View Full Version : Let's Kick off This Forum with Intros
Welcome to forum members from outside the US :)
Why not introduce yourself briefly in this thread, stating what country/region you are from and what your fav regional search engine is?
I'll start - I'm Kalena Jordan. Some of you may know me already, but if not, I'm an SEO based in New Zealand but I'm actually an Aussie :eek:. My fav local search engine is Google.co.nz. Next?
AussieWebmaster
06-02-2004, 12:02 AM
Hi... Though I am based in NYC, we do a lot of advertising globally. So depending on what part of the world you are looking to attract traffic from there are some solid PPC engines available.
ESpotting and Mirago in the UK and other parts of Europe.
Wanadoo also for Europe.
9MSN in Australia.
Sina, Sohu and Bidau in Asia, to name a handful.
NineMSN is going to be an interesting one to watch with LookSmart out of the picture. I think Overture Australia has just done a deal with them?
easycure
06-02-2004, 12:36 PM
Hola a todos,
Based in Barcelona, Spain, but also advertising globally.
As for local search engines...Google.es brings the most traffic by far. For PPC Overture works nicely.
Anthony Parsons
06-02-2004, 12:40 PM
Your spot on Kal. Overture has done a deal here in Australia and picked up where Looksmart left off. Overture has Yahoo, Altavista, NineMSN, F2 Network and more now. With Looksmart out of the picture, its clear sailing to have all your eggs in the one PPC easy to manage campaign basket.
Funny saying all that, though most of my clients are in the US and UK. Be stuffed huh.
AussieWebmaster
06-02-2004, 03:41 PM
Hard to tackle PPC etc in Asutralia for a local company... they need to reach out beyond the small population base to make the real money.
Though optimization would be what I would largely recommend for most Australian only web sites...
Anthony Parsons
06-02-2004, 06:39 PM
Damn straight. Its an uphill battle with some people here because all they here is PPC / CPC.....blah blah blah from the US. Trying to convince them that we are not the US and what is required their, is not necessarily here, well.
I just give up arguing with them, hence why most of my work comes from the UK and US. You get Australians go over to a US SEO, they have no idea what they really need here in Australia, end up with the all singing, all dancing, bells and whistles with cream and sugar on top, then they come asking me questions again. Do I really need this? Do I really need that? This is expensive? How about, Piss Off! Blunt but they don't get confused this way.
I'm bill from Japan.
My favorite local engine at this time is probably Google Japan, but Yahoo Japan only just dropped Google results this past Monday...so I don't have a solid opinion of that one yet...
rustybrick
06-02-2004, 10:35 PM
Welcome Bill! Please let us know your thoughts of Yahoo! Japan when you have more details.
Nacho
06-03-2004, 12:00 AM
Hola! I am Nacho Hernandez and live in La Jolla, California (San Diego), but was born in Mexico City over 30 years ago. I have lived half my life in the U.S. and half in Mexico. I have been targeting the U.S. Hispanic Market for over 5 years and work with clients for Mexico and Latin America as well. Google and Yahoo! (U.S. and its own children engines by country) bring the highes traffic and coversions for my clients and me.
I will be helping Kal moderate this forum. It's nice to meet all of you.
Bienvenidos a todos!
mcanerin
06-03-2004, 01:02 AM
ooooh - a section after my own heart :) I'm Ian and I'm a Canadian SEO. I've got a very strong interest in geolocation issues and international internet promotion - good to see everyone!
Ian
rbester
06-03-2004, 04:45 AM
Shalom! :cool: reporting from Israel ... Google.co.il undoubtedly rules.
Hola Nacho! and hi to all the other posters :). Seems there are a lot of internationals here. It will be great to share SEM experiences in various countries.
bwelford
06-03-2004, 08:20 AM
We seem to see a lot of friendly faces here. Well I guess we don't see the faces but you know what I mean. :)
I'm Barry Welford, a Brit from some time back, but resident in Montreal, Canada, for more years than the life of the average member here, I would wager. I work as an Internet Marketing Coach and Montreal is a thriving place to be based for that. For a start you've got to get your mind in gear about working in at least two languages and that's a challenge. Then one of the languages has accents, cedillas, etc. so there's another big challenge.
