Jeff will be speaking about “SEO” at Searchfest 2009 which will be held March 10th in Portland, Oregon. Get your tickets now.
1) Please give me your background and tell us what you do for a living.
I’m President and CEO of Search Engine People Inc. We’re a moderately sized search marketing firm based out of Toronto Canada. As a firm, our core services are SEO (Search engine optimization), PPC (pay per click), SMM (Social Media Marketing), link building, and all services that support the greater search cause.
I’m heavily involved in setting the overriding strategies of many of our larger more complex clients , who require extremely advanced solutions. I’m also very heavily involved in staying atop breaking trends, and in making SEP world class at deploying those tactics and techniques as part of the search effort.
2) Can you distinguish any algorithmic differences between Google.ca and Google.com? Which index do Canadians prefer?
Ultimately, Google does its best to redirect Canadians automatically from Google.com to Google.ca. Even still, we typically register 20-30% more Google traffic from Google.com than from Google.ca.
Are there differences … absolutely.
First, there are 2 different Google results available to us:
1. Google.ca “Search Pages From Canada” – this search filters out all sites deemed to not be Canadian, either based on IP of the hosting company, TLD (the .ca domain suffix), or the setting in Google webmaster tools. If one of these elements isn’t uniquely Canadian, then the site will not appear at all in the search results for this type of query. The ordering of results then varies slightly according to some personalization techniques being employed (the personalization is not unique to Google.ca!)
2. Google.ca “Search the Web” – this is almost exactly the same as Google.com, although the search results differ slightly based on the ip address of the searcher. Someone searching from Canada is shown different results than someone searching from the U.S. The current theory is that Google gives Canadian sites a slight boost when searchers are searching from Canada, and apparent U.S. sites a slight boost when searchers are searching from the U.S. This is more of a personalization twist though, than an algorithmic difference.
3) How have your conversations with prospective clients changed since the economic slowdown began?
Probably the biggest impact has been we find that we have to be slightly more flexible, from the sense that we sometimes have to start with a smaller program, and gradually increase it as we prove ourselves at different phases. Companies are much more cautious before committing themselves, and rightfully so.
Todd Mintz knows PPC…knows Social Media…knows SEO…knows Blogging…knows Domaining…and knows them all real well. He runs growth marketing for )and is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx: Portland, Oregon’s Search Engine Marketing Association, and he can be found here on Twitter and Facebook.