Search Headlines – Danny Departs, Elisabeth Steps Up

The Day Has Come; Danny Sullivan Leaves SEW

If you’ve been paying attention at all, you know that today will be Danny Sullivan’s last day at Search Engine Watch.

In honor of the day, Danny has penned a farewell post (check out the graphic of SEW back in 1997. Hellooo, ugly.) to his readers to keep them up-to-date on his plans and to once again explain his reason for leaving. As many times as we’ve heard the story, it’s still not easy to hear.

We now know that Elisabeth Osmelowski will be taking over Danny’s role as Managing Editor at Search Engine Watch. She commented over in the SEW forums about what today means for her and it’s expected we’ll hear more from her later in the day. Here’s hopin’.

If you want to say goodbye to Danny, a thread has been started over at Search Engine Watch. However, let’s remember that Danny is moving to Search Engine Land, he’s not dying. Let’s try and keep those comments meaningful, but upbeat. Got it?

UPDATE: Elisabeth speaks!

Yahoo! Swoops in to Answer Your Questions

I’m sure you’ve heard that after the first of year you’ll no longer be able to submit your questions for answering over at Google Answers, but don’t fret my loyal readers, Yahoo! has already valiantly come to your aid.

Wasting no time, the Yahoo! Search blog has formally invited all Google Researchers, question askers, and community fanatics to use Yahoo! Answers for all their community answering needs. Well played, Yahoo.
Yahoo! got slack for not taking full advantage of this social community crazy when it first showed itself, but I think they’ve come along way since them. Though released later, Yahoo! Answers has been far more successful than Google Answers because it focused on what users were really interested in – the community aspect of question answering. Google tried to charge people to get information, whereas Yahoo! welcomed them with open arms. This a big win for Yahoo.

(The best headline for the closing of Google Answers: TechCrunch’s Google Has No Answers. Heh.)

AskCity Coming December 4th

A couple days late on this one (I’m useless, I know), but Barry Diller revealed that InterActiveCorp, Ask.com’s parent company, will release a new local information service on Monday. The service is nicknamed AskCity (doesn’t this sound like it should be an Xbox 360 game?) and, according to Barry Diller, it:

"Integrates maps, integrates events, integrates all of these different attributes that we have got in the best thing you will be able to use in a city to do things."

Okay, okay, for those of you thinking that ‘sentence’ made no sense, you’re right, but I’ve had a rough week and it made me laugh. [You know, I had to read it twice to figure out why it wouldn’t make sense to some people. I think like Barry Diller apparently. Send help. –Susan]

Barry, however, was able to coherently note that AskCity will combine functionalities of Ask.com, Evite, CitySearch, Ticketmaster and other IAC properties, so it sounds like this will be a fine-tuned local media service that will strengthen the Ask.com engine. But that’s a guess at this point.

We also hear that once AskCity is released, Ask.com will undergo a major update, as will the Ask.com homepage, so that’s something to watch.

Fine, twist my arm, here’s another fun Barry quote regarding AskCity:

“I have not seen anything that anyone is doing that is anywhere near it.”

Heh. I’ll never get a job working at Ask now, will I?

November Newsletter

The end of another month means it’s time for another edition of the highly coveted (I can dream, right?) Bruce Clay, Inc. SEO Newsletter. Look excited, people!

This month Susan takes a look at the Search Engine Family Tree as part of our Back to Basics article, while I take a deeper look into Ad:Tech’s Merging Web Analytics with Email Marketing Metrics to Increase Performance panel (yowsa, that’s a mouthful). And as always, there’s lots of juicy search news and tidbits that you’re definitely not going to want to miss.

If you’re a faithful newsletter subscriber (and Susan loves you all very, very much), keep your eyes glued to your inbox because it will be arriving shortly. If you haven’t yet subscribed, go do it!

[Competitive Blogger Plea: If you love me, please make sure you go read this month’s feature article entitled When Web Analytics and Email Marketing Collide. (Make sure to click through from your email!) It’s very important to my fragile ego that I beat out Susan in the my-article-got-more-clicks-than-yours-did ‘game’. Please? I’ll give you a hug in Chicago? ]

Fun Finds

AOL Gives Away Free Movies. Let’s hear it for AOL. That’s way better than them giving away all your personal information.

The Yahoo! Tech blog gives users a way to protect the sanctity of their email address when signing up for one-time offers – use a disposable email instead of your real one. The 10 Minute Mail is a free, easy to set up, email account that will self destruct just 10 minutes after you create it. I’m having total Inspector Gadget flashbacks. Wowsers!

Lisa Barone is a writer, content marketer & VP of strategy at Overit Media. She's also a very active Twitterer, much to the dismay of the rest of the world.

See Lisa's author page for links to connect on social media.