Mihai Aperghis (@mihaiaperghis), an SEO we reference here from time to time, is also an expert on Google products and attended the Google Search Central conference call the other week. He wrote this blog post and I’m posting it here as a very rare guest post on this site. Because? (1) Mihai rocks and (2) this site is about community and product experts are the essence of the Google community. I (Barry) personally was unable to attend due to a conflict. Note: Mihai didn’t ask for a link or mention, but I added this because it’s clear that he wrote this.
Last week was Google’s first official SEO-focused event in Romania, Search Central Live Romania, on a sunny April 4th in Bucharest. Like a Search Central Product Expert who lives in Bucharest, the event was an exciting occasion for people in my local SEO community to hear and interact directly with Googlers.
John Mueller and Martin Splitt expertly shared a lot of SEO knowledge in most sessions of the event. In addition, several other Googlers provided insights within sessions focused more on publisher-related topics such as elections, misinformation, and changes to third-party cookies.
As with other Search Central Live events, this was a free, invitation-based opportunity for SEO professionals, digital marketers, and publishers to learn more in-depth and interact directly with Googlers themselves, with nearly 100 people they attended
agenda
The official schedule it included 8 SEO/Search focused sessions covering introductory to slightly more intermediate topics (including a very nice Q&A) and three more sessions on other topics, heavily focused on the upcoming election season.
Throughout the day, there were several lunch, snack, or coffee breaks, while providing opportunities to network and engage in a quick chat with John, Martin, or anyone else on the Google team present at the event:
10:00: Registration and networks 11:00: Opening 11:10: Welcome 11:20: How search works 11:40: What’s new in Search 12:00: Search and AI 12:20: Analysis of traffic drops 13:00: Lunch and networking 14:00: Myth busting 14:30: SEO for video and images 14:50: Ecommerce best practices 15:10: Search Q&A 15:30: Coffee break 16 :00: Disinformation/Elections 17:30: Ad Manager: Preparing for the End of Third-Party Cookies 17:45: Elections, Disinformation, 3P Cookie Q&A 18:00: Closing and Image 18:10 : Network work
Highlights of the session
Although I didn’t manage to attend all the sessions, I did make it to most of them, especially the ones presented by John and Martin. One of the first sessions that comes to mind is “Search and AI”, where Martin covered some of the basics of what the opportunities and limitations of LLMs are, both in general and with a focus on Gemini and Google Search:
John’s best practices were very well received during the following session on “Analyzing Traffic Drops”, highlighting the use of Search Console and various scenarios that could affect organic rankings and traffic:
Finally, one of the most anticipated sessions was the question and answer session, with questions asked by the audience live and from a pre-submitted set. Some of the questions even generated quite a few laughs from everyone in the room:
All in all, this was a great experience, made possible by the fantastic support of Romanian Googlers like you Elisabeta Moraru i Teodora Patrauceanu. I hope John and Martin had a great time too and will consider coming back soon; everyone who participated, as well as those who were unable to attend, look forward to another event like this.
Until next time!
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