I have been a fan of Google from way back, mostly google.com, since for most of my customers we deal with the Internet world, which has no national boundaries. I'm thoroughly confused by Google for the past 6 weeks or so. It seems as though they still index pages fast but only allow backlinks to influence rankings after a delay of some months. I'm watching Yahoo with interest. Of course they are working with the content whereas Google seems to be fixated with the backlinks associated text. ... and the Microsoft spider is grabbing so many web pages nowadays: what does that mean? I can't wait until we get back to stability again. :D
Chris_D
06-03-2004, 08:34 AM
Ok - I'm another Australian - we might have a small population - but we've now got this thread hijacked!!
I'm Sydney based, have been doing SEO for several years now - previously for a large online agency, mostly doing SEO & SEM for large blue chip clients. I set up my own SEO/ SEM business last year.
I first met Kal when we both gave papers at Danny Sullivan's inaugural Australian SES conference in Sydney back in 2002. I am also the PPC course tutor at Search Engine College.
Favourite search engine? I love 'em all!!!
Chris
AussieWebmaster
06-03-2004, 01:27 PM
Hola Nacho! and hi to all the other posters :). Seems there are a lot of internationals here. It will be great to share SEM experiences in various countries.
Kal I want to take the finals and see if I can get a degree from your institution... love the logo
AussieWebmaster
06-03-2004, 01:31 PM
Ok - I'm another Australian - we might have a small population - but we've now got this thread hijacked!!
I'm Sydney based, have been doing SEO for several years now - previously for a large online agency, mostly doing SEO & SEM for large blue chip clients. I set up my own SEO/ SEM business last year.
I first met Kal when we both gave papers at Danny Sullivan's inaugural Australian SES conference in Sydney back in 2002. I am also the PPC course tutor at Search Engine College.
Favourite search engine? I love 'em all!!!
Chris
Yes this is a burgeoning industry and providing skill sets is important... hey Kelly Girls grew out of teaching typing.
bhartzer
06-03-2004, 01:39 PM
Hi,
My name is Bill Hartzer and I'm based in the Dallas, Texas area. I founded the Dallas/Fort Worth Search Engine Marketing Association (dfwsem.org). I've been optimizing sites since 1996, and you've probably seen me at Danny's Search Engine Strategies Conferences--I'm a regular.
Although I'm based in the US, I do a lot of SEO for websites that are non-US based, such as .com.mx, .com.br, and European sites.
St0n3y
06-03-2004, 01:57 PM
Hi All. My name is Stoney and I'm and SEO in Reno, NV. I'm for any search engine with relevant results and 100% in favor of search engine diversity.
Webformance
06-05-2004, 03:05 AM
Hi everybody, we're the Webformance team, working in France since 1996.
Kal I want to take the finals and see if I can get a degree from your institution... love the logo :D Thanks AW. Wish I could take credit for the logo, but it was actually designed by my clever husband. Hi Barry, Chris, Ian, Bill, Stoney and others!
Rumbas
06-07-2004, 05:41 AM
Howdy from Denmark :)
I've been into SEO/SEM in Europe for +5 years now and been doing some moderating in that area on another board.
Really pleased to see that you've put up a forum for the samme issue here. Good work and the best of luck!
K.S. Katz
06-07-2004, 11:09 AM
Hi, I'm K.S. Katz.
I'm based out of Florida and have been doing SEO for about three years. Recently, my career path has dragged me away from SEO but I still spend a lot of time on the forums so I don't loose touch with the industry.
gspinos
06-08-2004, 04:44 AM
Hello, this is Greg. Have been offering SEO services to local / mid sized companies for the last 2 years.
Fav SE google by far, although I always use webferret to do my searches.
Have been using Overture for online marketing, any suggestions anyone for marketing to the Chinese SE's using Chinese language search terms.....
Irony
06-08-2004, 06:00 AM
Hi, this is Irina from Russia.
I'm working for a UK-based company, developing our own corporate sites and doing some SEO work for them. Currently planning on adding SEO/SEM services, too.
The most popular SE in our country is Yandex (http://www.yandex.ru), but personally, I definitely prefer Google.com ;)
Mikkel deMib Svendsen
06-09-2004, 05:49 PM
I am from Denmark (Scandinavia) but I spend a great deal of my time in the US. I've been dealing with local SEO since 97 so in case you have any questions for this region/languag(es) I will be happy to give whatever advice I have..
