Former Google Search Reps Start Search Quality Alliance

A new site just launched under the name Search Quality Alliance, which is currently made up of five companies that offer SEO and web services. The big punch line here is that these five companies are all founded by former Google Search Quality representatives.

As it states on the website:

Search Quality Alliance is a group of former Google Search Quality team members who offer Search Engine Consulting Solutions on an international scale with local expertise.

From collaboration in international SEO projects, to Google & SEO workshops, to developing new tools including testing and sharing best practices, the Search Quality Alliance offers a range of SEO solutions.

Members of the alliance include people like Pedro Dias, Alfonso Verdugo, Ariel Lambrecht, Jonas Weber, Michael Schwarz and Sebastien Monnier.

Google’s search quality team oversees, as the name says, the quality of Google’s search results. The group includes everything from those involved in the ranking algorithm to spam fighting to dealing with webmaster issues.

We’ve seen Googlers leave Google to offer SEO and SEO-related services (our own Vanessa Fox is one example), and we’ve seen SEOs leave SEO to work at Google (Adam Lasnik is an example here). I’ve never seen a group of Googlers leave to form an alliance of companies offering SEO and web services.

Postscript: Ariel Lambrecht from the group tells us, for those who are wondering if there’s any pitch of inside knowledge:

We won’t be revealing any inside knowledge. That is ours and not to share to anybody. (We want to establish white hat practices in the market (as you can read in our mission statement), with initiatives like communication, training etc.