I can't imagine why someone would bail on a conference session like that without informing Danny ahead of time. Hopefully it's nothing serious.
We talked primarily analytics during the 45 minute Q+A - one of the most high level and informative/honest Q+A's I've ever seen at the conference, actually. Tony Wright from Kinetic is a superbly informed search marketer and his experience with many of the big analytics tools really paid off. It was funny to learn that both of us recommend and use IndexTools above all the others - the price to performance is just so high that the few features it doesn't have are overshadowed by value.
Interestingly, there were a few folks from Google Analytics in the audience acting a tad peculiar. I asked at one point, if anyone was in the audience representing Google Analytics and the gentlemen remained silent and seated. Then later they announced they did work at Google analytics, but when Detlev (who was moderating) asked if there was any way audience members could sign up, they said "talk to us." Apparently, there's still a very long waiting list...
Not the greatest public relations, certainly. I suppose Tony, Detlev and I all criticizing GG didn't help much, either. Free is cool, but waiting lists and sharing data with the search crews are not so cool - at $150-$300/month, Indextools is an easy choice (we agreed that we also liked ClickTracks & WebSideStory).
Another cool cartoon from the presentation:
It was good to meet you, too.
It's the little things that make case studies like that stand out. Like the notion of using Google Conversion tracking as a backup means of collecting some stats in case something went wrong with stuff like the insertion of tracking pixels for the analytic tools being used. (Tony's example.)
It was kind of fun to have the Google folks in the audience come out of hiding.
I have to agree with Bill. BTW Bill, great meeting you. I think Rand and Tony's case studies hit home with a lot of people. I know I got quite a bit of info from this session. Thanks Rand!
This was one of my favorite sessions of the conference. The war stories used as examples were excellent. Tony's shellcones tale was honest and informative - it's nice to be able to learn from someone else's mistakes, and nice to see that his story ended with success. The same with your presentation, Rand. Excellent work.