I've been at Search Engine Strategies in London this week. Over the next few days I'll aim to add a few posts talking about the key things I've either learnt, or found surprising from the sessions at the conference, but a few random impressions are:

1. It's a lot smaller this year than last - presumably as a result of the recession
2. There's quite a large proportion of Europeans, both attending and speaking - perhaps a sign that the media market in mainland Europe hasn't (yet) felt the pinch as much as the UK/US?
3. There's a surprising range of understanding expressed in some of the questions. It's easy to forget that there are still people out there for whom universal or blended search is a new, and confusing concept.
4. On the basis of some of the case studies, the publications at Reed Business are actually quite a long way ahead of the curve in terms of executing the basics for SEO, findability etc. Being close to the business it's easy to lose sight of that.
5. Twitter - everyone's using it, but I'm not sure how much value its added to the twitters experience of the conference - randomly quoting presentations you are in, in an attempt to appear insightful just adds random noise to the conversations. Or maybe I've just seen the first online phenomenon I'm too old for...