I moderate the Dynamic and the Technical/Relevancy forums here at SEW.
Denyse
06-16-2004, 10:22 AM
Hi I'm Denyse and I am here to up the Canadian quotient of this thread... Hi Ian! Hi Barry!
I am still fairly new to the professional SEO game, and so far I do it only in French (why make it easy for myself, right?). I'm in the Laurentians just north of Montreal, and like Ian, I have a strong interest in geolocation issues - it seems to popup alot around here. Btw, I can strongly recommend Ian's article on the issue to anyone who works outside the US but still likes to use the ole .com moniker. VERRRY interesting reading. Hey Ian, put up the link will you.
Dealing in French is interesting because there is not much support out there, I find I have to adapt from the english, and pretty much make it up as I go. So I find it very nice to have a forum specifically geared to multilingual and non-US engines. Thank you Danny for thinking of us.
bwelford
06-16-2004, 10:39 AM
It's good to see you here, Denyse.
Mentioning French reminds me of the extra raft of problems that come up in SEO when dealing with accented characters. Those guys in easy languages such as English think they've got a problem worrying about stop symbols such as hyphens or spaces. They should try working with accents. Of course you do have "funny" characters such as ligatures in traditional English in words such as archæology, œsophagus, and encyclopædia. However their users seem to be dieing out. :)
Denyse
06-16-2004, 11:08 AM
Boy do I hear that Barry... accents are the bane of my existence. You never know when they are going to show up right or wrong - there are so many factors involved...
For example, on my own computer, I run Windows XP in English (it's easier to find info), my Word version is in French, Internet Explorer is English, now when I look at an html newsletter I created using signs é (as far as I know it's the accepted standard) there is no problem. However, I get messages all the time from readers saying they have a bunch of funny signs all over the page (the é showing up) - now, I realise that its probably because of their preferences... but to them I sent them this thing so it's my fault. And what about all those who have the problem but have not written, they just think I don't know how to code!!!
Sorry for shouting, but this issue really bothers me. If there are some experts out there who have a deffinitive answer... PLEEEEASE post it.
Mikkel deMib Svendsen
06-16-2004, 11:16 AM
> there are some experts out there who have a deffinitive answer
Most times there are no deffinitve answers - just different oppinions based on various experience. Thats the game of SEO :)
In my experience dealing with Danish (we have three special letters too) the best thing is not to encode them at all. Users that should be able to read them can, as far as I have experienced, and I found it to be the most secure way of not running into problems in the search engines.
bwelford
06-16-2004, 12:59 PM
I agree with Mikkel. I normally just type the accented character using a French keyboard and there's no problem. It produces the right characters in most of the standard browsers that I've checked.
If I'm not using a French keyboard, then I would hold down the <ALT> key while tapping in the ASCI code on the number pad at the right of the keyboard. For example <ALT>130 gives me é. In an HTML document an alternative to the é is to use & #130 ; [but without the spaces since this is the only way I could show the characters here]. This also should give you é. I'm not sure what will work and what will not work in any given application.
easycure
06-16-2004, 01:27 PM
It's good to see you here, Denyse.
Mentioning French reminds me of the extra raft of problems that come up in SEO when dealing with accented characters.
Not to mention PPC, all the keyphrases multiply themselves by the number of accented characters they contain (at least in Adwords, Overture deals with them much better). Such good fun :D
Hi, I see so many friends have met here.
Hi Irony, I here , if maintenance thee ;)
The question is - why only Irony posted a link of russian SE? meseems it will be very interesting for everybody to have a look at national SEs & come to find out , than their differences against Google Search.
AussieWebmaster
06-21-2004, 12:05 AM
Not to mention PPC, all the keyphrases multiply themselves by the number of accented characters they contain (at least in Adwords, Overture deals with them much better). Such good fun :D
I am entering into the European and Asian engines right now... and I fully understanding the various new things I have to learn.
Ciao a tutti
It's Gaia from Italy.
We are based in Milano (but I grow up in Venice).
