What you should do next week

Next week is going to be a humdinger. If you’re in the Bay Area, here’s what I think you should do:

Attend Google I/O. If you’re a developer, trust me, I think you’ll get something out of the conference. Just check out the list of sessions, for one thing. The price is $400, but if you have a student ID the price is only $50. Need an extra incentive? I’ll be doing a site review session so you can tell your website and get a review and advice about your site. I plan to bring along several smart folks from my team to help on the panel. I really think this conference will be worth your while.

– Is $400 (or even the $50 student rate) too much to pay? Then come to WordCamp 2009 in San Francisco on Saturday, May 30, 2009. It costs $25 that includes a T-shirt and lunch. I’ll be speaking at WordCamp as well.

Maker Faire is next weekend (May 30 & 31st). I love Maker Faire, so I’ll be there to soak up the fun. If you’re a geek in the Bay Area, you don’t want to miss Maker Faire–again, trust me on this.

Bonus recommendation: If you’re willing to look two weeks out instead of one week, SMX Advanced will be in Seattle on June 2-3, 2009. I think there’s only ~50 tickets left, so I’d sign up soon. I’ll be there and I’m really looking forward to it. Danny Sullivan will repeat our You & A session where both Danny and the audience ask me questions.

I think each of these events should kick butt in slightly different ways, so I hope you can make it to some of them. If you can make it and you see me, walk up to say hello and chat a little bit! 🙂

30 Responses to What you should do next week (Leave a comment)

  1. I’m gonna be in hawaii during Wordcamp, otherwise I would have been there, since I live here in the Bay Area, but hate driving in the city..
    Any chances of you recording your site review at I/O?
    side note: new version of chrome… SMOKIN’ FAST!!!

  2. Hey Matt just to help you relax a bit before the events of next week. 🙂

    I have promised my readers that I would share this SEO Fairy Tale Story with you so here it is. I recently wrote a post to explain SEO in a basic way so that everybody could understand it, and to make the delivery original, I wrote it as a Fairy Tale, depicting a lot Google SEO principles.

    Many emailed me to share it with you for your enjoyment, so here it is Matt, my “SEO Fairy Tale for Kids and Grown Up”:

    http://www.nicolasprudhon.com/seo-help/seo-fairytale

    I’d love to hear your comment on that too, if you ever find the time!

    Sorry if this a bit off-topic.

  3. So paying $400.00 and getting a Matt Cutts personal site review means you get at least an edge over your competitors in the Google *organic* SERPs?

    Matt, the Google *organic* SERPs are already full of YouTube videos (now that Google owns and profits from it), does Google REALLY want to go this route? Google has always stated that no amount of money will boost your SERP position in the *organic* SERPs.

  4. so eager to be there,but so far from China,maybe focus the vidio!

  5. I want to be in the Bay Area. As youfoundjake said, I too would love to see a recording of the site review session if at all possible.

    Also, I’m struggling to see what Dave(Original)’s argument is. Matt isn’t saying pay $400 and get a +5 boost to all your rankings. He is simply saying he will comment on some sites and highlight good and bad practices. I write recommendations all the time and if the client doesn’t act on them their rankings go nowhere or perhaps you know something I don’t, maybe Matt has a magic clicker that raises the PR of every site he reviews by 1 O.o

    Right I’m off to register matts-magic-clicker.com

  6. Hi Matt,

    I’ll be at Google I/O. How do we submit a site/question for consideration via email? Just send it to you?

  7. re. Dave(Original)’s comment – Im not seeing your correlation between google’s ownership of the tube, and its high serps- it always had great serps in the past, the only thing thats changed is that its now no longer competing with the defunct google video..

  8. Hey Matt, sorry for asking this here but you don’t have a “Contact Me” page. I have a few domain names that I’d like to hand over to Google. The biggest being GoogleMLab.com (and some similar ones). I’m not trying to make money from it, it just didn’t feel right. If you think Google would be interested in obtaining these at no charge, can you point me in the right direction?

    Geiger OUT

  9. I’ll be heading to SMX Advanced and I’m looking forward to meeting you as well as some of the other prominent names in the search industry.

  10. Thanks for the heads up Matt, I won’t be able to attend this one, but I’m looking forward to getting out there soon!

    -Swansonager

  11. The site review sounds great! The link says “We’ll take site submissions via e-mail and before the session starts” … but where should we email submissions?

    I’d love to have someone review Redfin. (We were accepted for review at O’Reilly Found, but unfortunately that conference was “postponed” indefinitely.)

