Facebook, asking topical questions to do with your industry can reveal some very interesting answers and pave the way for some great discussions and information sharing from your peers:

What made me eventually commit to the network was the fact I was blown away by two things:

1. The number of my peers already signed up: it was staggering
2. The raw honesty from founders / business owners

Here’s a question illustrating the honesty on Quora. It’s asked about FriendFeed by Bret Taylor (the co-founder):

His answer (highlighted in yellow) was refreshingly straight to the point and honest. No sugarcoating.

How many times have you seen honesty like that on Twitter? Or responses from the founders themselves on LinkedIn? Or even questions like that on Yahoo! Answers? I can recall many wrongly-presumed accusations flying about on Twitter which usually ended up in a storm of misunderstandings due to the 140 character limit restricting people from explaining themselves fully.

Could Quora be the ideal platform to generate discussions and evoke honesty on hot topics?

What’s also interesting is that Robert Scoble, one of FriendFeed’s die hard users, has taken to Quora too.

Despite all of this honesty and the questions that have fuelled massively active discussions, I must agree with what many are saying; Quora’s concept is nothing new. It does perform better than the rival Q&A platforms namely LinkedIn Groups, Yahoo! Answers and Twitter, but will that be enough to ensure it’s not just a flash in the pan?

Question from a friend: “Quora, isn’t that LinkedIn Questions, without LinkedIn?” – I kinda agree, what do you guys think?

— Joost de Valk (@yoast) January 5, 2011

Am I missing the point on Quora? isn’t it just the bastard child of Yahoo Answers and LinkedIn Groups? And we know how well those two work.

— Matty Curry (@mattycurry) January 5, 2011

On that basis, all that’s needed is one of the older networks to update their platforms to encourage more interaction (perhaps through easier sign ups, more open public conversations and a better layout) and Quora is blown out of the water. Noone wants an extra network to log into so the only way Quora can guarantee survival is if it integrates – perhaps one of the aforementioned networks will make an offer?

Another curious question about Quora: why can’t you link directly to answers? At least a USP of Quora would be the ability to quote people within high profile blogs and news articles. (Mmm links!)

Follow me on Quora: Joanna Butler

• The negatives
• The positives
• Google’s positives
• Mobile Buzzing
• A summary

My “oh Buzz off” moments: 

1. Connected sites
   Google decided to connect PicasaWeb and my Flickr account automatically. I disconnected both twice, but they resurfaced each time. So far I’m winning. Watch this space.
   Google also appears to have ‘found’ my YouTube page. Naturally as they own YouTube, this isn’t a massive surprise, just not expected. My YouTube channel does not have the same name as my Gmail account, however… Some clues can be found on my Google Profile page where Google has clearly done some sniffing around to find the following sites. Note however, I have NOT used my Gmail account to sign up to any of these sites. I can only assume Google has been reading my email:
   
2. Followers
   I was automatically following one person and already being followed by another. Both seemingly random choices of people since there are others who I email/tweet/converse with more frequently. Interestingly, the following day, I got a notification saying that “1 more person is following me”. Actually it was that person who was already following me in the first place… Hmm.
   
   On using the “Find people” option to select people to follow, I learned of people’s multiple Gmail accounts. I could follow all of them if I wanted. People like to have separate Gmail accounts for many reasons – we email different people, we have different websites that require different profiles for services such as Analytics or AdWords. We keep them separate for a reason…
3. Email address
   My advertised email address is now my Gmail account one. This is not how I want it to be. I use Gmail to collect my website’s email so it sort of serves as a backup for my email and is easier to use on my iPhone. But I’d rather my primary website email address was advertised. But I can’t for the life of me figure out how to do that…
4. Contact groups
   It’s great that you can separate contacts out into Friends, Family, Colleagues and Contacts so that you can pick and choose which updates are shared with who. That’s OK… if you’re a Billy No Mates. Otherwise, that’s most of an afternoon’s-worth of sorting out your hundreds or thousands of contacts into groups. Don’t forget to keep the groups up to date…
   
5. Syncing contacts
   Were you one of those people who synced your contacts between your iPhone and your Gmail account? Yep, all those contacts are now connected via Gmail to Buzz. I have taxi numbers as contacts in Buzz now, along with my Gran and my Doctor. Some contacts don’t even have an email address, let alone be bothered to know what Google Buzz is. But my point is that some groups of people you just don’t need “to Buzz”.
6. Confusing follower/following counts across Google Properties:
   Here’s a screenshot of my follower/following count on Google Reader:
   
   And here’s a screenshot of Google Buzz at time of writing:
   
   I just “Shared” a post from my Google Reader. I’m a little confused as to who is going to see that post. I’m guessing 61, but there is almost definitely going to be some crossover here. Not fantastic for tracking reach.
7. There is now a new tab on my public Google profile showing all my updates on Buzz:
   
   That’s ok. I guess. I can see some people not realising this and posting public updates to their page. As this is higher profile this should be on people’s online reputation management radars.

