Let me share some thoughts from WMW Pub Con 10 Vegas, a very large search conference that I attended last week.

The antendees were welcomed with exciting news. The annoucement for the launch of Google Analytics. This put the analytics software company representatives in the exhibit hall shaking in their boots.

The stock for Google rose to an all time high during the conference, breaking the $400 mark (there are only 4 other publicly traded stocks in US that exceed $400 per share). This seemed to put the Google folks, including Matt Cutts, in a cheery mood.

Jagger, the last major Google algo update, was on everyone's mind. Who did well, who and who sufferred. Not surprisingly, the white hats seemed to have benefited the most. Lots of spam sites, affiliate sites, and duplicate content was removed from the index.

It's amazing how many black hatters have turned white hat. Google is fighting spam hard and dedicating alot of resources for the detection of paid links. Both manually and via the algorithms.

As Dani pointed out, Google's stance on the the SEO industry has evolved. All the other engines have followed suit. 'Twas a time when a rocky relationship existed between the two industries (the engines and the SEOs). The engines are more committed now than ever to work with the SEOs :-). The SEOs that enable the spiders to index more content. The ones that encourage development of new, quality and fresh content. The ones that help distinguish what is important content and what is not. The ones that develop creative marketing buzz to encourage natural linking.

My rant ends here. Post if you have questions about what went down in Vegas. I'll be watching...

Avi,

I would appreciate any other feedback from WMW Pub Con 10 Vegas.

THanks