Pandia looks at conferences and workshops for people interested in search engine marketing and Internet searching, including webmasters, marketers, internet professionals, librarians and researchers.

Are you looking for the latest on the search engine scene, itching to meet colleagues and competition or do you simply need some inspiration?

One of the best way to get up to date is to participate in search engine conferences and workshops.

Not only do you get the chance to hear and ask the leading search engine experts world wide, you also get access to the latest gossip and rumors. It is amazing to see how much even the search engine representatives are willing to divulge over a beer or two!

If you are able to continue into the night, you will also see people gathering around search engine celebrities and — even — performers of the black arts: search engine spamming and the like.

Webmaster World PubCon for search engine marketing and webmaster related issues

The famous Webmaster World discussion forum has its own search engine marketing conference called the “Pub Conference”.

Originally these gatherings had no fixed agendas, as the idea was to skip the speeches and go right down to the networking.

This is why Pandia started to call them “Pub Conferences”. The name stuck, and we are proud to say that the official name of the conference series is now “WebmasterWorld’s PubCon”!

However, the conferences are now like “proper conferences”, with regular agendas, famous speakers and everything.

If you haven’t been to a search engine conference before, go to PubCon. You will learn a lot!

The next conference is in Las Vegas on November 14 to 17 2006. Go there and meet John Battelle, search engine expert and author of the Search, SEO expert and Pandia guest writer Andy Beal, Matt Cutts of Google and many more . Being Norwegian, we are also glad to announce that Opera’s CEO Jon S. von Tetzchner will be there.

Webmaster World leader Brett Tabke is also bound to be there. Now, there is a man that knows a lot about web sites, search engines and search engine marketing!

SEO Roadshow

Some search engine marketers are obviously missing the old-fashioned “pub conferences” so much that they decided to arrange their own informal gathering at the original Pub Conference waterhole in London.

This new “SEO Roadshow” became so popular that SEO enthusiasts have continued to meet over a beer to discuss the ins and outs of search engine marketing.

The next roadshow takes place in Copenhagen, Denmark, September 23 2006.

Search Engine Strategies

Danny Sullivan is a friendly and modest man, but he has to get used to the fact that he is the most famous search engine expert on the planet.

This is also why he has his own series of search engine conferences, or — rather — the events are hosted by his site Search Engine Watch.

The Search Engine Strategies conferences do, like PubCon, cover all issues related to search engine marketing, including on page search engine optimization techniques, link building, pay per click text ads, search engine friendly copywriting and web design, visitor tracking and web site analysis, searcher behavior, keyword analysis, the effect of blogs and RSS, and much more.

The speakers are search engine marketing experts, search engine industry representatives, and media strategists.

The next regular conferences are:

• July 10-11, 2006 Miami, Florida, USA
• August 7 - 10, 2006 San Jose, California, USA
• September 28, 2006 Denver, Colorado, USA
• October 23 - 24, 2006 Los Angeles, California, USA
• November 28 - 29, 2006 Paris, France
• December 4-7, 2006 Chicago, Illinois, USA
• April 9 - 12, 2007 New York City, USA

There is also a special local search conference in Denver on September 28 and one on multimedia in Los Angeles on October 23 and 24 2006.

AiMA conferences

The Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association does from time to time arrange search engine marketing oriented events.

The conferences are packed with information about the top search engines and their strategies for natural search, pay per click marketing, and more.

The next one on search engine marketing, called “Maximizing Search Engine Marketing Results”, takes place on September 6 2006 at Georgia Tech, Atlanta, USA.

Search Engine Workshops

If you want some more personal follow up than a search engine conference may provide, a search engine workshop may be the thing for you.

At Search Engine Workshops you can study with search engine experts Robin Nobles and John Alexander.

The workshops, which focus on search engine marketing and optimization, are organized in such a way that you can attend with others on your own experience level. The price includes support for six months.

You can choose between a 2-day beginners workshop, a 3-day advanced workshop and a 5-day all-inclusive workshop.

The next workshop is in Disneyworld in Orlando on July 17 to 21 2006. Now, how do you explain that to the kids?

High Rankings Search Engine Marketing Seminars

Jill Whalen pops up on many of the search engine conferences listed on this page, as she is one of the leading experts on the gentle art of combining good copy with search engine optimization.

Her firm has, however, also its own series of search engine marketing courses called the High Rankings Search Engine Marketing Seminars.

On these two days seminars, Jill and her colleague will give away the secrets on how they have been putting their client’s Websites at the top of the search results for years.

Visit the High Rankings site to find out when the next seminar will be scheduled. (There are none at the moment of writing).

Enterprise Search Summit

If you are looking for information on enterprise search, i.e. on internal search capabilities (intranets, web site search engines etc.), you may visit the Enterprise Search Summit.

Expert speakers cover topics such as standardizing interfaces to integrate search functions, tuning search to deliver optimum results, making the most of search logs and analytics, applying Web services solutions to metadata challenges, developing topic maps, and so on.

This year’s event has already taken place.

Websearch University

The Websearch University provides a venue for improving web searching skills. You can learn about new search tools, new resources, new techniques, and new approaches to research on the Web.

The Websearch University faculty consists of well known search experts like Mary Ellen Bates, Tara Calishain of ResearchBuzz, Greg Notess, the editor of Online Marydee Ojala,
Gary Price of ResourceShelf and Ask.com, Chris Sherman and more. These names are definitely signs of quality.

Among the topics covered are:

• Teaching web search skills
• Search engine industry trends
• Advanced search techniques
• Differences among engines
• Evaluating web search results
• Multimedia searching
• Finding books and searching inside them
• searching and information delivery via handheld devices
• RSS
• and much more.

The next two days course is in Washington D.C. on September 18-19 2006.

Internet Librarian

Information Today arranges a series of conferences for librarians and researchers, which are according to them the

“only conference for information professionals who are using, developing, and embracing Internet, Intranet, and Web-based strategies in their roles as information architects and navigators,Webmasters and Web managers, content evaluators and developers, taxonomists, searchers, community builders, information providers, trainers, guides, and more.”

Hence the Internet Librarian conferences go far beyond the world of search engines, but web research skills are included and the other topics are of relevance to people using the Internet for professional information gathering.

There is also an international version of the Internet Librarian Conference which has its own web site.

The next conference is in Monterey, California, USA on October 23-25, 2006. The next international event is in London October 16-17.

Search Engine Meeting

Search Engine Meeting takes a more academic approach to search engine conferences, with calls for papers and so on.

The goal is to “bring together commercial search engine developers, academics and corporate professionals to learn from each other.”

The events are arranged by a British company called infonortics.

Papers and presentations from previous conferences are available at the web site.

The 2007 Meeting will take place in Boston, USA, on April 23-24 next year.

European Conference on Information Retrieval

The European Conference on Information Retrieval or ECIR for short is also an academically oriented conference. The conference encourages the submission of high quality research papers reporting original, previously unpublished results.

Among the topics covered are searching, browsing, meta-searching, data fusion, filtering and indexing, text and content classification, categorization, clustering, topic detection and tracking, novelty detection and much more.

The 2007 conference has yet not been announced.

See also: SEO Book SEO Event and Conference Calendar