The conference kicked off nice and early for me this morning as I needed to register, grab all the freebies that go along with antending, and get myself prepared for the upcoming sessions.

The Front of the San Jose Convention Center.

My first session was the "Searcher Behavior Research Update", with speakers Bill Barnes, Rob Murray, David Williams, and Anne Frisbie. For the most part, this was a good session as the speakers highlighted their latest studies and findings regarding how searchers interact with search engines.

Robert Murray, President of iProspect, shared a couple of interesting statistics that I thought were worth mentioning. According to his research:

This just goes to show how important top search engine placement is. Search users are no longer digging though the thousands upon thousands of search engine results to find a website (frankly... I'm not sure that they ever did). It seems that if the majority of searchers don't find what they're looking for by the 3rd page, they'll either enter a new query or try another search engine all together. Therefore, it becomes extremely important that website owners find their way to the top of the search engines, either organically or through paid-placement methods, for their desired keyword phrases.

Robert also mentioned that:

Which again, these statistics certainly say a lot about today's search users and their searching behaviors.

My second session was "Leveraging Social Media" and it focused primarily on how one can use media services like MySpace, YouTube, Friendster, and Flickr to deliver marketing messages without disrupting the diverse audience that exists within each area. Overall this was a pretty decent session and one that provided me with lots to look into and experiment with.

At lunch I sat in on a Google Sitemaps / Google Webmaster Central session. That's right if you didn't already catch it elsewhere... Google announced earlier today that it has dropped the name "Sitemaps" and dubbed the service "Webmaster Central". Personally, I hate the name, but 'what are ya going do'. The lunch / session featured the "Webmaster Central" team as they walked through some of the program's new changes and updates.

A quick shot of the panel (sorry its blurry). That's everybody's favorite Googler Matt Cutts on the big screen.

My last session of the day was a jam-packed, standing-room-only "SEM Via Communities, Wikipedia & Tagging" session. This session featured the all-star line-up of Rand Fishkin, Neil Patel, Andy Hagans, Todd Malicoat, and Chris Pirillo. Together they discussed the many services and strategies that can be used to tap into links and search-driven traffic, such as Wikipedia, Digg, Flickr, and Technorati. "Kudos" goes out to these guys for putting on a very entertaining, and yet informative, session.

The All-Star Panel: (L-R) Todd Malicoat, Chris Pirillo, Rand Fishkin, Neil Patel, and Andy Hagans.

Well, that's it for today. There's a party happening later on tonight sponsored by Ask.com, however, I'm pretty sure that I'm going to pass on it for a nice, relaxing cigar down by the hotel pool. Besides... I'm going to need my rest for tomorrow's opening of the exhibit hall and the big Google Dance bash. Stay tuned for tomorrow's updates on the conference and SES happenings.