Warning - this post is somewhat personal with a little bit of search thrown in. If you're not into travelogues, my apologies. We'll return to our regularly scheduled business-of-search blogging tomorrow.

On Sunday, July 22nd, Mystery Guest accompanied me on a 3-day, jam-packed trip to the Bay Area. The trip included visits with some very smart people in the search world and generous tours of both Yahoo! & Google. I'll walk through chronologically to make things easy :)

Day 1: San Jose, Buck's Restaurant, Laura Lippay & the Missing Punchline

We flew out of Seattle on a surprisingly busy Sunday morning, landing in San Jose around 11am. We rented a car (a spotlessly boring grey Chevrolet) and drove to Woodside (one exit from Sand Hill Road) for lunch at Buck's. The service was great, the food was decent and some kids outside spent 20 minutes chasing around a tiny frog - proof that the definition of fun hasn't changed in 5,000 years, and probably never will (even in Silicon Valley).

We stayed at the San Francisco Fairmont - a gorgeous hotel at the top of the hill overlooking the San Francisco Bay. The hotel was started in 1905, damaged slightly in 1906 and finished construction in 1907, so they were celebrating their 100 year anniversary. Even if you don't stay there, I highly recommend a visit.

Sunday night we met up with Laura Lippay and her fianceè, Chris, an insanely talented ad copy writer. Laura's currently hiring for her SEO team at Yahoo!, so if you're interested in working in a very prestigous SEO environment, apply soon. Laura and Chris took us to Punchline for a night of a dozen or more rotating stand-up comics that ranged from the very funny to the "please, just get off the stage, my eyes are bleeding!" On the plus side, unlike our last visit with Chris & Laura, we managed not to lose any of our posessions.

Rand & Laura outside the Punchline Comedy Club

Day 2: Yelp & the Stoppelmans, Jessie Strichiola, the SF MOMA & dinner with Chris Null

Monday morning we were up bright and early for a meeting with the crew at Yelp. Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp's founder, took us on a tour of their jam-packed offices on Mission Street. We spent a little over an hour discussing SEO for the site, while Mystery Guest stared at Jeremy's brother, Michael, who, apparently, was voted "Googler most likely to become a male model" during his previous stint there. Hilariously, it's mission accomplished, as he now sports Yelp's form-fitted tank tops.

Rand with Buffy the Vampire Slayer at Yelp (this one's just for you, Vanessa)

After some well deserved shopping at H&M, we headed out to Zazie for lunch with Jessie Stricchiola of Alchemist Media (and her charming dog, Spencer). I can honestly say that not only was the food some of the best I've had in the city; the company was, too. You won't find a more genuine, sweet, and intelligent woman in the search industry. I often say nice things about the people I spend time with, but Jessie's on another level - MG and I both agreed that we've got friend-crushes.

Rand, Jessie & Spencer, outside Zazie in San Francisco

The afternoon was spent at the SFMOMA, admiring the Matisse exhibit. Remarkably, the museum had assembled dozens of major Matisse sculptures and paired them with his paintings, sketches and the work of sculptors from whom he drew inspiration, namely Rodin. I personally loved the exhibit because it showed a master of art in a very amateur, exploratory style. Matisse was certainly conscious that his scuplting was not nearly at the level of his paintings, but continued to pour months and years into them out of a nagging desire to learn and grow. I've always been impressed by leaders who can humbly go outside their comfort zone to try something new and possibly even fail. It seems to me that it requires great strength of character to take this sort of risk.

That evening, we dined with Chris Null, owner of the Filmcritic.com movie reviews website. SEOmoz had done a bit of work with Chris, and our own Matt Inman, even created the new look & feel for the site:

Chris charmed us instantly with rigatoni & mushrooms, but it was his delightful daughter, Zoe, who stole the show.

Day 3: Tim Mayer & Yahoo!, a Kwik stop at the Kwik-E-Mart & an afternoon at Google

Tim Mayer (whose blog is still quiet), whom Mystery Guest described as having the most charmingly perplexing accent around, invited us to Yahoo! for a morning tour. We got to see where the magic of Site Explorer & Yahoo! Search happen and meet some terrific folks from Tim's team. Tim was even kind enough to drive us over to the Yahoo! store, where we grabbed some terrifically cool gear, including a button that will be sure to make it onto Whiteboard Friday tomorrow.

Tim and the Y! Search crew have some very cool new stuff to announce around SES, so keep your ears perked. They've been working hard and really listening to what webmasters want. And, with 2 billion searches a month, a new CEO and new products launching every week (including the very cool YSlow for Firebug), there's a lot of reasons to have your eye on Yahoo!.

Mystery Guest at Yahoo! in Sunnyvale

Seeing as we wrapped up with Tim in the morning, we had some free time before our lunch at Google, so we headed over to the Mountain View Kwik-E-Mart to revel in Simpsons-mania. For my birthday, MG had taken me to the one in Seattle (right across from the Space Needle), but we both agreed that the Mountain View location was 10X better.

Rand outside the Qwik-E-Mart in Mountain View

We arrived at Google around 1pm and had our car valet-parked (a great new feature at the 'plex). Matt Cutts, Brian White, Aaron D'Souza and several other folks from the search quality team treated us to a fantastic lunch (including flawlessly cooked duck breast) and a tour of the many wonders of the Googleplex. The strong focus on community, fun and the environment certainly makes Google stand out from any of the other office complexes I've visited. Growing up in the Seattle area, I practically lived on the Microsoft campus a few summers with a childhood friend, and from what I've seen, Google's in a whole different world.

The Googleplex

Before arriving, Matt had asked me to prepare a presentation for the Google search quality team. I've signed an NDA with Google, so I can't go into specifics, but I will say that my slides centered on issues that I often see webmasters and companies struggle with. To Google's credit, they listened intently (though Mystery Guest nodded off a bit) and we had some great Q+A afterwards.

As we left Google, I couldn't help but think how amazing it was that, even under what must be an incredible workload, Matt & co. found time to listen to some concerns from the webmaster community. I feel truly humbled to represent my field and hope that I can continue to follow in the footsteps of the giants on whose shoulders I've stood.

We arrived at the airport a bit early, but found to our dismay that our flight was delayed. Luckily, both of us had brought great books and the San Jose airport has a spiffy T-Mobile wifi connection, too. When we finally got home at midnight, I wrote a blog post and hit the hay. 3 days of non-stop excitement makes even me tired... whew...

It was an honor to be invited by both Tim & Matt and I hope that the trend of increased communication between search marketers and serach engineers continues. For SEOs who've been in the business for a few years, I think we can all agree that interconnectedness between the disciplines has been good for everyone - from searchers to marketers to business owners and search engine shareholders :)