5 Quick Tips: Keeping Up To Date

For those who don’t know, I’m just finishing up my holidays today and initially wasn’t planning on doing a 5 Quick Tips piece this week but as I was reading through some of my favorite resources I realized that a critical part of my day is keeping up-to-date on what’s going on and getting analysis on events from people who know what they’re talking about.  That got me thinking, if I had to reduce the number of people to five that I could get my search engine news or otherwise use for information discovery …who would they be?

After over 15 years in Internet |Marketing … here they are …

People Who Will Keep You Updated ACCURATELY Are …

#1 – Barry Schwartz

If you’re in SEO and you haven’t encountered Barry Schwartz in your travels it’s either because you’ve been living in a vacuum or just don’t read who authors an article you’re reading.  He reports for Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Land.  He tends to report news as opposed to opinion which makes him my first stop in the morning and before my weekly radio show when I need to know what’s going on without fluff.

---

#2 – Danny Goodwin

Danny Goodwin has been a mainstay in search news for as long as I can remember and writes for Search Engine Journal.  Apart from simple breadth of information Danny is one of my go-to as he tends not to cover pure search news but more about what’s going on with the major social networks.  As with everyone on the list he does a great job of just passing on information and letting the reader conclude what they will regarding it’s impact.

---

#3 – Bill Slawski

The reason I follow Bill Slawski is for his explanations and analysis of patents and white papers.  When I said this list is about news I meant it and one of the great things about Bill’s analysis is that while he’s thorough in his writing the main focus is on explaining what’s contained in the patent to a layperson (or even just someone who doesn’t have the patience to read through the volume he does) and with that understanding let’s the reader determine what it means to them.  This isn’t breaking news to be sure but reading his breakdown of recently awarded patents helps me understanding what companies are doing and understand what’s coming up and how to interpret the related news hat follows.

---

#4 – Anthony Ha

There’s knowing what the search engines and social properties are doing as it related to algorithm, features, etc. and there’s also understanding which companies are doing, who they’re buying and what the ecosystem itself is doing.  That’s where Anthony Ha from TechCrunch comes in.  Until recently to keep up with this area of things I simply ran queries for “google”, “facebook”, etc. into Google News.  While I can’t say I don’t still do this from time-to-time Anthony does a great job of covering the core points and bringing to light news items I might otherwise never see.

---

#5 – John Mueller

You’ll notice that the link above goes to Google’s Office Hours page.  While Google’s John Mueller is an interesting person to follow on Twitter this list is about news sources.  In office hours John answers questions and you’re likely to hear about his answers on the other sites listed above.  While he rarely covers new items he provides clarifications on points and new information on strategies which is why I include this in my news list – it’s information you’ll not have heard regarding strategy and clarifications on algorithm points. That said and with all respect to John, one can’t fully trust Google or any other company to answer questions on how to monetize their free (and gameable) offerings.  Everything needs to be taken with a grain of salt but there are many gems in these hangouts.  Rand Fishkin of Moz discussed this very issue a couple weeks ago in a very good whiteboard Friday.  Here it is:

---

You don’t need to visit each of these folks daily (though it wouldn’t hurt) but if you follow what they’re doing and saying on even a weekly basis you’ll be kept up to date on pretty much everything that’s going on in the ecosystem.  It’ll take perhaps an hour or two a week to gather the information and you’ll be sure not to miss a something your competitors didn’t.

To be sure there are some other great writers out there and other folks I read regularly and they’ll likely make other lists but when it comes to gathering news and information, these are my go-to’s and they’ve served me well.

Save