What snowy weather we’ve had. I actually got out in it for a bit last night to visit with my cousin. It’s amazing because apparently, snow isn’t a big deal to Chicagoans. They’ll get out in it regardless. With that being said, I’m just glad that everything is here in the Hilton where I am staying. So the SES conference is just a quick, warm trip down the elevator.

I know we have all had our minds on personalized search this year at one point or another. This is what inspired me to attend the session on personalization, user data and search. In this session the panelists talked about how user behavior drives personalization. One of the panelists, Bill Barnes presented a very compelling case study that put things into perspective. This case study consisted of an eye tracking test. This test showed that more searchers looked at personalized results longer and clicked on these results more than that of the regular results.

Another profound thing that was stated in this session from the “Google guy” Aaron D’Souza, was that personalization of search results are very subtle changes and does not dominate all of the results. This just means that even though you might get some personalized results, not all of the results are personalized results. You will still get some of the regular search results mixed in.

Some of the other sessions that I attended over the past couple of days had to do with analytics and understanding conversions. In one session, there was a case study presented showing how conversions increase when you use all media sources together and how they can decrease when cutting a piece or all other media sources. Another great thing that was discussed was external factors to conversions. These included traffic quality, click fraud, behavior of searchers, algorithmic changes and search engine testing.

There were also discussions about putting your analytics data into action. The panelist presented several ways to do this. One big one that stood out was segmentation. You shouldn’t group together all actions that take place on your website and have one conversion, you should divide or segment them out. This helps in determining which group might need more work. The biggest thing I got out of the analytics sessions was that analytics are not about numbers, but are about improving the user experience. It’s not good enough to just look at the numbers on a yearly, monthly, weekly or daily basis without putting the data you have into action. By not doing this, you are at a loss and if you are paying for an analytics tool, you are just throwing your money away.

Another fun event, was tearing down the TMP booth; which was every bit as hard as putting it up. But now that SES 2007 is laid to rest, I have realized how great this conference is. It is always good to see others so passionate about what they do, especially if it’s the same thing as what you do. For that reason alone, I will always jump at the chance to come back.