The Karcher Group is exhibiting this week at Search Marketing Expo (SMX Advanced) in Seattle.  Many of us in the industry have been anxiously waiting to see how Danny Sullivan’s new show turns out, so we thought we’d give the good folks back in Cleveland a live update.  We anticipate posting more detailed summaries of the sessions once the conference wraps up, but here are some conference “snapshots” if you will…

General observations from Geoff Karcher (TKG President) and Jen Doerschuk (TKG Web Marketing Manager) – 

• Compared to SES, there are very few exhibitors.  Maybe only 30 or so?   We are one of three SEO firms exhibiting, and the only firm who does Web Development in addition to SEO. 
• There also isn’t a huge crowd (maybe 500-600 vs. thousands at SES), but the attendees here are definitely more educated about SEO. The people visitng our booth seem to know what they’re here for and have higher level questions than we typically get at SES.
• The overall tone of the conference has been positive. Attendees are sharing ideas & rubbing elbows with some of the big names in search, which is creating an informative and laid back atmosphere.
• The trend so far is that if you’re an SEM beginner, you’ve come to the wrong conference! The speakers are presenting a pretty high level of expertise and so far the crowd seems to get it.  It’s nice to sit in a conference and hear about the up & coming strategies, platforms, etc. instead of hearing the same SEO approaches from other Search Engine Conferences. So far, the billing of SMX as “advanced” seems for real.
• As you might expect, many of the heavy hitters within the SEO world are speaking – Matt Cutts and Vanessa Fox (Google), Rand Fishkin (SEOmoz), Tim Mayer (Yahoo! Search), Paul Vallez (Ask.com), etc.

Observations from the sessions on Day 1 from Jen:  I’ve already attended 3 sessions today:  “You & A” with Matt Cutts, Head of Google’s Web Spam Team; Paid Search Round-table session with some big names from Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, Microsoft adCenter & Ask.com; and SEO Meets SMM (Social Media Marketing).  Some brief comments –

• Y! Search Marketing admits that 12% – 15% of clicks on the Yahoo! Network are identified & never billed for
• MSN adCenter acknowledges low traffic for advertisers and assures us that they’re working on a solution
• Don’t be afraid of Social Media Marketing (SMM); just be prepared to invest a significant amount of time researching, creating & keeping up on your SMM initiatives

More to come…in the meantime get complete SMX details from Geoff and Jen at http://websense.thekarchergroup.com