UnGagged Reviews 116

Good for making new contacts in seo world, 70percent lectures just theoretical outdated stuff

I'm disappointed this year. I was on Ungagged London two years ago and got very much actionable advise and insights on SEO - but this year was very different.

This year the conference was renamed to "SEO & Online Marketing" and now I know why: Only 50% of the talks were SEO related, rarely showed interesting new insights. So nothing really "ungagged" - things you could get everywhere else as well.

Of course, there were some very interesting talks, but if I pay 600€ I would expect to see MANY interesting talks!

Lunch was ok, there was no coffee expect in the coffee break! Would expect coffee throughout the day. Breakfast and coffee break just had biscuits, no sweets or croissants or anything else on the second day.

Not worth to attend another time. I thought of going to Vegas this November, but this definitly wont happen.

Fantastic first experience of an SEO event

I thoroughly enjoyed my first experience at an event like this. I don't remember seeing a bad presentation or bad speaker. I have learnt so much in a short space and would love to get involved once again in the future.

Thanks ungagged!

I have to say, I was expecting something quite different. UnGagged London 2018 was your typical conference in a typical London hotel. Sure, some speakers were interesting and bold, but overall, it was a plain conference, totally disconnected from the branding, which is what drove me to the event in the first place.

Therefore, I have to judge it by traditional conference standards. On that front, it was pretty vanilla. Catering was just decent, the rooms were OK but power sockets were hard to come by, coffee was not available throughout the whole day... it was just very average.

Overall the day was fine, but I think lacked the full value of the ticket price.

Firstly, my experience of getting to the venue and then once getting there to find I was on the wrong floor altogether despite signs was a foreshadowing of the overall organisation of the event. I had trouble locating the venue despite using Google Maps to get there (which isn't that helpful at the best of times.) Signs at the entrance of the hotel were not very clear and I found the hotel staff to be neglectful when wondering around looking lost.

Once I finally got to registration, there was no tag for me to pick up despite having a printed ticket with my name on, which meant I was late for the first talk and had to be ushered through over the top security, which I found to be quite intimidating over the course of the day. There were multiple instances where glaring and the constant feeling of being scrutinised did not make for a nice atmosphere.

I felt the quality of the food and refreshments was mediocre at best. My plate at lunch time did not look very appetising. The pudding however was great.

I'm confused as to why any portion of the talks wasn't allowed to be filmed, as I found most them pretty standard and didn't cause any feeling of necessary secrecy.

Whilst the quality of the talks was OK, I feel some of the titles/descriptions in the printed program did not fully match what was delivered. In some cases, I found the talks to be overly technical and advanced - something that wasn't preempted verbally or in any collateral before the event.

I wish I could say I came away from the event feeling awash with new knowledge, even though I did get a few snippets of value from some talks. Overall, I think there's a lot more that could be done to reflect the ticket price.

The day was okay - but didn't match the premium price tag attached to the ticket.

I have no doubt that the speakers are hugely knowledgable in their fields, but this did not necessarily shine through from their presentations. I think it was probably a case of trying to cover too many points in too little time, but they definitely lost the crowd and the talks became fairly dull and bland. I also felt that, on the whole, the knowledge level was fairly basic - understand that you need to cater to all abilities, but the expensive nature of the tickets implied to me that this was to be a more advanced conference and telling the audience to use keywords in their title tags definitely isn't an advanced nugget of info...

Stand out speakers were Jill Quick and Ross Gifford whose presentations were interesting and engaging and provided the only new takeaways of the day for me.

As an aside, I also think the security element was way too high - whilst the venue was nice, it felt a little OTT for our needs. Not being allowed to take video and being GLARED at every time you got your phone out to write a memo is less than ideal for a room full of marketeers. I also saw a waiter tell a guy off at lunch for picking up a roll and walking away without putting it on a plate... I mean, come on.

All in all, not one I think our agency will be rushing back to...

Attended day 2 of London 2018. Opening presentation (Bastian Grimm) no doubt contained tons of great stuff but he fired through it ludicrously fast to the point where I couldn't even write down key points. As a result, most of his slides were completely redundant as he insisted in clicking through them so quickly (and talking at machine-gun velocity).
Ditto Lukasz Zelezny's one - too many slides, rushed through. Classic case of two people who are experts but don't have decent presentation skills.
'SEO in a world without traffic' was OK but not something I feel warrants the premium of the Ungagged price.
On the more positive note, Ross Tavendale's content marketing presentation was spot on - well paced, well explained and tons of actionables.
All in all, not a conference I would bother with again.

It was my first time attending this type of conference and I was probably not the right target audience for it.

I have to admit that all the SEO stuff went over my head as I am more interested in the creative side and how to provide a great user experience rather than how many clicks my content is getting. But I do agree, you need click rates to measure if what you created is resonating with your audience, but this is not something I monetise. Different world for me, but great learning nevertheless.

Nothing bad to say about the conference itself, it was in a nice hotel, well organised, started on time, food was good and the sessions ran very smoothly.

