In the last of our SMX Sydney series we caught up with Danny Sullivan who shares some tips to get rankings in blended search along with keeping a balanced life in this crazy “always on” digital world.

Jacqui Jones: Hi, I’m Jacqui Jones from Netconcepts and we’re at SMX Sydney and today were speaking with Danny Sullivan and so, welcome to Australia and welcome to this side of the world.

Danny Sullivan: It’s good to be here. I’m squinting and crying because it’s so bright today.

Jacqui Jones: It is extremely bright. Well, thank you for your session today on blended search, it was very interesting. We have some questions that we’d like to ask you from the team back in the US. One of which is about images and so when you actually do a site query command in image search, will that actually bring up all the images that are typically indexed by Google?

Danny Sullivan: I honestly don’t remember, I’d have to go back and sit at the computer and take a look at it. Are you saying that if I do a site colon and that domain command and I’m in image search, does that narrow it down?

Jacqui Jones: Yes.

Danny Sullivan: I wanna say that it does, but sometimes the site command can be funky when you try to use it on some of the vertical searches, so I’d have to take a look and see.

Jacqui Jones: Can we then assume that if that is the case, does that mean that only those images would be displayed in blended search results?

Danny Sullivan: Yeah, I mean if those images aren’t in Google image search, there not going to be showing up in blended search results, so that certainly is a good way of to find out what’s likely to make it.

Jacqui Jones: Absolutely and so, images from Flickr and other image type sites would actually display in blended search results as well, won’t they?

Danny Sullivan: That’s right. I believe that Google can crawl Flickr and pick up the material that’s over there. I don’t think that they’ve blocked it, although you don’t tend to see a lot of Flickr showing up on Google, and then of course at Yahoo it is the opposite. They favour the Flickr photos. They’ve been pulling in the Flickr thing, so certainly if you’re trying to deal with blended search at Yahoo, you wanna have a Flickr account.

Jacqui Jones: One of the observations I’ve made is that the content or the text on the page actually puts the image into context and that actually affects the ranking of that image, do you think that’s the case at all?

Danny Sullivan: I believe that’s what certainly Google has said, that the content of the page can be associated with it. Usually it’s the words that are very near the image, definitely the Alt text. They’re very explicit about the Alt text being important as well.

Jacqui Jones: Ok, great. So were seeing a lot more other types of web assets and media appearing in blended search results such as video, so how would you go about getting your video to rank in Google, is it a matter of just pointing links at that video on YouTube or on Google video?

Danny Sullivan: Well, in the terms of blended search, they’re hitting both YouTube and the stuff that’s on Google video. As I was talking about, some people feel like they’re favouring that content. Since a lot of these places allow you to take the video content anyway, I would just go and put it out on as many places as possible. If you can have it on YouTube and you can have it on MySpace video, why not put it in both places, you can always choose to promote just one of those, if you want to go with it from there.

Jacqui Jones: If everyone is doing that, if a whole range of businesses in a particular industry are all putting video onto YouTube, Google video and other video sites, how do you actually make your video more important in search results, more relevant to that search query? Is it dependant on the ratings or the number of views of that video in YouTube or is it simply having some links with good anchor text in it, linking back to that video?

Danny Sullivan: I honestly don’t know what Google has said in terms of when they hit blended search, how they’re making that determination. I don’t think that they’re using things like the YouTube ratings. And the reason I’m fairly certain they’re not doing that is because they couldn’t use those YouTube ratings and then fairly weight all the other video content that’s out there as well. I would tend to think it’s going to be much more a combination of looking at the meta data from the video they have that’s been reported as well as looking at the anchor text they’re pointing over.

Jacqui Jones: We know that local search and maps is huge on the internet, and it’s made a huge impact on what people are seeing in search results and where they’re going to. Once maps and local search starts to become more popular and more business are being listed in local search how do you actually make it to the top 10 listings that are displayed there? Again, is it based on reviews or links going back?

Danny Sullivan: There’s a tonne of factors that come in. The proximity to say the city centre if you’ve done a generic city search, it’s coming up within that, certainly the words that are in the listings, the title of the business name can have an impact and it can bring you up there as well. In some cases, like I think with Yahoo that they did say that ratings could have an influence as well. I can’t recall if Google said the ratings have been. I mean local search tends to be a very, very complicated creature in terms of all the factor s that flow into it.

Jacqui Jones: The next question is on a personal note. I don’t know if you’ve heard that on blogs recently or on the news, that some bloggers they have had heart attacks or a couple of A list bloggers have had heart attacks and it’s because they haven’t had a balanced life. And I know for you, you’re busy traveling the world and blogging and you’re online all the time. How do you actually keep balance in your life?

Danny Sullivan: I saw that story in the New York Times and thought it was a lot of bull really. I mean we had one tech writer that actually died of a heart attack. Om Malik who runs GigaOM did have a heart attack. I don’t know that’s a wave of bloggers suddenly having… Om fortunately didn’t die and he’s well, but you know I think lots of people have unhealthy lifestyles. I don’t know that just because you’re a blogger that tends to do it. For me personally, I did notice about two years ago that you know, I spent a lot of time sitting in front of the computer, doing a lot snacking, not getting a lot of exercise, I suppose blogging, it’s just anyone using a computer a lot.

I just really started thinking more about what I was eating, trying to eat less and do a lot more exercise. It was around the time there was a lot of people talking about doing this blogger diet, so I got inspired by it. I remember Chris Pirillo had lost a lot of weight, and (Jeremy Wodney?) had done that, so it was kind of nice peer pressure to think, well I wanna go out and see if I can do something better. I guess my life does probably, you know health wise has improved a bit. I’m sure I’m not the healthiest person out there though.

Jacqui Jones: So, what does a blogger diet consist of?

Danny Sullivan: Well, I mean in my case, it wasn’t that I was eating the wrong things. I was just eating a lot. I mean I was doing a lot of snacking. I would get up and I would take a break and I’d have you know, just some candy or something like that and eat too much and I wasn’t getting a lot of exercise. I think on the traveling it’s harder, cause you’re traveling and you’re going through an airport and it’s very easy to say I’m gonna get a candy bar here and I’m gonna grab a thing there. You go into a reception here and there’s a lot of food that’s out and you go oh I’ll have this muffin and pick up something like that, so for me that’s just more a lot of saying no.

Jacqui Jones: Very good. One last question. What do you think are the main challenges for search in Australia and New Zealand?

Danny Sullivan: You know it’s difficult to say, cause I’m not down here. I’ve really been talking with a lot of people already. The top of my head, I would say one of the biggest challenges is, you’re not getting as much support as of some of the new things that are coming out. There’s Local (search) that’s out there, that felt like from talking to some people that they didn’t have as much support. They did have a local business though, they were pleased about that. There’s no product search for Australia and they’ve had product search at Google for like 5 years now. So where, you know the heck is it?

It’s not like the people in the room that we were talking with didn’t have products to sell. There’s just no ability to put it out there. This is my 3rd trip to Australia and talking with people, unfortunately you seem to get use to being forgotten sometimes. You know, “we’ll get to you when we get to you”.

At least on the last trip I came out, it was still a case you couldn’t even buy the paid links, you know, so I guess there’s advancement there. They want to take your money now. You couldn’t even give your money away to them at the time.

Jacqui Jones: I think your observations are right, that sometimes we do feel a bit forgotten, but things are catching up and there’s a lot more happening down this side of the world, which is fantastic. Thank you for your time today and I hope you enjoy the rest of your time in Sydney.

Danny Sullivan: Definitely looking forward to it, you’re welcome.