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However, the positives, as promised: 

1. I like the simple interface, the ability to Like or Comment is very easy. Very Facebook and FriendFeed-esque, but let’s let that slide. These are good features.
2. I like that I can select which sites to connect and that other people’s updates clearly state the source, i.e. Google Reader.
3. I like the simple drop down menu. Very intuitive:
   
4. I like the stacked appearance of updates to give you a chance to read less active users’ updates:
   
5. I like the fact the page refreshes itself using Ajax so I can see comments etc. as they come in. They are easy to identify as well with the aid of a yellow line and fade-out highlighting of the whole post/comment:
   
6. You DO actually have the option to turn Buzz off, but it’s on by default:
   
7. Adding a comment to a shared item in Google Reader is great. This is why we like the OLD retweet feature of Twitter rather than the new one. Adding our own spin:
   
   Here’s one I wrote earlier:
   
8. Posting a link: USE A URL SHORTENER!
   As you can see below, Google still follows the redirects, retrieves the page title, snippet, images etc:
   
   But the link itself is kept as your shortened version. This is essential for tracking your social media efforts:
   

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Mobile on-the-hoof Buzzing 

1. My location wasn’t quite right. I couldn’t work out how to create a new location for my office or link to any existing one. I thought it might link up to Google Local Business Centre listings, but a search for my company proved fruitless.
   
2. Using the page http://buzz.google.com/ on an iPhone is basically a similar experience to an iPhone app. BUT it’s not an app! Google gets around publishing an app in the App Store by encouraging you to add a Home Screen Shortcut to your phone, like you can with any website, as follows:
   

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Pluses from Google’s point of view: 

1. Money! Advertising on Gmail is now more noticeable as they appear above all updates like so:
   
   From a paid search perspective, I’d be interested to know if you could control where your ads appear on Google accounts. You might prefer more informal ad copy here to blend with the social conversations that follow it. I wouldn’t be surprised if this ad section was enhanced further.
2. One giant step for Google…
   Google is going to rock the boats of many other social networks out there with this move. Especially FriendFeed and Facebook. It’ll be interesting to see what happens to Twitter too, although I suspect the superfluously simple interface to prevail.

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To summarise 

I’m a little unnerved by how much Google really knows about people. I sort of suspected they knew all that information already or had the ability to find out, but this proves it. This proves that they have tremendous power. Check their list of properties if you want to see what could potentially be linked in the future: Calendar, Docs, Earth, Finance, Books, Talk… and even Translate. Don’t forget they’re a domain registrar and have an affiliate network too.

While this IS basically another platform and since writing it I have proved myself wrong in several ways, this is a little like my Search Cowboys post where I talked about leaving the platform behind and the is the potential to bridge the gap – socially – between different language speakers too.

Its prospects? Google has a massive, pre-existing user base with Gmail. There will no doubt be more uptake of Buzz than there was with Wave due to the immediate integration with Gmail. However, there are some privacy issues, as articulated by @wilks below:

My honest opinion? I think it will stay. As much as I hate the whole Google as “Big Brother” concept, and it is yet another social network to keep checking and updating, it does have a few cool features. And they are kinda fun to use. Occasionally

This time last year I chose “get results” as my New Year’s resolution.  I ended up changing my life around within a month. Here’s where it all began:

How it started

2008 I took exams and continued building solid career experiences at a web design company in Nottingham. I was working as a web marketing consultant there until February 2009 when they told me some gutting news; they had to make me redundant. As devastated as I was to leave, I’d had a niggling urge in the back of my mind for a few months about travelling or relocating. Being made redundant made me turn those ideas into a reality and I started to explore travel options and research living and working in London, leaving my quiet countryside life behind. One of my leaving presents was the book The Yes Man by Danny Wallace (aff)  – one of the best gifts of the year as I followed in his footsteps and ended up changing my life around and having some phenomenal experiences in the months that followed.

Gathering momentum towards the Big Smoke

In the month between finishing my job in Nottingham and moving to London, a LOT happened!

