Vanessa Fox Leaves Google for Zillow
Thursday, June 14th, 2007;
-- Andy Beal |
Google’s popular conference spokesperson and member of the Webmaster Central team, has announced that she is leaving the company to join real estate search company, Zillow.
Here’s an extract from her announcement…
For the last two years, I have had a fantastic time helping to build Google Webmaster Central. I have loved working with the (ever-expanding!) team, writing about search on the blog and for the help center, and designing features for the webmaster community. And speaking of the webmaster community, I have been lucky enough to have been able to meet them, get to know their challenges, and well, then there’s the drinking. There may have been a little of that too. Search is a fascinating industry and I am thrilled to have had the opportunity to create such exciting things in the space.
Now I have an all-new opportunity to work on the unique challenges of the vertical and local search space at Zillow. I’m moving on from webmaster central knowing that there’s a great team who care as much about this audience as I do and they’ve got exciting plans in store for the coming year. I’ll really miss working with my team, but I’m happy they’ve been getting out and meeting more of you and I know they’ve had a great time drinking with you too. I mean talking. Did I say drinking?
I’ll still be around in search. My company name may change, but I still plan to see you all online and at the bar, talking search and Buffy and mobile devices.
Good luck Vanessa, the SEO community appreciates all you have done for us, and we’ll always think of you when watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 
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June 14th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
wow. I wonder if she left b/c of $ or if she was just frustrated with the route the team is taking, particularly with regards to snitching on link sellers via webmaster central.
June 14th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Sounds like a great pick-up for Zillow.
June 14th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
All I can say is wow. Not at all the news I was expecting to see today. Vanessa’s name is so ingrained with Google it’s going to be hard to separate the two.
June 15th, 2007 at 9:25 am
It was not that long ago I watched a podcast of Vanessa chatting away about the benefits of working for GOOGLE. I think Zillow have done really well to get her.
We all wish her the best of luck.
June 17th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
[…] Here are some thoughts from around the net: I’m really sad to see her go, but the work she’s done has really helped webmasters and Google. In the years that Vanessa has been at Google, she’s helped to launch and improve the webmaster console, communicate policy and get feedback with the outside world, and bring search engines together on the Sitemaps standard. She’s done a bunch of things to make Google a better company and search engine. Matt Cutts Vanessa’s been a great resource for many webmasters plus overseen the huge and welcome growth of Google Webmaster Central, so it’s sad to see her go from that perspective. But the team has expanded in other ways, with her announcing yesterday that Susan Moskwa is joining Jonathan Simon as a webmaster trends analyst. They both watch forums, blogs and elsewhere to understand what site owners are concerned about. Danny Sullivan Google will miss her, because she developed into one of their public faces (ala Matt Cutts, and Adam Lasnik) that they could keep in the spotlight on a regular basis. Vanessa has done a great job of helping to humanize the search giant for webmasters, and always had a smile on her face, even when she was accosted by a troubled webmaster at every turn at Search Engine Strategies and other industry gatherings. Search Engine Watch Good luck Vanessa, the SEO community appreciates all you have done for us, and we’ll always think of you when watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Andy Beal […]
June 18th, 2007 at 8:48 am
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June 18th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
Wow… Good luck with her new career! I am sure Google will miss you!