I certainly didn’t need another reason to love the city or the state of Arizona… But wow. Free WiFi at Sky Harbor? I can has a love affair with this city. hard.

To make things even more entertaining, there’s this little bird hanging out trying to drink my diet coke. Check ‘em out!

Also, check out this random find on the passenger paging / monitor screens. Coincidence, or were Jimmie Johnson and Casey Mears in town?

Best. Week. Ever.

Aside from missing my wife and little man, the whole time was incredible. From the people I’d been waiting to meet to the people I didn’t know were out there… wow. Amazingly good times.

Fittingly, the week ends with me pulling an all nighter, blogging. Many good times, but there’s no value in blogging them. You were either there, or not. Much love to my new and old friends.

Just wrapped up my panel at SMXWest on Local Search and Blended results. It’s bittersweet. I know I could’ve done better, and provided some more meat to general search marketers — but I was nervous to say the least. Hopefully that didn’t translate through though.

Tip of the hat to Barry Schwartz who, in typical SER fashion — is live blogging like no one else. He’s got a recap of my panel available already online.

To condense his notes:

…Eric Lander, Associate Editor, Search Engine Journal is next up.

He shows a Google OneBox example for Santa Clara Sushi. He then shows how local results are blended into a search result, the Google Local plus/minus box. Yahoo is a bit more traditional, Yahoo one ups Google by showing a rating by users there. Live Search is very traditional but was a bit more disappointed.

Verified Listings:
- Manually verified feed via Google Local, Yahoo Local and Windows Live.
- Feed Based Solution to submit for businesses with many locations, such as ReachLocal, Localez and infoUSA.com.

Who are Trusted Sources?
- Internet Yellow Pages: SuperPages, YellowPages, YellowBook
- FeedProviders: InfoUSA, Localeze
- Social, Review & Niche Sites: Yelp, CitySearch, Automotive.com, etc.

Tips:
- Cross link your contact pages to MapQuest or other mapping service
- Verify your unverified listings, multiple data sources can lead to troubles
- Free Tools: Localeze’s merchant profile manager lets you update your business profiles for free
- Search categories and users: Local search is very much social, user reviews, etc.

If you know my, you know that tomorrow I will be speaking at SMX West in Santa Clara. It’s my first speaking/presenting gig in years. In other words, if I flop, it’s cool — I don’t need to know. I’ve recently read that “your opinion of me is none of my business.” I’ll stick to that unless I do really well.

And if that’s what happens — plan on my speaking again.

So, the panel is scheduled to begin at 3:15PM and conclude at 4:30PM in Room A2. I’m still waiting to hear back from the gals at WebmasterRadio.fm about a possible interview, but if that does get arranged — I’ll be posting the link, no doubt.

Details on my Presentation
Sharing the stage with Chris Smith (Lead Search Strategist, NetConcepts) and Gab Goldenberg (Owner, SEO ROI) is cool enough. Add in the fact that Vanessa Fox* and Matt McGee* are moderating my panel — and forget it. I’m already stoked.

My actual presentation is nothing if not simple. I learned from Matt at SMX Social that many times, less is more — especially when presenting. With that in mind, my panel begins by taking attendess through screenshot examples of local, blended results on Google Yahoo and LiveSearch. Next is a discussion of verified local listings and working with trusted feeds (or, trusted sources). And finally — I wrap things up with a few tips aimed to help business owners get the most out of local search.

My fear is that the panel won’t provide anything earth-shattering for people. Hopefully the few tips I have time to explain will motivate others to be more proactive with local listings — but I’d be lying if I told you that it didn’t concern me.

I did get positive feedback though from both Matt and Vanessa — so there’s some comfort there.

* - Notes about Matt & Vanessa
I’m really pleased to be working on a panel that they’re both moderating. Having looked up to both of them for so long, I was blown away by them at SMX Social. After day one of that event, we all hiked to some NYC bar and had a couple of drink passes as part of the conference. I got to spend some time talking with Vanessa and Danny — and I immediately realized why these are the people that lead industry disucssions. Aside from being incredibly insightful, they’re nothing if not grounded. In our world, they’re superstars. In a random bar in NYC, they’re just like every other dedicated SEM’mer out there who’s simply engaged with what they do.

Matt McGee is simply a genuine guy who doesn’t have a bad bone in his body. Always diplomatic, always well spoken — he simply made sure I had a good time and was comfortable in NYC. He showed me around, let me hang with his circle, etc. Without his help, I never would’ve met wonderful people in the industry who I now look forward to seeing again.

All in all, SMX Social was a wonderful time. And that’s why I’m stoked to see my new friends again and really just enjoy it all over again.

As mentioned in the last post, I grew up with a travel agent mom. We traveled all over — though, always when wither cheap or convenient. If there’s any place I know well, it’d have to be Florida and Arizona. Until today though, I had never visited Vegas or California.

While I won’t be spending more than an hour *in* Vegas, it’s still one place I can say that I’ve traveled through. With California, I had always assumed that I would just end up visiting LA or San Diego someday.

I never thought I’d be visiting Silicon Valley in my first visit — but I’m glad it’s playing out that way.