Italy fav regional search engine is Google.it, followed by Virgilio.it
Fran Fernandez
07-24-2004, 11:53 AM
Hello everybody,
My name is Fran, from Spain. I only do seo for spanish websites but i read this forum everyday. :)
strategicrankings
07-25-2004, 04:15 AM
Hi there,
i'm Riley from Mauritius, don't even try to figure out where it is you won't even find it on a world map :D . I've been doin SEO since Dec 1999. I've always asked myself why SEW didn't have a forum, finally its here and i'm glad to see that.
Denyse
07-25-2004, 10:40 PM
Hey Riley,
Mauritius - just of the east coast of Africa isn't it - and welcome to the forum
Incubator
07-26-2004, 12:36 AM
Hello, Im Wayne Cowan from Toronto Canada..Google.ca leading the way
strategicrankings
07-29-2004, 02:23 AM
Salut Denyse,
Tres bonne connaissance de geographie, ou surtout est-ce un tres bon souvenir de vacance passé dans cet ile paradisiaque? Quoiqu'il en soit merci pour l'accueil. :)
Hello SEW,
I'm Lucas from Australia, recently graduated from UNSW - spent a year of deferred study o/s in Singapore as a webmaster for a finance portal which is where I acquired a substantial interest in SEO. I've followed the SEW site every now and then and decided to sign up on these forms and also become a member of SEW.
Google all the way.
delridge
08-07-2004, 02:39 AM
Merhabalar, memnun oldum,
My name is Matt, and I live in Istanbul, Turkey. Actually, I consider the US west coast to be my permanent home (that's where I'm from -- California, Seattle, etc). But I currently live and work in Istanbul. I sell jewelry from Turkey to the USA.
Matt
PS: BTW, my favorite search engine is google.com. Since I'm selling to the US, I end up doing most of my searches as if I were actually in the US. To no .tr suffix, just plain old google.com.
chrisfooxx
08-10-2004, 05:14 AM
Bonjour,
french guy based in Germany.
FOOXX.com does search on the web relevant. with the toolbar, websites the members visited are automatically evaluated. the ranking is then better for positive evaluated sites.
not bad!!
tschüss
chris
Hi all, Georgi Georgiev form Bulgaria. Currently working as SEO, SEM and web marketing expert for one of the top players in Bulgarian internet. I have experience in Multilingual SEO, though - English, Romanian, know looking forward outsourcing for Hungary.
Favourite search engine - www.google.com (with the ability to search in Bulgarian pages only ;))
Welcome new members! Thanks for introducing yourselves :)
matthewmurcia
09-21-2005, 08:09 AM
¡Hola! :)
I'm Matthew and I live in Murcia in the south east of Spain. I've been doing SEO for a relatively short time compared to everybody else here I think but now concentrate on it almost exclusively and have taken on my first projects. I do most of my work in Spanish and am very interested in the ideas present in this fourm and getting to know much more about the regional/local/language differeneces in SEs. From the people I've talked to in my area, lots of potential clients seem to be really interested in the idea of PPC management as well so I've signed up for the Google Ad Professional certificate to learn a bit more.
Would be really good to have some discussions about the differences and similarities between the different Spanish speaking markets and hispanics in the US as well. I've also worked as a professional translator and copywriter so I could take part in discussions about those subjects too.
Anyway, that's enough I think. Glad to be here.
Nacho
09-21-2005, 08:33 AM
Bienvenido Matthew! :)
AussieWebmaster
09-21-2005, 02:51 PM
¡Hola! :)
I'm Matthew and I live in Murcia in the south east of Spain. I've been doing SEO for a relatively short time compared to everybody else here I think but now concentrate on it almost exclusively and have taken on my first projects. I do most of my work in Spanish and am very interested in the ideas present in this fourm and getting to know much more about the regional/local/language differeneces in SEs. From the people I've talked to in my area, lots of potential clients seem to be really interested in the idea of PPC management as well so I've signed up for the Google Ad Professional certificate to learn a bit more.
Would be really good to have some discussions about the differences and similarities between the different Spanish speaking markets and hispanics in the US as well. I've also worked as a professional translator and copywriter so I could take part in discussions about those subjects too.
Anyway, that's enough I think. Glad to be here.
Do a search for everything Nacho has written about and you will be well on your way!