Mike Grehan

Pioneer three: Mike Grehan

Mike Grehan started life as a radio DJ and has not lost his skills at telling great stories, he also is one of the smartest minds in SEO and has much to share. An entertaining conversation that was full of insights in between the laughter.

This conversation opens up the early days of SEO and many insights relevant today. Mike has an extensive recollection of the last 25 years, including how search has evolved and how information retrieval works.

Mike was one of the first contributors to Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Watch and later went on to be group publishing director of Incisive Media that managed ClickZ and Search Engine Watch.

In 2002, Mike wrote an influential book called ‘Search Engine Marketing – The Essential Best Practice Guide’. It was one of the first comprehensive guides to SEO and the underlying science of information retrieval (IR) and contained insightful interviews with Andrei Broder (Alta Vista), Craig Silverstein (Google) and Detlev Johnson (i-Search) amongst others.

In this conversation Mike talks about:

• Why he doesn’t like or use the term ‘SEO’
• How he set up a fake conference in Edinburgh
• When he interviewed Craig Silverstein of Google and what Craig let slip about the algorithm
• Where Alta Vista went wrong and what Google got right
• The spam tactics he used that he has never shared before
• How he coined the term ‘black hat’

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