More recently, Sullivan created the “Search Engine Land” website, which continues his work looking at all search related issues. He has also now helped to create a series of search conferences - Search Marketing Expo.

How did you come to be involved in the area of search?

Back in 1995 I was involved in web development and had one client that was not ranking well for a term on the search engines. At the time, there was no Google and there were no tips online for people to look at and learn from. I investigated what factors influenced search engine rankings then published my findings online. I got plenty of attention and people kept going back to those pages again and again. I changed and updated the pages as the search engines changed and updated their algorithms, and that’s how Search Engine Watch was born – through watching search engines and updating information on them. 

Since December 2006 I have been working on Search Engine Land which has quickly become the primary point of information on and about search engines and related activities.

Early on, the founders of Google were referring to you as an expert and your authority and acclaim seems to have grown since. Do you expect to stay involved in search?

Search is still interesting and exciting for me and so I’ll be staying involved. It is always a challenge but there needs to be a distinction drawn between what is search related and things that search engines do. While some things that search engines have become involved in is exciting, it isn’t search-related. I am always keeping up to date by talking to people at search conferences and at the search engines themselves.

Recently on Sphinn there was a suggestion you could and should build a better search engine. Were you ever tempted to do so?

No, I was never tempted. It would be a huge challenge – just ask Microsoft who are still struggling to build a better search engine.  To actually work on a search engine would be fun though. I am always on the outside looking in. It would be great to be involved in actually creating a part of the search engine – to be able to make a real difference.

How do you see the new social landscape, with people increasingly asking trusted sources and not search engines for site suggestions, changing search?

I really don’t see this happening. The best example of a social search engine is probably Maholo and it is not threatening the existing engines. Not even Wikipedia has all the answers and so I think a search engine can present different options to answer a question.

If Google did not exist or was down for a week, which search engine would you turn to first and why?

Yahoo – it is the most mature and longest established crawler and has excellent search results.

Could you tell us a little more about how the idea for conferences on search marketing came about and how they evolved into the highly targeted ones they are today, such as SMX travel?

In 1999 the president of the company I was with suggested the idea of a conference for people involved in search. Up until then search was only ever a single talk in a back room at an internet conference. They started as a single track on a single day and evolved in to three or four tracks over three or four days. As the industry has grown and matured, so too have the tracks expanded and grown. Certain tracks are now so important and have so many people interested in them that a whole conference could be dedicated to them such as Social Media, Travel and Mobile. Mobile search, while not a topic in 1999 now is so important it has its own conference.

In addition to search marketers, traditional marketers understand the need for knowledge and expertise within search. Conferences which focus directly on search marketing appeal to a broad range of people from both technical and non-technical disciplines.

At what level have you pitched SMX London and will the locals like SMX Social be coming to our shores anytime soon?

SMX London is going to be pitched at the “beginner to intermediate” level with only a small number of advanced sessions. There is a dedicated advanced conference called “SMX Advanced” which we do ask beginners not attend as no basics are covered. SMX London will have both basic and intermediate level streams.

It is hard to do a more advanced conference more than once a year, therefore it is unlikely that SMX Advanced will be coming to the UK. There is a possibility that SMX Social may come over; however. at the moment the more focused conferences are restricted to once a year in the US. As the shows grow, the more focused ones will be added to the UK schedule.

One of the ways SMX London is different is that it will have search marketing spoken about from a European perspective. That is quite different from what you get in the US conferences where languages, cultural references and multi-country targeting are not an issue. SMX London will be much more relevant to those marketing to a European audience as well as globally.

At SMX London we will be holding an official networking event on the Thursday evening to help encourage people to network. On the Friday night a large event will be held by the London SEO crowd in a nearby pub. Networking and meeting people are always important parts of any conference.

You restricted blogging at a session of SMX Advanced about insider tips and tricks.  How do you feel blogging is impacting conference attendance?

The blogging restriction was actually originally done as a joke. At SMX events, live blogging is available at every session and in fact there are well known people who do live blog every session. Part of the idea behind restricting blogging was to have a bit of fun and part was to develop an amount of hype around the event.

I think that blogging at the conference is helpful and does not detract from the attendance at all. A live blog is not the same as being at the conference itself. Often when someone has attended a session and then read the blog of it, they find that they took away different things and so what the blog gave was different from what they got.