  12. Hi Matt; just wanted to ask you does google have yet more problems with search engine ranking because some really old sites have lately lost their ranking (penalized, all of the sudden for no apparent reason)?

  13. Is this event something that you pre-register for, or can you just show up?

  14. Damn it! I never see this kind of events in my country. We need more online events for people outside the USA.

  15. Hello Matt,

    I wish I was in “San Francisco” in order to attend this conference.

    In the site review by experts section, this is written:

    “We’ll take site submissions via e-mail and before the session starts”

    Are you doing a site review for people all around the world? 🙂

    Or this option is only for the people who will pay $400 or $50? 🙂

    Actually, I am willing to pay $400 or even more, in order to get a full review from you about my website. That way, I can correct the remaining problems in my sites and I may get answers to few of my questions.

    So, how about making this site review thing a global service by Matt Cutts which will cost $400 or more to get advice/review about our sites?

    Thank You
    Regards

  16. MOGMartin: there is no correlation, other than on Planet Dave (Useless). Don’t even try to look for one, because it doesn’t exist.

    Whenever something happens that Dave (Useless) doesn’t like, he’ll complain, pick fights, agitate, incite, insult, and do or say just about anything to get whatever ridiculous point he’s trying to make across under the euphemism of “not sugar-coating explanations”. Ignoring him doesn’t help, either…he’ll just keep rambling away without realizing that he’s only making his argument weaker and even more asinine with each passing rant, even when he’s proven wrong.

    Matt is doing what would normally be the right thing under the circumstances…trying to ignore Dave and hope he’ll go away. Unfortunately, Dave’s ego won’t allow him to realize that the reason he’s being ignored is that he doesn’t have any idea what he’s talking about.

    So if you’re smart, you’ll either do one of two things:

    1) Ignore him yourself. I don’t find this works very well.
    2) Try to distract him and get him to say something stupid and make himself go even more off-course than he already is.

    I’m going with option 2) because it’s the only way to get some value out of Dave (Useless). Inevitably, he will say something insane and ridiculous in response to this. He can’t help himself.

  17. DRATS! IO is sold out. I just moved to the west coast, and would have loved to go.

    Any spare passes available for a recovering black-hat? I’ll slow pitch you a site you can destroy in your site review…

  18. Matt isn’t saying pay $400 and get a +5 boost to all your rankings

    I didn’t say that either, so all those fanciful words only exist in your mind.

    Im not seeing your correlation between google’s ownership of the tube, and its high serps- it always had great serps in the past

    Yes, ever since Google took ownership. Prior to that, searchers would rarely see YouTube videos UNLESS one clicked the “Video” search. Now-a-days, relevant content pages are being shunted down by YouTube videos that are FAR from relevant and/or dead.

    MOGMartin: there is no correlation, other than on Planet Dave (Useless). Don’t even try to look for one, because it doesn’t exist.

    Whenever something happens that Dave (Useless) doesn’t like, he’ll complain, pick fights, agitate, incite, insult, and do or say just about anything to get whatever ridiculous point he’s trying to make across under the euphemism of “not sugar-coating explanations”. Ignoring him doesn’t help, either…he’ll just keep rambling away without realizing that he’s only making his argument weaker and even more asinine with each passing rant, even when he’s proven wrong.

    Matt is doing what would normally be the right thing under the circumstances…trying to ignore Dave and hope he’ll go away. Unfortunately, Dave’s ego won’t allow him to realize that the reason he’s being ignored is that he doesn’t have any idea what he’s talking about.

    So if you’re smart, you’ll either do one of two things:

    1) Ignore him yourself. I don’t find this works very well.
    2) Try to distract him and get him to say something stupid and make himself go even more off-course than he already is.

    I’m going with option 2) because it’s the only way to get some value out of Dave (Useless). Inevitably, he will say something insane and ridiculous in response to this. He can’t help himself.

    You will that have to excuse the fact that I haven’t bothered to read past the 1st paragraph. I feel sure it’s your normal dribble, is it not?

    There’s only one thing worse than a hypocritical fool and that’s a “hypocritical fool” that is ignorant to the fact they are one. And, speaking of egos, I take all those cheap shots and name calling have fed yours yet again.

    RE: “He can’t help himself.” FUNNY you should say that when you stated long ago, many times, you were going to ignore me. Have a problem with SELF control, do we?

  19. Thanks, Dave (Useless). You’ve now demonstrated that you can be played like a fiddle and that you’re far too stupid to realize it…even when I not only blatantly stated that I was going to do it, but that you were going to react with something stupid. The only thing I didn’t predict is just how stupid what you were going to say was. You just amused me to no end.

