This Just In: “Deconstructing Pigeon” Session Added to @SMX East (Speakers Wanted)

In light of last week’s news about Google’s new “Pigeon” local algorithm update, we’ve decided to add a session about it at SMX East:

Deconstructing Pigeon, Google’s New Local Search Algorithm

I’ll be coordinating that session, and I’m looking for speakers right now! It’s scheduled for day two of the conference, which is October 1st, from 1:30 to 2:45 pm. Ideally, we’ll have a panel with 2-3 speakers and then plenty of time for audience Q&A.

What I’m Looking For

I know it’s less than a week since Pigeon came to light, and many local SEOs are probably still analyzing the changes and how to deal with them. But since SMX East is still about two months away, you should have plenty of time to “wow” the audience with great analysis and actionable tactics.

Here are some of the things I’ll be looking for speakers to cover:

• What Pigeon is. We know what Google said: “… it ties deeper into … web search ranking signals.” But is that all? How is Pigeon changing the local search results? (Data about that would be excellent.) What will the impact be on people looking for local businesses? In other words — what’s the big picture? What does this mean?
• Winners and losers. Who did Pigeon help? What can we learn from the businesses that are benefitting from this update? Who’s been hurt, and what can we learn from them?
• Impact on local listings and listing management? Impact on other local tactics (reviews, etc.)? Short-term impacts? Long-term impacts?
• National brands with local offices/stores: What was the impact on you? How are you responding, or planning to respond?
• Small/local businesses: What was the impact on you? How are you responding, or planning to respond?
• Local SEO consultants: What was the impact on your clients? How are you responding, or planning to respond?
• Case studies: It may be too soon, but I’d love for someone to be able to share specific case studies that would benefit the whole audience — these could be related to the questions I’ve posed above, or related to something else (Pigeon-related) not mentioned above.

That should give a general idea of what I’m looking for, but if you have a super idea or have seen something Pigeon-related that I didn’t mention above, and you think it would be make a great presentation, I want to know about it.

How to Pitch for This Session

We’ve re-opened the speaker’s pitch form on the SMX website. So start here and choose “SMX East 2014” where it asks what conference you want to speak at. (Ignore the part about closing on July 11.)

Then choose “Deconstructing Pigeon” from the dropdown menu that follows. It’ll be the only choice.

Then fill-out the form in its entirety and submit.

Hint: Read my unofficial tips for pitching to speak at SMX before you do this.

Hint #2: DO NOT DELAY. I want to get this session finalized so that speakers can get to work right away, so I’ll be looking to identify speakers as soon as possible. I’d like to have speakers confirmed by the end of next week — August 8th — if possible.

Hint #3: If you don’t see any dropdown menus on that pitch form, it means the session is already closed.

Hint #4: This is the final sentence of this post. 🙂