Mihai Aperghis (@mihaiaperghis), an SEO we reference here from time to time, is also a Google Product Expert and attended the EMEA Product Experts Summit a few weeks ago. He has written this blog post and I am posting it here as a super rare guest post on this site. Why? (1) Mihai rocks and (2) this site is about community and Product Experts are the essence of the Google community. I (Barry) personally was unable to attend due to a conflict. Note: Mihai did not ask for a link or a mention, but I added this so it is clear that he wrote this.
Summer’s going by rather fast, but one event that’s already come and gone has been this year’s edition of Google’s PE Summit for the EMEA region. It took place on June 20th and 21st in Zürich, Switzerland, and was hosted at Google’s own offices as well as in a virtual format, similar to previous years.
As a quick refresher, the PE program is closely tied to Google’s Help Community forums, where people outside Google (non-Googlers, if you will) can volunteer their knowledge and experience to answer whatever issues and questions users have about a specific Google product. I’ve been a PE in the Google Search Central English community for quite a few years now, and as such, I’ve had the opportunity to attend several of these invitation-based summits.
While, like most such events, this one was not focused on Search, quite a few sessions were dedicated to SEO-related topics, from general web search updates and upcoming features to more specific discussions about Google Shopping or Google Business Profile. Since most of the sessions are under NDA, I won’t be able to go into specifics, but I can share some general takeaways and impressions from the event.
The Event
The first day of the summit was mainly for the PEs to get to know each other better and meet some of the Googlers, without any sessions taking place. This was done mainly at one of the 25 Hours hotels in Zürich, which also hosted most of the attendees. It included a lunch where PEs were able to mingle and chat with each other, as well as an afternoon trip to the Google offices for a tour and a welcome dinner.
It was great to see some familiar faces, including Dave, a fellow Search Central PE and contributor to the SEO community in general, as well as meet new PEs and Community Managers from other languages.
The second day was when the actual sessions took place. The day started early directly at the Google offices, with a breakfast and a welcome session that included some information and updates about the program, as well as some updates regarding Gemini, YouTube Shopping, and Google Pixel. After this, the PEs were assigned to breakout rooms, where they could attend their preferred product sessions — 5 in total throughout the day, with a lunch break in between and a closing session at the end.
