A Little History On SES

Search Engine Strategies is now going into its seventh year, with SES San Jose being the 23rd show that I've chaired. Overall, we've had over 30 shows to date, since I'm not the chair of all of them. I thought you might be interested in a little background on how it all got started.

Way back in 1999, Jupitermedia senior vice president and general manager Chris Elwell asked me if I thought there would be any interest in a conference about search engine marketing. Yeah! I thought there would be great interest. Moreover, I was excited about the chance to have an entire show just dedicated to search marketing.

Until SES, there really wasn't anything major devoted to search marketing that I was aware of. I'd spoken on search marketing many times, such as at the Thunder Lizard shows on web design (still happening) and web marketing (no longer). I'd done plenty of turns at Internet World, when that conference was still going. But at these places -- and elsewhere -- search was sideshow. You could barely scrape the surface of issues there were to explore.

An entire show about search marketing? I couldn't wait. And on November 18, 1999, I went nuts with an insane schedule. The first SES show started at 8am, ended at 6pm and breaks? Who needed them? I gave people 10 or 20 minutes here and there.

It was exciting the day before, when people started to arrive. Search forums were just starting to take off, and lots of people still only knew each other through one-way mailing lists or email discussion lists like the former I-Search group. No one had really met in person. People kind of cocked their heads to a side, eyed you up and said, "Are you...," then had lots of big smiles and handshakes as they met for the first time.

More important, the physical contact and greeting for many was a revelation. You weren't alone in doing search marketing. There were others dealing with the same issues, and you could talk about things and commiserate face to face.

I was most nervous about the two sessions at the end of the day, Dealing With Directories and Meet The Search Engines. Fair to say, some see adversarial relations between search marketers and search engines from time to time and on different issues. But until this show, you pretty much never saw the two sides really meet face to face. What would happen?

I joked to the search reps that if worse came to worse, I'd jump across and shield them physically from any attacks out of the audience. I especially worried about how Yahoo would be received.

Remember, the Google obsession many marketers have today was totally on Yahoo back then. Yahoo was a huge traffic source (and still remains so today). Yahoo was also driven off its human-powered directory results, and your ranking depending on whether your key terms were among the 25 or so that a directory editor approved. Many had had serious issues with Yahoo, such as covered in my special report in 1997. An express submission service opened in early 1999 helped, but there were still issues.

Yahoo actually declined to participate when I went through official channels. But I had a personal contact, Andy Gems, a Yahoo surfer who listed one of my own sites. Andy said he'd come out (thank you, Andy).

The presentations happened, including Andy's. Time for Q&A. The first person started out, "I have something I want to say to all the search engines that have come out for this panel today...." Oh, no. Here it comes! "Thank you. It means a lot to have you talking with us."

I probably don't have the quote exactly right, but the sentiment is spot on. Thanks for having a conversation. It was a great thing to hear, especially when the entire audience broke into applause to support the statement.

Since then, SES has grown. There's a lot more break time! Our session attendance in San Jose of 325, which Jupiter thought was amazing, grew to 1,800 at our last New York show. That amazes me. Add a two or three thousand more when you count those who only attend the expo, and the crowds provide one of the biggest indicators of how important search has become.

Single tracks have given way to over 60 different sessions spread across multiple tracks in our next show, as search has diversified. Search engine founders no longer rollerskate on stage as Google's Sergey Brin did at our first show. I guess we've grown up a bit over time. But the conversations still happen, formally in sessions and informally in hallways and in the expo. That's the best thing of all.

Want some more background? Barry Schwartz talked with me back in 2003 about the show and has some history here. Chris Sherman did a write-up of the first show here, back before he was part of Search Engine Watch and chairing shows himself. The first agenda is here, and the first press release here.