Danny Sullivan Removes Pro-SEO Forum From SMX Conference Agenda

As you may know, my full-time job is Marketing Manager for Did-it Search Marketing, and I regularly communicate with founders Kevin Lee and Dave Pasternack. So I witnessed the incredible flap that happened over a six-month stretch when the SEO community massively overreacted to a very reasonable comment that Dave made when he noted that "SEO is Not Rocket Science."

Search maven Danny Sullivan, who has insisted that "SEO is Rocket Science" on numerous occasions, recently decided to add a session to his forthcoming SMX (Search Marketing Expo) entitled "Is SEO Bull?" to capitalize on the furor and stocked the panel with pro-SEO partisans and, presumably, someone who would take issue with the "SEO is Rocket Science/SEO Rockstars Deserve $500 an hour" camp.

OK, fair enough: it's Danny's show, and he can run it anyway he wants. But I noticed something interesting today when I checked SMX's agenda: the "Is SEO Bull" session has been deleted without any explanation. You can see this yourself by comparing the Google Cache for the conference agenda with the live page.

I'm very glad that Danny decided to cancel this "debate," which would have been one-sided and largely self-serving to his SEO pals. But why didn't we read about this cancellation on Danny's site, SearchEngineLand.com? Maybe because such an announcement would have served as an admission that the debate was lost long ago, and those who insist that SEO is Rocket Science are a rapidly dwindling fringe group.

EBay Ads That Will Make You Think You've Lost Your Mind

Alex Goad, at NetFrontierMarketing.com, has put together a great little gallery of contextually insane EBay ads that boast of selling everything from Battered Women to Dead Pets and Mexican Immigrants. I can't imagine that any of these ads have high conversion rates, and can only guess how much money EBay is wasting on them. Call this a case of Dynamic Keyword Insertion run amok!