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Interview with Building Your Business with Google For Dummies 
Author Brad Hill, By Scott Buresh   

Brad Hill has worked in the online field since 1992 and was a 
recognized authority on search engines long before two 
now-famous Stanford graduate students started tinkering with 
what would eventually become Google. His popular books, among 
them Google For Dummies, Yahoo! For Dummies, and Internet 
Searching For Dummies, share a knack for taking what are often 
highly technical concepts and presenting them in ways that are 
immediately useful to the average reader. His latest book, 
Building Your Business with Google For Dummies, was released 
June 14th. I recently had the opportunity to ask Brad some 
questions about his background, his take on the current and 
future search engine landscape, and his latest book. 

SB: Your new book, Building Your Business with Google For 
Dummies, was recently released. Please give us a brief overview 
of the book and the topics covered. 

BH: The book covers principles of site optimization (for Google 
in particular), the basics of search engine marketing, and goes 
into substantial detail about AdWords and AdSense. The AdSense 
part (three chapters) is probably the most detailed tutorial in 
existence for optimizing AdSense code. The AdWords section, of 
course, is meaty. I had to force myself not to turn the whole 
book over to AdWords. I'm glad to give readers a grounding in 
SEO and SEM.  

SB: Your interest in search engines is apparent from your 
publication history. How did your fascination with the world 
of search begin? 

BH: I remember when Gopher was introduced to the Internet, 
before the Web was invented. Gopher was revelatory to those 
days, because it offered the first coherent way to search for 
Internet content. Later, when the Web came along, search was not 
an immediate priority. Yahoo! had great impact on the early 
Web, but as a directory, not a global search engine. My first 
...For Dummies book was about search engines, vintage 1995. 
AltaVista was huge, Deja News was becoming important, and 
Boolean operators were advanced material. 

SB: Your publisher says that your latest book was written "in 
cooperation with Google, which will help support the book".  
What is your relationship with Google, and how will they help 
to support the book? 

BH: Google sells my Google For Dummies in its online store, and 
I think it will carry the new book. I didn't need very much 
consultation for the first book, but Google definitely wanted 
to be involved with the second one. I've traded e-mails with 
Eric Schmidt (who went to school in Princeton, where I live), 
and he's a fan of the first book, but obviously he didn't get 
involved in reading manuscript pages! Somebody at Google did 
read the manuscript to Building Your Business... for trademark 
issues and technical correctness. Several other individuals from 
various departments made themselves available to me for questions 
despite intensely busy schedules, for which I'm grateful. Ana 
Yang (who, incidentally, launched Gmail), coordinated Google's 
assistance on my behalf. 

SB: Tell us a bit about your writing process. Is a project like 
this broken into distinct phases? How long does a typical project 
take?   

BH: The editorial process for a ...For Dummies book is unique in 
publishing. The entire process is paperless. I e-mail chapters 
as I complete them to my editor, who distributes them to a 
technical editor and various developmental and copy editors. My 
acquisitions editor (who brings the project through contract 
signing) stays involved, too, and probably reads along. 
Eventually the chapters come back to me with comments and 
queries from all the editors, each person using a distinct font 
color. I respond to every query and make changes (or decline to 
make them) on the screen. When I send these finalized chapters 
back to my editor, there are rainbows of queries and responses 
mixed in with the text. Normally, a ...For Dummies book is 
written in six to eight weeks, and reaches stores six to eight 
weeks after that. No other publisher is as fast. 

SB: How does a typical day of writing work in the Hill 
household? 

BH: A day of writing usually starts with blogging, which defrags 
my brain and gets my verbal juices flowing. My house is 
blanketed wirelessly, so I can write anywhere, but I'm usually 
in my office at a desktop. I can listen to instrumental music as 
I write, but not songs. I use Princeton University's library as 
an office away from home when I feel like it. I often must work 
on more than one book at a time, and when my writing is in a 
high-volume phase I pace myself with daily word quotas. 5,000 
words is a solidly productive day. 

SB: Apart from your books, where would you suggest people turn 
for more information on Google or search engines in general? How 
do you keep your finger on the pulse of this ever-changing 
industry? 