Firstly, I had a lot of luck and serendipity along the way to moving down. For example, I had already planned to attend the first ever Think Visibility conference in Leeds when just a week or so beforehand Dom Hodgson asked me if I’d like to be a speaker! I was honoured of course and jumped at the chance to talk about one my many passions, web analytics – so I said ‘yes’ in true Yes Man style. I’d done many small web marketing seminars previously, but this was my first conference speaking event. Here I met many inspirational people that weekend who would each encourage me to follow my ambitions, including Dave Chaffey, Dave and Becky Naylor, Chris Garrett, Kieron Donoghue, Tim Nash, Patrick Altoft, Al Carlton and many more. [Oh and let’s not forget guys how I beat most of you at pool the night before! ]

At this point I have to say a huge thank you to Mike Nott for initially inviting me down to my first LondonSEO. It blew my mind meeting so many inspirational people, many of whom I have grown to be great friends with even now. I’ll never forget getting one of the warmest welcomes by Lisa Myers, being shown how not to smuggle bottles into a free bar by Rishi and meeting one of my best friends, Martin Goode.

Somewhere between Think Visibility and LondonSEO I had my first blog published on Search Engine Journal about web analytics which went hot on Sphinn.

I also decided at about 11pm on the day the Google Analytics exam was launched to sit it right there and then with no preparation, but managed to pass! (I don’t recommend that method!)

Once I found somewhere to live (thank you Gumtree!) I upped sticks and moved down. I think this was especially hard in a way as I’d unexpectedly become full-time, live-in carer to two injured family members – they’re all mended now but my brother had a badly broken leg and my mum had an operation that went wrong on her right hand. I worried about how they’d manage cooking, cleaning, shopping and just generally getting about when I left, but clearly my worries were unfounded as they’re still in one piece! It made it interesting coordinating trips to London, though, what with preparing meals for them and prepping the house for when I was away, but that process forced me to become independent and was just what I needed to introduce me to hectic London life.

And a #LDNTourist was born

Whilst working for a top London agency, with some amazing blue chip companies, I also set myself a mission to make sure I do one London tourist activity per week. And so the #LDNTourist hash tag on Twitter was born! In fact the hash tag has actually generated its own buzz along the way and I’ve really enjoyed interacting with my followers while exploring my new hometown – you guys made the experience even better!

In July I got not one, but two iPhones. Yes – I moved to London with a real life, paper map initially and actually carried it around with me! Stylish. But from then on I could pretend I wasn’t a tourist with the help of my beloved iPhone 3GS.

Twitter never knew what hit it.

Events, events and more events!

London is well-renowned for its events and I’ve since been to some amazing ones such as the TechCrunch Europas 2009 (was great to meet Robert Scoble), SMX, LondonSEO, International Search Summit, Web Analytics Wednesday.

But the most notable for me will always be A4U Expo 2009. Thanks to the encouragement of Kieron Donoghue I spoke at this fantastic 3 day event. In the process I was also interviewed on Search Cowboys by Bas van den Beld about my slot and also the A4U blog. Yet again, I met so many inspirational people; the list is just endless!

I was asked once who I would like to meet – alive or dead – if I got the chance. I answered Sir Tim Berners-Lee as I’ve been a self-confessed Internet addict since I was about 14. In 2009 I got the chance to hear him speak at the Science Museum in London about the history of the Internet – another great moment I’ll never forget!

The second Think Visibility, combined with Tim’s seminar the day before and another fantastic ‘Drink Visibility’, was another great success and was where I was thrilled to meet Yoast, a fellow SEO, web analytics and developer nerd, and SEOIdiot, a fellow wasabi pea lover, among many others.

Giving back to Nottingham

Back in December 2008 I’d volunteered to take a set of seminars at the CIM annual event in Nottingham on SEO. I absolutely love the CIM events in Nottingham and was thrilled to bits to have this chance to give something back after gaining my award the year before. Sahar Hashemi, founder of Coffee Republic, was also to give a talk about being an entrepeneur that has stuck in my mind ever since.

Becoming a Doctor

Just prior to A4UExpo, I was honoured to join the Affiliate Doctors! The Doctors form a community whereby we review websites and offer our advice and expertise for free through the site.


Other notables

With so many life changes, I conquered infinite personal goals as well. Some of these include battling asthma to take up jogging with the help of some Nike Plus trainers and a personal trainer for the first time ever. This has been a goal of mine for a long time as I really hope one day I can do a 10k run or ideally a half marathon. Watch this space!

Had my first trip to Ikea …and probably the last!

Won a book about Australia from @STATravelBuzz.

