August 14, 2006 | Monday

SES fringe (event) benefits

By Jackie Danicki - Blogger in Events |Search Engines |Yahoo |Search Research

Last week, in Palo Alto, I attended the STIRR 1.5 Mixer. This event is a launchpad for new start-ups as well as a great party heavily attended by Silicon Valley superstars (yes, Mike Arrington was there), and often covered in the US national press for its significance. With SES taking place during the same week, the 1.5 mixer was STIRR’s largest ever, with a waiting list a mile long (thanks to Waxxi CEO Tracy Sheridan for getting me in!).

I met many interesting people at STIRR, but spent the most time talking to my (relatively old) buddy Ian Kennedy, who works in corporate development for Yahoo. He had just spent the day doing user testing, pulling people off the street at Yahoo’s Sunnyvale HQ and observing their behaviour from the other side of a two-way mirror. Later on, over dinner, Ian told me that when they had set the testers loose and let them do whatever they wanted with their internet connection, one of the guinea pigs went immediately to Yahoo Answers and started checking out various Q&As. “So you like Yahoo Answers?” one of the testing administrators asked him casually. “I LOVE Yahoo Answers!” the tester replied. He then turned to the two-way mirror, gave two thumbs up, and cried to the observers he knew must be on the other side, “THANK YOU for Yahoo Answers! I love it!” (I forgot to ask Ian, but I don’t think that this guy was called Stephen Hawking.)

On another note, Ian links, via the del.icio.us feed displayed on his blog, to this tool that approximates how much traffic a website will get via Google, Yahoo, and MSN for various search terms and rankings. Dan Zarrella has a pretty chart to accompany the findings. This particular method combines the controversially published (and yanked) AOL user search data, Hitwise search engine market share data, and Overture’s search tool to reach its conclusions. Definitely one for the SEO geeks out there (and inside Latitude) to test…