So I went to the Webmaster World Conference Las Vegas. It was fun...this is kinda a personal post. On SEO Forums...
There are many problems with SEO forums, many SEO forums are decaying, and some people feel like they were burned by the commercialization and policies Webmaster World have adopted over time. As the largest webmaster forum Webmaster World often is stressed harder than many of the other forums.

Webmaster World Search Conference VS other Conferences
Webmaster World's conference was much larger than SEO Roadshow, but the conference still seemed to have a fairly strong sense of community (much stronger than that of Search Engine Strategies) I think SEO Roadshow had about 100 people, WMW had about 800 people, and SES was like 2,000 people.

Webmaster World Search Conference Highlights
Webmaster World's conference had many no B/S type speakers who spoke in a "results oriented" (thanks RC) manner. Yahoo! stated that they fixed their redirects problem, but it can take about a month to propigate throughout the web. During Google's lucheon they stated that they were eventually going to work on giving advertisers better control of spending through their various ad networks.

Seeing People
Many times I type keys thinking I am just typing keys...with actions that almost seem automated, but the web server logs are showing the traffic patterns of people. Some people I did not know came up to me and said "your SEO Book," which I found both really cool and somewhat weird...as it is not something I am used to.

On the web I am not too shy, but in person I am. I rarely leave the house and sometimes even have a bit of social anxiety in crowded areas. Despite that I spoke with a ton of people and had a ton of fun though.

People I Spoke With...
I talked to a ton of people, drank a bunch, and have a somewhat sketchy memory sometimes, but thanks to the following people who I got to say hi to:

• Jon Glick

• Jeremy Z
• Elisabeth Osmeloski
• Patrick Gavin
• Daniel Kovach
• Matt Cutts
• John Lessnau
• Greg Boser
• Todd Malicoat
• Justin Kistner
• Kevin Lee
• Thor (although I forgot your site)
• Derik Chew
• Eric Edelstein
• Christine Churchill
• and all the cool people at Beyond Ink

and thanks to Brett Tabke for putting on the conference. Looks like the next one will be in New Orleans and then back in Las Vegas after that.

MSN Launched their new search engine

More info about the new MSN Search beta:
John Battelle
Chris Sherman

Google tries to steal their sunshine by announcing a new 8 billion page database...

There aren't many details behind the story or how exactly the debut will be different to the currently available MSN technology preview. Danny states limited details are available and gives a brief history of MSN search.

Google is using predictive modeling to try to help serve up more of your ads.

New AdWords Status Ratings
In the past Google stated ads were strong, moderate, or at risk. The new ratings are normal, in trial, or on hold.

How the New AdWords System Works
If Google has enough keyword data from prior ads on your keywords and it indicates that your ad should perform well Google will start your ads off in normal distribution. If they have inadequate data on your keyword then they will give the predicted CTR a small boost to help start you off in normal.

If past ads for the same keywords show that the ad is not likely to perform well then the ad will start off "on trial." Your account can only have a limited number of on trial keywords in it at any given time. They'll continue showing the "on trial" ads until they are statistically confident their CTR is below or above 0.5%.

If you have more than the max alotment of words which are expected not to perform well then the additional ads will go into the "on hold" category. The on hold ads will be tested based in the order of expected clickthrough rate.

More info on the Google AdWords Changes

• Keyword Evaluation Flow

• Three Keyword Evaluation Examples
• Improved AdWords Minimum CTR and Performance Monitoring
• Additionally at SEW Forums AussieWebmaster stated that Google is running a beta of an API for tracking companies.

SMA UK
Releases membership rates.

Go Big or Stay Home
Less than a month old, the Uncover the Net directory just joined the World Wide Web Consortium, already has over 100,000 pages in Google's index, and is running a free site submission program this month... click here for details of the promotion.

Google
Stock 30 points off its peak. Perhaps the market did not like the new (finally published) AdWords Content policy.

She Comes and Goes...
RCJordan starts a thread about how SEO Forums build up and die off...lots of great comments there too.

Talk to me:
Speegle

Sterling Blog Comment Spam
Having a blog is a good way to track what markets are exceptionally competitive or which ones people think are worth a ton of money. I have been getting a bunch of forced sex spam recently...apparently some people are into that, and it is perhaps a hard market to penetrate.

Today I just got a comment from Sara B Sterling, pointing at http://www.sarahsterling.com/

Notice the Sterling anchor text...bet that becomes a silver website.

Canadian Dollar:
At 12 year high against the US dollar. After the election some Canadians are looking to use the additional funds to rescue people from the states, while others just want to buy the blue states outright.