Since Christmas is literally around the corner now I thought I would pose that age old question to all State of Search bloggers. What do you want for Christmas? They get to ask for one real life present and one from the search engines. Some were whacky and some were very sensible so if you are an engineer from one of the engines pretty please can we have a few!
Jeroen van Eck from e-difference
Engines: Devaluation of exact match domains.
Barry Adams from Polemic Digital
Real life: A nice comfy house in New Zealand with a view over the Bay of Islands
Engines: For the Google’s of this world to stop trying to alternately brainwash SEOs in to doing their work for them and driving SEOs out of business, and instead focus their energies on creating a better SERPs with a better user experience (i.e. less advertising, more natural results).
Bas van den Beld
Real life: I would like for Christmas that State of Search will become the industry’s most successful blog :). That would mean all the funding I can get to make the site as good as it can possibly get.
Engines: From the search engines I would love to finally get some integration with other channels. We are already seeing some social elements, but I’d like to be able to search for a topic and find what is written / said/ videotaped about it on every single platform by simple filters.
Carla Marshall from SorbetDigital
Real Life: A racing green 4 oven Aga please. Failing that, the ability to remove dead accounts from Google Analytics. Not the most exciting request when money is no object but it irks me every single time I log in.
Engines: I’d like to go back to non-personalised results in Google please. Today if possible. In fact, right now would be my preference.
Sam Murray
Real life: The first present would be a life long season ticket to Spurs.
Engines: I’d love Google to remove the EMD boost they give to sites.
Lisa Myers from Vervesearch
Real Life: If money was no object I would like a Maldivian Island please with a private jet and its own airfield. Is that excessive? Ha!
Engines: From Google I would like them to take Google Places seriously, and able businesses to do local on a large scale without it taking 100 years with postcards, different addresses and all sorts of hindrance. Places should also only be allowed for brand and business owners, no affiliates! Also for the damn keyword in domain not to be such a big factor.
Marcus Taylor from SEOptimise
Real Life: If money weren’t an option it’d have to be this awesome water jetpack (http://www.firebox.com/product/3579/JetLev-Flyer).. I love that they offer free delivery on that 🙂
Engines: Fixing the Google Places admission process. I’d also like Google to be better at remembering my search settings so that I don’t have to turn off personalised search and set my number of results to 100 per page so often.
Claire Carlile from Clairecarlilemarketing
Real Life: A large country house, with a lake for boating, a river for fishing, and lots of land for huntin’ and shootin’ and dog walking. Oh, and some chickens, horses and some llamas. And sunshine, health and happiness 🙂
Engines: First I’d like to see exact match domains becoming less powerful – despite Matt Cutts talking down EMDs I’m still seeing them popping up above my clients – BOO! I’d like to see more rewards for businesses who work hard to build quality links and social mentions based on the fact that their product and services are excellent – not on the back of buying a thousand spammy links. One can only hope!
Pete Young
Real Life: Bugatti Veyron or a car of a similar speed/stature etc. More realistically I have my Ipad2 on my letter to Santa.
Engines: where do I start. My keyword data back on SSL searches, easier validation for Local search submissions and a year we start seeing SEO’s working with Google rather than against them. Think the first two are perhaps more realistic than the last one. Thats about as realistic as Lisa’s Maldivian Island 🙂
Annabel Hodges from OMDUK
Real Life: Can I go back in time, become a professional dancer in the 80s and appear in all of Janet Jackson’s videos from back then? Done.
Engines: Time travel again. Can we go back in time and make a skeleton key to the secret safe where the algorithm is kept?
Other than that, I think I have to echo others – definitely my keyword data back, definitely actually having some kind of support for Google Places, and definitely definitely getting rid of enforced personal search.
So there are a lot of requests for EMDs and Google to sort places out which are both on my engine list. My other one is link spam which still works far more than it should imo. Hopefully markup elements will help fix that issue in time but that’s a major one for me.
In terms of Christmas present i am pretty easy to please. One of these would do very nicely thanks. 🙂
