Good morning search marketers, do you know what Google's Public Liaison of Search does?
"I'm here to foster two-way communication with the Search team and anyone external who has concerns," Google's search liaison Danny Sullivan told Barry Schwartz in an interview at Google headquarters last week. If you don't know, Danny was Search Engine Land's founding editor, and he covered search for 21 years. His stab at retirement was cut short after a few months when he got a call from Google's head of search Ben Gomes about a new role with the Search team.
"Search is really important to everybody's lives. There's a lot of misunderstandings, a lot of misconceptions, about how it operates," Danny said of the appeal of the search liaison role. "There's also things previously I had been trying to say, Wouldn't it be good if [Google] did this [or that]. And now to be part of that process and maybe help shape some of the change, yeah, that was exciting."
"My role isn't to say nice things about Google….. My role is to understand what your issues are, if you have issues with Google. You don't have to water it down … and it's great when you can give me specific examples. I love that stuff….I go back to the Search team and say, This is something that's come up, this is why people are really concerned. Have we thought about XYZ, etc. etc.? And it's to get that two-way thing going," Danny explained in part one of Barry's two-part interview, which you can watch here.
In other news, the privacy-centric search engine DuckDuckGo has joined the W3C, saying it will contribute to "global standards with privacy in mind as part of our mission to raise the standard of trust online."
Read on for a Pro Tip on setting up Site Kit for WordPress and more.
Ginny Marvin
Editor-In-Chief
