Rip Van Winkle: Search Engine Strategies NYC 2004 vs. SES New York 2010

After returning from SES New York 2010, my wife asked to clean out the bags of stuff that I’ve piled in the garage from other shows. Over the weekend, I discovered my conference handbook for Search Engine Strategies NYC 2004.

As I glanced through the agenda, I felt like Rip Van Winkle. Has the search industry really changed that much in just six years?

So this week, I plan to take a closer look at the hot topics at Search Engine Strategies NYC 2004 that were irrelevant at SES New York 2010. At the same time, I’ll continue to highlight the new topics that have emerged in the search industry today.

Why write a whole series of posts on then and now?

Well, my wife thinks it is a ploy to avoid cleaning the garage. But, I suspect that there are other Rip Van Winkles out there, who don’t realize yet how much has changed since the last Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo they attended.

They mistakenly assume that search engine optimization is something that you can set and forget for six years. Or, they haven’t updated their pay-per-click advertising skills since Google introduced the Quality Score in August 2005.

But “shift happens.” That’s part of the title of a YouTube video with more than 5 million views, “Did You Know; Shift Happens – Globalization; Information Age.”

I often use a slide from the video in YouTube and Video Marketing workshops at SES conferences. It says the top 10 jobs that will be in demand in 2010 didn’t exist in 2004.

It’s worth noting that YouTube didn’t exist in back 2004.

So, consider this a “wake-up call” for the Rip Van Winkles in your organization.

When was the last time your webmaster or IT department conducted keyword research? If they used Overture’s free keyword suggestion tool six years ago, it doesn’t exist anymore. And many of the search terms that people use today, like “universal search” and “real-time search,” hadn’t been coined back in 2004.

Get it? Got it? Good.

Now, you can participate in this wake-up call, too. You are invited to share your own observations in the comments area below. Or re-tweet this, if that is your preference.

Oh, it’s also worth noting that Twitter didn’t exist back in 2004, either.