And learning to say No, too

I learned several life lessons during 2009, too. Most importantly I learned that I simply must say No sometimes, exactly how the Yes Man story goes. 2009 unfortunately involved almost driving myself to burning out and a, thankfully brief, hospital visit. I’ve definitely learned the hard way I am not a machine and I must look after myself more! London’s fast pace is so exciting it’s so easy to get carried away with it. But I was also reminded that I really am a country girl at heart as a few visits back to the countryside in Nottingham did the world of good and has put me back on the right track.

2010 goals and New Year’s resolutions

So 2009 for me was about:

• saying ‘Yes’ to opportunities
• meeting inspirational people
• experiencing more
• and tackling challenges – both personal and professional – head on.

My main 2010 New Year’s resolutions build on what I learned from and started in 2009:

• to ‘have faith’ (in myself most of all, but also in life in general)
• and to ‘take control and drive my life’ in the direction of my ambitions.

Other goals I have for 2010 include travel…

I can’t forget my wanderlust and desire to see the world, so this year simply must include travel somehow. I must also learn to put the brakes on my hectic London lifestyle on a regular basis and take care of myself a little more! I took no holidays in 2009 and didn’t even book more than 2 days in a row off work, so that has to change in 2010!

Phew. What a year! If you read this far, leave a comment so I can congratulate you!

Bring on 2010!

Here’s what I mean. My old profile URL, which still works, is: http://www.linkedin.com/in/joannabutler

However, this is now appearing on profiles as the following:

Not only this, but other country codes are also working as @danbarker noticed:

• http://us.linkedin.com/in/joannabutler
• http://au.linkedin.com/in/joannabutler
• http://nz.linkedin.com/in/joannabutler
• http://hk.linkedin.com/in/joannabutler

All the above URLs have not been blocked through either robots.txt or a robots Meta tag. Only the canonical tag has been used on all URLs, except the ‘www’ and ‘home’ country. The tag specifies the ‘home’ country as the main URL as follows:

As Michael Gray eloquently put it, these tags are like an SEO band-aid and entrusting your entire site and its duplicate content issues with a single tag is a little risky, if not foolish should the effect of these tags change overnight. It is much better to choose one URL and 301 redirect all to it, or at least to use some simple pattern matching in the robots.txt file to block search engines from the duplicate URLs. Failing that, implementing a ‘noindex’ robots Meta tag would help avoid issues.

But, as it currently stands, there are two URLs per profile: ‘www’ and ‘UK’ for me.

So, what are the SEO implications for LinkedIn profiles?

Duplicate content

Besides the fact having two URLs makes absolutely no sense, users are left wondering which URL is their ‘real’ profile and therefore which to link to. Two URLs could potentially mean half the number of inbound links as they’re split between profiles, and therefore link equity, reducing it’s authority.

Rebuilding your ego SERP

If LinkedIn axed the old URLs without 301 redirects, you will probably have to rebuild that equity for your new profile URL. The link to your nicely formatted career summary in the form of your LinkedIn profile page may well disappear out of your ego SERP.

International reach

If you are based in the UK, want to connect with people in the UK, and don’t ever consider moving countries, this update is for you! However, in today’s well-connected, online society this is highly unlikely. You are far more likely to fall into one or more of the following categories:

• You work for an international company
• You need to connect to people around the world
• You may emmigrate

Therefore, you will prefer to keep the original, location-independent URL.

Complex URLs

Already there appears to be a redundant ‘in’ directory within profile URLs, but now we have to remember what country a person resides in in order to reference them.

What benefits are there, if any, of a country subdomain?

Local search

Your profile may well rank better in local searches. That is to say if someone searches for me in the UK, my UK profile should rank better than if they were searching from the US. [However, this may not be true due to the well publicised issues with the UK SERPs recently receiving unnaturally large amounts of foreign websites in local searches, but that's a whole other topic!]

Interestingly, LinkedIn haven’t changed the ‘lang’ attribute in the HTML or employed international language changes such as using ‘resume’ in US profiles and ‘CV’ in UK profiles.

In conclusion: this is a LinkedIn #FAIL

It makes absolutely no sense to adopt this new URL structure from an SEO, usability or recruitment/business standpoint. The only possible reasons they could be opting for this format are to free up more usernames or for unknown technical reasons.

It will be interesting to see what happens to LinkedIn profiles in SERPs over the coming days and weeks. If you have any insights or opinions on this, drop me a comment as I’d love to hear them. Let’s hope you haven’t had any expensive business cards etc. printed with your LinkedIn profile URL on…

In case you missed it before the event, Search Cowboys also interviewed me about my talk, which I later learned was the most retweeted interview – so thank you to those who retweeted!

Overall it was a fantastic two days where I met and caught up with many inspirational people. If you have any questions or just want to keep in touch, please do! A few of my details are below, but you can find my full contact details here.

