Michael Roebuck's Blog

Apparently Conrad Hilton's Board of Directors saw it coming so they started broadening there brands. I say Board of Directors because his descendants are too busy being in the news helping degrade his name.

I'm fed up with Hilton Hotels. Usually when you hear the name "Hilton Hotel" you think quality. Expensive, but quality. Apparently, not any more! (Quality anyway. They are still expensive.)

As you know, I was in San Jose attending the Search Engine Strategies conference and past years have stayed at the Hampton Inn on Old Tully Road. The Hampton Inn was clean, large rooms, well lit, large bathrooms, Free Internet, Free breakfast, Extremely friendly staff (The manager himself drove us to the train station one day and picked us up later that night.)

This year, I figured with the savings in taxi fare and my Hilton Honors free breakfast upgrade, I'd stay at the Hilton next door to the convention center. (Denise.... Never let me do that again!!!! You continue making the reservations!) Well, I did save on taxi fare but apparently they don't do breakfast here in San Jose. Chicago does, but not San Jose. Huh?? I need to be a gold or platinum or some other member but my Hilton Honors wasn't good enough here for access. There goes my savings! At over $15 for breakfast my days are not starting off very good.

The rooms at the Hilton are not the best. I guess most everything. The beds are actually comfortable which is a major factor. I'm not only picking on San Jose here either. The rooms at the Chicago Hilton aren't any better, but also has comfortable beds. Here are a few pictures of the lap of luxury:



No vents in the bathroom. Well, they have a vent, but no fan.


You can't see it very well, but the water is spraying from all areas of the shower. Make sure the shower curtain is closed before turning on the shower! Very old shower heads.


Can you see the puddle of water? Maybe you don't need to worry about the shower curtain. It doesn't do well anyway! I make a point to move the shower curtain to prevent water from leaking everywhere. Sometimes it's just not good enough. That probably explains the nasty tiled floor.


Here is my room. It's hard to see with this picture but the room is very dark. They use these tiny compact fluorescent light bulbs that don't give off much light. I'm typing this in a dark corner of the desk area. And I can't leave the desk because there isn't any wireless Internet access. Since I'm complaining about dark hotel rooms, the only hotel I remember being darker than this room is the Luxor in Las Vegas. Those rooms were very dark.

Anyway, I'm sorry Hampton Inn for not staying with you this trip. However, you were priced a bit high which caused us to shop around. Next year, I may stay away from the Hilton Brand altogether. I wonder if there is a Holiday Inn Express around here?

Labels: express, hampton, hilton, holiday, hotel, inn, jose, san, ses

Congratulations to Yahoo for receiving the 2008 Search Engine Strategies Award for the Search Engine with Most Relevant Search Results.

I knew that Merchant Solutions was the best hosting platform, now we know you have the most relevant search results as well.

Congratulations!!

More info on the: Search Engine Strategies Awards - 2008

Labels: awards, search, ses, yahoo

Today is my first day back after attending Search Engine Strategies in Chicago. It's been a busy day, as usual after being away for several days. The show was a success and I came back with several new tips and tricks to try with Yahoo! Stores in order to increase both Search Engine Placement as well as Conversions. I was accompanied by Karl Ribas and on Tuesday we were graced with the presence of Kelly and Jessica. Kelly is one of our Yahoo! Store RTML designers and Jessica performs SEO and PPC duties.

Other Yahoo Developer friends Rob Snell as well as Dave and Sally Burke were both present and we swapped a few stories. Rob was a speaker at a conversion seminar and we all cheered him on. In fact he reviewed one of my sites during the session and offered some good tips. Rob did state a couple times about how a site increased sales by 20% by including a spokesmodel to endorse and give tips. If you don't have a spokemodel, time to get one! I'm available for anyone needing one.






Above, Rob is talking with Lori Blackwell whose brother sells decks. Very interesting lady, story and web site.

Some of you have already noticed I didn't cover the show every day like I did in August. I apologize for that. This week was busy and I didn't have the time to sit and transcribe notes. A good blog to check out for daily notes is my good friend and co-worker Karl Ribas. He gives a great day by day summary of his show activities.

Due to all the snow we received here on Friday and the inability to come to work, it set me back a few days and I was actually a day late at going to the show. But that didn't stop me from getting some good data. I primarily wanted to meet with various vendors and see what they could offer us. I had discussions with several tracking vendors as well as a few publishing vendors. I feel we are closer to a great tracking solution and I even met with a usability expert and long time friend of mine with the goal of working closely with him to allow me the ability to offer great usability advice for Yahoo! Store clients. Keep watch for that service to appear. If anyone has immediate needs for usability analysis, let me know.

I sat with Yahoo Search and had a great presentation on there new PPC model coming out. Code named, "Panama," this will enable Yahoo to be more like Google in the PPC market. No longer will you bid strictly for position, but various other factors will determine your position. Such as landing page quality, ad popularity and of course money.

Lori Weiman from Keyword Max talked a little about Click Fraud. She was included with Jessie Stricchiola from Alchemist Media and Shuman Ghosemajunder from Google who was pummeled with a direct hit from Jessie about why Google changed click charge policy almost immediately after a lawsuit. As you can see from the below picture, Jessie can barely keep from laughing as Shuman defends Google.

Another big story was WebmasterRadio. They read, "WebmasterRadio.FM investigative journalist Jim Hedger hosts an exclusive WebmasterRadio.FM series on the implications of click fraud on the industry and on national and global security." The story further reads, "Mr. Briggs noted the use of click fraud by criminal and terrorist organizations. Our investigation has found several incidents of this type of activity. We have also found evidence of bot-nets used to facilitate click fraud, primarily against Google advertisers." In short, they claim that terrorists are using Google Adsense Fraud to fund themselves. I highly recommend you listen. The link is: http://www.webmasterradio.fm/breakingstory.php Below are some pictures from an announcement.

Well, that's about it for now. Again, be sure to check out Karl Ribas' blog for daily attributes.

Anyone interested in more pictures from the show, I have uploaded several pictures to my new work Flickr account. I've been using a Flickr account for personal pictures and decided to start using it for work as well. You can view the pictures by clicking this link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mroebuck/

Until Next Time....

Labels: ses