BH: I subscribe voraciously to RSS feeds. At Bloglines, my SEM 
folder includes feeds from Seth Godin's Weblog, Topix.net, 
Adverblog, John Battelle, Search Engine Lowdown, Rugles, Search 
Engine Roundtable, various SEO blogs, and others. I regularly 
check the forums: WebmasterWorld and the new SearchEngineWatch 
Forums in particular. My browser bookmarks include 
SearchEngineWatch (of course), SEO Today, WebProWorld, SEO Chat, 
ClickZ, Marketing Profs, Search Engine Guide, SiteProNews, and 
dozens of others. For intensive expertise, I've read most of the 
standard books and e books--Andrew Goodman and others. Of 
course, I work with AdWords and AdSense, and stay current with 
those programs by using them. 

SB: How often will this book need to be updated to stay current? 
Do you update your past books consistently? 

BH: The decision to publish second and third editions is both an 
editorial and business matter. At least a third (preferably 
half) of the book's content should be in need of update, and 
the current edition should be making money. It is not my 
decision, though I can push for it. Usually it is the publisher 
doing the pushing, and I have written second editions six 
months after publication of the first. Google is currently 
making content changes at a more rapid pace than ever in its 
history. Building Your Business with Google For Dummies is 
current on all points except for image ads in AdWords. It covers 
AdSense channel reporting in detail. 

SB:  There has been a lot of press recently dedicated to the 
"search wars" (primarily involving Yahoo!, Google, and MSN) and 
upcoming technologies (such as personalized results and private 
search networks). What is your take on the future of search? 

BH: Search has been reborn as an industry, thanks to Google, and 
is now in its second infancy. Local search is a frontier that 
must be plumbed. Desktop searching is a battleground clearly 
marked out, with political difficulties for everyone. Extending 
the topography of the search landscape to the local hard drive 
is an approach familiar to enterprises but alien to consumers. 
Time will tell whether consumers will tolerate destroying the 
wall between machine and network. But Overture and Google have 
succeeded to a fair degree in eliminating the wall between paid 
and organic listings, without damaging credibility, so perhaps 
anything is possible. 

Right now, Yahoo! and Google wrestle every day, with AskJeeves, 
Vivisimo, Teoma, and others chipping in from the sidelines. 
Microsoft has barely gotten started. Things are going to get 
much more interesting. As we all know, consumer search is just 
half the equation. Google is preeminent because it understands 
it is not just a consumer service, or a business enabler. 
Google is a keyword processing company. The elemental keyword 
catalyzes that golden match of seeker and knowledge; buyer and 
seller; editorial content and commercial content. This 
understanding and the utter objectivity with which it is pursued 
is Google's best advantage. But extending its dominance outside 
the U.S. will be difficult, and defending its marketshare 
against Yahoo!'s R&D portfolio and Microsoft's access to the 
desktop will become increasingly challenging. 

SB:  I'm told that several industry experts provided valuable 
contributions to Building Your Business with Google For Dummies. 
Of these, who was your favorite?  

BH: Aha! A trick question! I was dumbfounded and deeply 
impressed by the generosity and effort that poured into the book 
from you and several others. I initially queried several SEO 
and SEM experts with the hope of harvesting enough pithy quotes 
to spice up my chapters a bit. I received a tidal wave of 
original writing and article permissions that bowled me over. 
Scott, you sent me a document that would have made a good 
chapter by itself. It was with difficulty and regret that I was 
forced to cut the submitted material way, way down to fit. I 
expect everyone to be unhappy with what I left out, but there 
was nothing else to do. Even so, I revised the book's structure 
to accommodate a full chapter of expertise written by you and 
others, presented as a sort of written roundtable discussion. 

I attribute the experience to sheer generosity and enthusiasm 
for the business. I only hope that all the work you and others 
did is rewarded by some good exposure. Royalties aside, the 
best reason for this book to do well would be to benefit the 
generous pros who contributed to it. 

SB: What is next for Brad Hill?

BH: My SEM Weblog at Weblogs, Inc. (http://sem.weblogsinc.com) 
is a growing venture that I take great pleasure in operating. We 
are introducing two advertisers in July, and it's an exciting 
experiment in professional blogging. In the book realm, I am 
completing an encyclopedic volume about American classical 
music. My wife and I just bought a new home, and as I write this 
I am surrounded by unpacked boxes. So my work is cut out for me! 

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Scott Buresh is managing partner of Medium Blue Search Engine 
Marketing, an Atlanta-based company that works with clients all 
over North America. His articles have appeared in numerous 
publications, including SiteProNews, ZDNet, WebProNews, 
MarketingProfs, DarwinMag, PromotionData, Search Engine Guide, 
and SEO Today.  
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