• Email: Joanna at Search Engine Chocolate dot com
• Connect with me on LinkedIn: LinkedIn.com/in/JoannaButler
• Follow me on Twitter: @JoannaButler

Barriers to Conversion and Discovering Untapped Opportunities with Analytics Slides

There have been some great write ups of the event so far including Top 10 Quotes – A4UExpo Hall of Fame by Search Cowboys, A4UExpo London Coverage 2009 by Richard Baxter AKA SEO Gadget and My review of A4U Expo 2009 – Excel, London by Geoffblog.com.

Talks from the other keynotes were fantastic; Sahar Hashemi, founder of Coffee Republic, was particularly inspirational in her talk about being an entrepreneur, Professor Malcolm McDonald‘s gave a great talk about the truth about marketing with some very funny quotes, some of which I had to list here:

• “The good thing about being mediocre is that you’re always at your best”
• “An increase of 100% on nothing, is still nothing”
• “You don’t analyse the ROI (return on investment) of the wings on an aircraft”

Helen Jeremiah, Head of Marketing for Boots, also gave a great talk explaining the history of Boots and their aims and philosophies behind their current marketing strategies.

If you’re interested in web analytics, come and see me speak in London at A4U Expo on the 14th October – you can use my special offer code SEOCHOC10 for 10% off!

The talk was truely fascinating, and by no means just a simple run down of how the Internet was born. I left feeling Sir Tim Berners-Lee was a true genius, and so genuine. The talk was actually filmed by BBC Click and as I was on one of the front rows you are guaranteed to see me in the background mesmerised by his talk and tweeting updates!

Below is a mini write-up including answers to your questions tonight:

• Your questions for Sir Tim Berners-Lee
• My write up and review of Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s talk at the Science Museum

Your Questions for Sir Tim Berners-Lee 

1. @Walkerama asked: Can you have a word with Microsoft about IE6?
   Not covered in the talk specifically, but he did say that information on the Internet should be available independent of the platforms or browsers, and that includes being accessible to people with disabilities
2. @DavidWilcock asked: The Internet has brought porn to the masses, do you feel this makes you one of THE great social pioneers?
   Again, not answered specifically (!), but Sir Tim did say that “the web is a reflection of humanity”, good and bad.
3. @wallglamour asked: you could ask him if the Grid really does exist or are we doomed just to have 24mb download speed.
   I don’t think he believed any of the internet was static; download speeds, just like the technology it relies on, will continue to improve.
4. Anon asked: What kind of idiot decided that mixing semantic tags (quotes etc) with visual styles (colors, sizes etc) was a good design choice for HTML?
   HTML was actually made to resemble the existing CERN documents as closely as possible to encourage people to adopt it quickly.
5. @nsdesign asked: “do you regret not charging a royalty to every web user ?”
   Sir Tim Berners-Lee absolutely believes in royalty-free data and information. Keeping it that way means more people adopt it, therefore more people collaborate on it and consequently a much more invaluable invention.
6. @_elj asked: What’s your favourite recent web innovation?
   Sir Tim Berners-Lee loved the social web, connecting people. He also loved mash-ups where people had used raw data to produce new information such as the Google Maps mash up with traffic black spots. He praised companies that released raw data WITHOUT creating excuses in delaying making it freely available.
7. Audience member (and I) asked: You clearly believe in data and information being made freely available, but where do you stand on newspapers charging for access to their articles online?
   Sir Tim Berners-Lee said there was a need for high qualilty, professional and reliable content online. He compared that with the abundance of untrustworthy blogs online now with questionable sources.
8. Audience member: At what age do you think children should allowed online; not from an online content point of view, but one whereby some people believe the Internet can hinder a child’s development?
   While stating that he was not qualified enough to answer this question, he concluded that early adoption of the Internet by children can either promote great multitasking skills (that older members of the audience may not have) or it could be their road to ruin!

My write up and review of Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s talk at the Science Museum 

Sir Tim Berners-Lee also made the following points:

• The WebFoundation.org will be launching later in 2009
• The Internet should be independent of the platforms and technology used to access it including disabilities. It should act like a collaborative knowledge bank that anyone can access.
• Documents therefore need to be decentralised; the Internet needs to be independent. An example of this would be social networks where you need to re-find your friends due to them being siloed.
• The Internet should work independent of size like water, which is a scale-free system with parts that overlap seamlessly.
• As the Internet is about sharing data between people the social side of it is intrinsic and should always be included in the process of web science.

If you want to read more about Sir Tim Berners-Lee you can find his biography online, his previous presentations, and also his Wikipedia page.