    But because I know you won’t realize why you’re wrong (YET AGAIN), I’ll be a nice guy and point it out to you.

    Matt isn’t saying pay $400 and get a +5 boost to all your rankings

    I didn’t say that either, so all those fanciful words only exist in your mind.

    Actually, in a manner of speaking…you did.

    So paying $400.00 and getting a Matt Cutts personal site review means you get at least an edge over your competitors in the Google *organic* SERPs?

    It may not be a “+5 ranking” (which was a loose translation of what you said), but some edge is implied. He’s not the only one who read your insane comment that way. It also implies that you (along with some other people) misinterpreted the point, since the $400 was to attend all the sessions with the Matt Cutts review being a bonus. It was pretty straightforward, yet Johnny can’t read again.

    You will that have to excuse the fact that I haven’t bothered to read past the 1st paragraph. I feel sure it’s your normal dribble, is it not?

    RE: “He can’t help himself.” FUNNY you should say that…

    That comment occurred after the first paragraph. Obviously you read past it….and conveniently ignored the middle part.

    Now, feel free to say something even more ridiculous in response. The smartest thing you could say in response is nothing at all, so naturally no one expects that of you.

  20. There’s only one thing worse than a hypocritical fool and that’s a “hypocritical fool” that is ignorant to the fact they are one. And, speaking of egos, I take all those cheap shots and name calling have fed yours yet again.

  21. It’s the point that keeps on making itself.

    Dave, I’m yanking your chain. I’m not taking you in the least bit seriously, because doing so would be a complete waste of energy.
    I openly said that I was going to yank your chain before I did it and why I was going to do it.
    I’m telling you that I’m doing it right now. I’m toying with you. That’s all I’m doing.

    Again, if you had half a clue, you’d realize how to deal with this (i.e. to stop)…but you aren’t, so I’ll just keep toying with you. Keep up the act, and I’ll keep up the puppetmaster routine.

  22. There is only one thing worse than a hypocritical fool and that’s a “hypocritical fool” that is ignorant to the fact they are one. And, speaking of egos, I take all those cheap shots and name calling have fed yours yet again.

  23. Matt,

    I wish I could make it out to the west coast. I could use some advice about my sites and in paticular 301 redirects and APACHE rewrites(seems like they always cause errors in webmaster tools). I use html on mnay of my sites and it is a bear to manage but migrating an existing site into a CMS is kind of a bigger bear and a bit scary(renaming URl’s, 301’s, Loss of PR etc..).

    On A side note wanted to know about excessive site cross linking and why there does not seem to be a penalty for it. It seems Black hat to me but I have heard of something called “The Spoke And Wheel Model” Which use Authority from site A (the wheel) to add credibility to site B Site C etc…(The spokes) Which host similar but not identical content. Is this an acceptable practice?

    I also wondered if their where any Google conferences for people on the East coast as I feel $400 is well worth while but $2000 for the trip and lodging is a bit pricey. Thanks for any help you can offer. Do you think a video could be created and posted of what you guys do out there for the rest of us?

  24. I would love to come to this Google conference, I would like to know though, living in the UK are the any upcoming any Google conferences over here?

    Edinburugh – UK
    Liverpool – UK
    Manchester – UK
    Liverpool – UK

    Also, just wanted to ask, can you pass on any good development resources, other than webmaster tools? It’s great dont get me wrong, I would just liek to know if you can provide anything else here.

    Regards

    Keith Griffiths.

  25. Hi,

    I think I’m too far from there 🙁
    Surely, one day, I’ll be getting there, and will be meeting you 🙂
    But, now, I’m busy with ma university exams !!

  26. Bumming that I no longer live in the Bay Area… at least, not in that bay area…

  27. Well, $400 turned out to be quite a bargain for a couple days of good food, beer, information, and an unlocked HTC Dream running Android! I can’t believe they blue-balled us with that Lego presentation Thursday morning. I think everyone in the building thought we were going to walk away with our own Lego NXT systems to play with!

  28. How did the conferences go?
    I’ve always wanted to go to a Google conference but I do not live in the bay area and $50 for me (I am a student) is a little expensive considering I’m already low on money. I guess I will just have to wait in line to get to one when they do a mini-conference at my university. :-

  29. If I could have afforded the air fare from the UK , I would have loved to have been there!!

  30. I agree I wish i could have gone to the conference. The conference is a one of a kind. There will be a lot learned at this conference. Great this is up and running. Hope it continues throughout the years.

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