Search Engine Land’s Community Corner: Staff changes at SEL, a new Google Twitter account to follow, and an awards reminder

This week brings a warm hello and a fond goodbye within the Search Engine Land team, along with another channel to stay up to date on Google search info, the Search Engine Land Awards and more honors for the search marketing community.

Search Engine Land staff changes

Good night and good luck, Jess

Jessica Thompson has been with Search Engine Land for the past five years, as our Features Editor. She has been an incredibly valuable team member, working with our contributors and helping to shape the voice of our featured content. We will miss her dearly as she embarks on her next career move, which will be building a digital marketing agency, Prewett McCarthy Marketing. We look forward to watching her continue to grow and are thrilled she remains a colleague in our industry.

I asked Jessica to share her parting thoughts with the community:

My years at Third Door Media have been invaluable to my professional development. Getting to work directly with some of the best minds in the industry to produce great thought leadership content has been very rewarding, and it’s an opportunity for which I will always be grateful. I’ve also found it genuinely inspiring to work at a company with so many brilliant women in leadership positions.

I look forward to the challenges and rewards that come with owning and building a business, and I am thrilled to be starting this new chapter in my career. But I will always cherish my time at Third Door, and I will miss the incredible staff and columnists that made working here a joy.

Welcome Debra Mastaler

Debra Mastaler joins our editorial team as Features Editor, and we couldn’t be more excited to have her! Many in the industry will already be familiar with this veteran search marketer (and link building expert). Debra has been a de facto team member, as much of the community has, through her contributions to Search Engine Land, as well as through her top-notch Link Building Bootcamp sessions at our Search Marketing Expo (SMX) events every year. Join us in welcoming her officially to the Third Door Media team!

Debra seconded the emotion:

I am happy to officially be part of the Third Door Media team. I’ve been involved with Search Engine Land and Search Marketing Expo as a contributor and speaker for many years, this just makes it official! I am honored to be part of such a great group of people and look forward to working with our many talented contributors.

A new way to follow Google announcements

Google’s Public Liaison for Search, Danny Sullivan, has a new Twitter account where he’ll be posting updates and announcements — @searchliaison. He announced this on Twitter and recommends the community follow for updates and announcements from the search team.

I'll retweet here anything I share there. I'll also likely do follow-up replies from this account. Plus, I'll still be sharing some minor things here. But larger issue stuff, @searchliaison will have the updates.

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) January 26, 2018

The first explainer from the new account:

Some have noticed the Google Assistant wouldn’t respond for “Who is Jesus.” This wasn’t out of disrespect but to ensure respect. Some Assistant replies come from the web. It might not reply in cases where web content is more vulnerable to vandalism & spam. Our full statement: pic.twitter.com/7iu1D8FEEK

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) January 26, 2018

The Search Engine Land Awards are open for submissions!

Reminder: The 2018 Search Engine Land Awards are currently accepting entries (early entries close March 31, final deadline is April 13, 2018). This year’s theme is “Celebrating the Power of Search” — so flex your muscles and submit your SEO and SEM campaigns for the chance to showcase your superpowers to our industry colleagues!

Get to know your search colleagues

Barry Schwartz continues his “Honor an SEO/SEM” series at his blog, and this (and last) week’s honored nominees included: Larry Markovitz, Annie Cushing, Pierre Far, Dawn Anderson, Danny Goodwin, Bruce Clay, Akvile DeFazio, Mike Blumenthal, Susan Hallam and David Harry. Learn why these fine folks have been nominated by the community and keep up with the ongoing series here.

Have some industry or community news you want to share? Drop us a note at [email protected]!