About Mike Moran

Mike is an IBM Distinguished Engineer for OmniFind search software, which offers the security, scalability, and extensibility needed for enterprise search solutions. Prior to this position, Mike spent eight years in various positions at IBM's customer-facing Web site, ibm.com, most recently as the Manager of ibm.com Web Experience, where he led 65 information architects, Web designers, Webmasters, programmers, and technical architects around the world.

Mike is an expert in search marketing, search technology, publishing, Web personalization, and Web metrics, who regularly makes speaking appearances. Mike's previous appearances include Search Engine Strategies, AD:TECH, Consumer Reports WebWatch, OMMA East, and the Enterprise Search Summit. Mike also writes the Biznology newsletter and blog is the co-author of the best-selling Search Engine Marketing, Inc., and writes the search marketing column for Revenue Magazine.

In addition to Mike's broad technical background, he holds an Advanced Certificate in Market Management Practice from the Royal UK Charter Institute of Marketing. He is a member of the Search Engine Marketing Council of the Direct Marketing Association, and a charter member of the DMA's Interactive Marketing Advisory Board.

Mike worked at ibm.com from 1998 through 2006, pioneering IBM's successful search marketing program. IBM's Web site of over two million pages was a classic "big company" Web site that has traditionally been difficult to optimize for search marketing. Mike, working with Bill Hunt of Global Strategies International, developed a strategy for search engine marketing that works for any business, large or small. Moran and Hunt spearheaded IBM's content improvement that has resulted in dramatic gains in traffic from Google and other Internet portals. Their IBM Press book Search Engine Marketing, Inc., shows any business the steps to search marketing success. Both Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and paid search techniques are explained.

Mike managed numerous projects at ibm.com, including continual upgrades to the ibm.com search engine. Mike is an expert in search technologies, developing technology at IBM Research, Lotus, and other IBM groups over the years. He led the product team that developed the first commercial linguistic search engine in 1989 and has been granted four patents with two more pending. Mike developed the business model for search technology at ibm.com, justifying investment with the increased revenue from more customers finding what they are looking for. Mike introduced automatic categorization technology in 2001 and multifaceted search technology in 2003, as shown by the Training Finder.

Mike also developed Task-Based Navigation for IBM's site-wide redesign in 2004 and led the personalization of those tasks in 2005 and 2006. The ibm.com home page now shows a list of tasks that customers commonly need to perform—following those links gets customers to their goals far more frequently than in the past. Visitors from select IBM clients have their tasks personalized by industry and other characteristics to speed their task completion.

In addition to Mike's career, he is the co-author of the Life Planners newsletter, a free monthly e-mail that helps parents of disabled children to develop a Life Plan, or Letter of Intent, for their child's care when they are no longer able to provide care. Mike is married to author Linda Moran. Mike and Linda have four children, David, Madeline, Marcella, and Dwight.

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