So what was missing...??? Well... ETHICS, RESPECT and DEONTOLOGY.

I work for a large company that holds very high values, and I am ever so proud to be working for them now more than ever. I could not believe my ears when I heard that one speaker... Is this what the world of digital marketing is?

I heard some talks about GDPR and how to embrace it and make the most of it, and how we SHOULD CARE about our customers and their data... and I found this talk very positive and constructive. This session was after one of the morning session which disturbed me a bit... but this was NOTHING compared to the session I attended later on...

I listened through this ruthless and absurd session that gave me goose bumps (not in the right way)... I was not only borderline legal but most importantly disrespectful and and just simply nasty. This is a pill I couldn't swallow really... I understand it is a tough world out there and you need to differentiate yourselves, but how can you talk about a customer in a way that undermines them, calling them stupid because they don't understand SEO and making them pay the high price for a service that requires a fraction of the time they should be spending... How can you slap bullsh*t jargon on a slide and lie to the face of your customer and call this a "strategy" that everyone should apply??? I thought it was a joke... But it wasn't, I was literally shocked... Was I the only one thinking that? I don't think so.

All I know is that I will never hire an SEO company in my life! Black hats, white hats, money hats were terms that I've never heard before but the fact that UnGagged is putting these people on stage is not giving this event a good reputation in my opinion.

I felt ashamed of being associated with such event just because of that ruthless, dishonest and disrespecful session (sorry about the others - no hard feelings).

Best SEO Show Around! The hardest part was deciding which seminar topic to attend. Great, actionable information given. It was my first time and I'll be going every year from now on!

I learned so many things from this conference in Vegas. I met just as many amazing people that were so willing to share their resources and secrets with me that I am now able to start implementing into our clients SEO strategies. I plan on going to London's next year!

A conference that is worth your time. Valuable sessions and great networking opportunities!

It was ok, not the best year although the view was beautiful there venue had no chairs to sit and eat lunch and staff were very rude. My 5th year however last one.

I'm a frequent conference attendee although this was my first time at Ungagged. I got talking to a couple of other first-timers there and the general feeling was that we wished we'd picked up on this event earlier.

Kinda surprised at the reviews that said it was basic or you could find the information anywhere. I've been in the industry for years and seo conferences are all starting to blur into each other. Almost every speaker comes out with the same old nonsense that's been paraphrased from the google guidelines. There should be a drinking game whenever a speaker comes out with "content is king" "backlinks are dead" "make sites for people not search engines". Yawn.

I was interested in seeing what a closed-door conference looked like. I was sceptical if this actually meant I'd hear anything new or controversial but I wasn't disappointed. The speakers didn't hold back at all. Sure, they covered the basic stuff too but I loved the way they felt free to give you their "unofficial" opinion. There were lots of moments when someone would go talk about a workaround they found, or something they were trying out, just lots of off-the-record snippets that you wouldn't hear in other conferences.

I had lots of useful tips, ideas and concepts that made me want to go back and start playing with them immediately. The venue was lovely but my only grumble is that it's housed in an enormous building, so there were some long walks to one of the session rooms or to get outside. Other than that, it all ran pretty smoothly, the food was great and everyone was friendly. The speakers were eating with the attendees at the networking events and were very approachable, particularly after a couple of drinks.
This is what the edgier conferences used to be like before they got corporate and "safe". Glad to see someone's still carrying the torch for all us old sceptics and reprobates, I'll definitely be back.

Came all the way to london 14hrs+ flight to attend ungagged and it was really waste of time. All they told you is basic marketing stuff which is not worth 1474 (price i paid for event & Masterclass). I was certainly expecting much more from ungagged and i told them about this on my first day when i attended mastermind class. Speakers were credible but they were holding back information and not going into details. If you were just starting out maybe its good for you however if you are making money in even higher five figures a month i won't suggest them. I must say ungagged was so crappy that i left the event on 1st day at lunch time since it was just waste of time and didn't attended the second day.

Very well organized, with good mix of experienced speakers. The fact that the speakers are not censored in what they can say makes for some really insightful and educational sessions. Definitely worth going if you want to know what is currently working in SEO

UnGagged 2017 may well have been the best conference I have ever attended (and I have been to quite a few since 5 years). The venue was perfect, the quality of the "content" was even better than last year and the organization overall was very good. Looking forward to UnGagged 2018 :)

Loved the content. I am a novice and there was a lot of information that was very technically, but I took down notes and will research the things that I didn't fully understand. I took a lot of great information way with me so I achieved my goal.

The speakers were excellent I love the No BS concept!

Great event.
Most of the speakers where great - 1-2 could have performed better, provided more quality.

Great value and learned some valuable insights.

on a side note, loved the beer, the food was nice (portions could have been bigger) and refreshments throughout were great. Nice laid back event.

Met some great people as well!

Strong conference, good speakers. Value proposition of Ungagged was not really different from other digital marketing conference, but it was still a good confernce. Would go again.