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Jeremy Zawodny Interview
Who is Jeremy Zawodny?
To me Jeremy Zawodny used to be that other guy from that other search engine with a blog that I would checkout sometime later. I am sure those who are more involved in search engine marketing know more about him than I, so why would I want to learn more about Jeremy Zawodny? Simple, Yahoo has become interesting again and you can thank people like Jeremy for making it so. I believe every search engine needs a Jeremy or Matt Cutts, it makes them more human, more accessible. Here is my interview with Jeremy Zawodny.
Hello Mr. Zawodny, let’s start this interview off by bringing you down to a user’s level. I read the interesting post in your blog titled “Walking a Mile in a User’s Shoes”. Explain to us what this workshop was about and what you learned from it? Do you go to workshops like this often?
Unfortunately, I can’t talk a lot about the workshop in detail. But in general I can say that it was a workshop that focused on a specific segment of search and web users. We thought a lot about what they need from the web, how they access information, and even had the chance to interview a few of them.
I don’t go to workshops like this often, but they’re incredibly valuable. You can learn *a lot* by simply having two days away from the day to day chaos of the office to focus on research and really getting into the mindset of some users.
Those of us who live in Silicon Valley and work in the tech industry really have to force ourselves to remember that much of the world is not like us. They think about search very differently and have different on-line behaviors. Understanding more about that helps us make better products and services.
You also did another post titled “A Toolbar For Jonathan Schwartz”; is there a message in that post for your friends at Yahoo?
Heh. Not really. Well, maybe. If there is, the message is this: next time you’re at a conference where someone mis-speaks about our products, correct them! :-)
Webmasters have been obsessed with getting good results in Google for so long that they sometimes forgot about Yahoo and MSN. Now that many of our websites have dropped off the map in Google we are paying more attention to Yahoo and MSN again. Do you know if Yahoo is seeing more traffic since Google’s “Jagger” updates?
Actually, our traffic has been growing at a healthy clip for years. But it’s pretty difficult to attribute it to updates from any of our competitors because we’re not sitting still. In fact, we just pushed a new index a few nights ago and the feedback I’ve seen mostly positive.
It was pleasant to learn that you are very much like the rest of us who have blogs. At some point we all say “Heck, I want to earn some money” which is the American way and we look to find ways to make a few bucks from our blogs. Is this what happened with you or are you sending a stealthy message to your friends at that other search engine?
Well, I’ve been running AdSense for quite a while now. I was more curious about how it worked, if it’d work well for my site, and what sort of ads would appear. I didn’t expect to make much money.
That’s really been the case with all the advertising forms that I’ve experimented with. I’ve had fun trying them out, learning what makes ‘em work (and not work), and the relative payouts from each one.
You’ve probably seen some of the posts where I’ve analyzed my traffic and revenue sources, trying to figure out where the money comes from and why. That’s what really gets me interested. I like to figure out what makes things work.
Now if someone can build a system that gives me more free time for every click, I’ll optimize the heck out of my site! :-)
You wrote a book titled “High Performance MySQL”. Tell us about your book.
Indeed!
High Performance MySQL was the book I wish I had been given back in 2000 when I started experimenting with MySQL as part of Yahoo! Finance. At that time, every MySQL book on the market assumed you knew little to nothing about MySQL and took you through the basics. But they all stopped well short of dealing with the real issues you face when deploying it on a large scale in a demand environment (such as Yahoo!). Since the book didn’t exist, I foolishly decided to write it.
Writing the book took longer than I expected. My original target was to write it in roughly one year. But reality was a bit different. It took two years, lots of poking from my editor (Hi, Andy!), and help from the co-author I recruited very late in the process (Hi, Derek!).
I think you need a SEO archives category on your blog, what do you think? Are you aware that we are not all telemarketer’s and email spammers? Heck, I make rain barrels out of recycled plastic containers and am trying to get a few hobby sites positioned in the serps.
What I really need to do is install a tagging plugin for Movable Type so that I have a more flexibly archive system.
A little over a year ago I attended my first search engine industry conference. Since then I’ve been to numerous SES and WebmasterWorld gatherings. As par of that experience, I’ve met a lot of SEM and SEO folks and quickly came to realize that the folks who give SEM and SEO a bad name in the eyes of bloggers and Internet “old timers” really are the minority.
Greg Boser admits to feeling a little bad about bringing the “paid link” thing up and respects you as a person. Do have any hard feelings about him waving the flag? What are your current thoughts on the “paid link” thing that seems to be driving people nuts.
Nah, I’m cool with Greg doing that. I really wondered how long it was going to take someone to notice and say something about it. I really expected to get a “Dude, WTF?!” email message from Matt Cutts within a few days of starting my sponsored links experiment. In reality it took nearly two weeks for anyone to bring it up. That honor goes to Greg.
I’m not sure what to think about the whole “paid link” thing at this point. That’s kind of why I decided to try it in the first place.
The more I read and think about it, the more I realize how little most people understand the subtle influences that search and on-line advertising have had (and continue to have) on the Web. But that’s a pretty far reaching discussion.
Anyway…
Each time I went to a search industry conference, I noticed that there were always a few vendors with booths advertising their text link services. To say I was pretty skeptical of them was an understatement. But I got curious and chatted with one of them. After a bit more email discussion and follow-up, they said “why not try it out?” And I figured it was the only way to prove whether or not my skepticism was warranted.
But the results aren’t all in yet. Some advertisers have jumped ship. At least one has said “we’re with you!” And one has asked for a nofollow attribute on his link. (I’ll be adding that tonight, I hope–gotta tweak some code.) At this point, I’m not even sure what “success” would look like.
Just as with Greg I would love to ask you questions until you start to get dizzy or defensive but I will not in hopes that you will stop by again for a chat. Thanks for giving seobuzzbox.com a little juice.
No problem. Thanks for being part of the discussion and giving me a chance to ramble a bit on your site too.
Jeremy
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December 19th, 2005 at 11:11 am
Good stuff as always from JZ. I’m always amazed at how versatile the he is with innovative ideas for Yahoo plus one of the top techno blogs.
I think the ad links have been viewed in wrong light - they were an experiment more than anything else, and launched a great debate about the paid link issue.
December 19th, 2005 at 9:17 pm
I think you’re right about everyone needing a Jeremy or Matt; they really bring a lot to the table in my opinion. We could do with some more too, similar minded people but with expertise in slightly different areas of those respective companies.
Al.
December 20th, 2005 at 4:19 pm
Great interview. Very well done.