About me
I’m currently Features Editor at Search Engine Land and a moderator at Sphinn. I’m also working with Ignition Partners as an Entrepreneur in Residence. I write a lot. You may have seen me speak at the last conference you were at. Sometimes, when I have extra time, I consult, particularly on building online communities and customer engagement, a holistic approach to online marketing, and product strategy.
Contact me at vanessafox at gmail dot com.
You can also find me at these places:
Videos and podcasts
- adCenter interview: web analytics
- SEOMoz Whiteboard Friday: Blended Search
- GoodKarma: with Natala Menezes on Twitter
- GoodKarma with Rand Fishkin at SEOMOz
- With Matt Cutts and Mike McDonald: WebProNews - PubCon 2007
- GoodKarma: interviewing Nate Buggia of Microsoft’s Webmaster Center
- Reachd.com TV
- SEO Rockstars with Todd Friesen
- GoodKarma (Oct 2007)
- Cranky Geeks with John Dvorak
- with Lee Odden re: Zillow
- with Patrick C. Price (Switzerland)
- with Mike McDonald on WebProNews (SES San Jose 2007)
- with Lee Odden (SES San Jose 2007)
- Daily Searchcast (07/07)
- with Mike McDonald: SES NY 2007
- with Rand Fishkin: SES NY 2007
- with Rand Fishkin: SES Chicago 2006
- sitemaps.org announcement
- AMA podcast
- Searchpulse
- Good Karma (01/07)
- Click This
- with Matt Cutts
- All about Buffy with Danny Sullivan
- Good Karma (02/06)
Interviews
- with Lisa Barone on Bruce Clay’s blog
- Women of Internet Marketing interview
- Seattle 24×7
- Stone Temple
- Search Engine Land
- Seattle 24X7 - Google Webmaster Central
- Seattle 24X7 - with Amanda Camp
- with Rae Hoffman
- with Greg Niland
- with Smart IT Consulting
Selected writing
- Information Today magazine
- PEW Internet Study Finds Americans Turn to the Internet First for Answers
- The Promise of Natural Language Search
- The Anatomy of Google Personalized Search Results
- Leveraging Universal Search
- People Search
- Social Search
- Search Engine Land
- Geek Estate blog
- Zillow blog
- Google Webmaster Central blog
- Google blog
- Google Librarian Central
- .net magazine
- Sugarrae
- Matt Cutts
- developer.mozilla.org
- Popgurls:Alias: season two premiere recap | Angel finale recap
Some random press
- LA Times
- London Times
- USA Today
- Wall Street Journal
- Search Engine Land
- Business 2.0
- Wall Street Journal
- ComputerWorld
- GigaOm
- Practical Commerce
Where I’ve been speaking
- Web 2.0 Expo: SEO Friendly Web Application Design | Startup Metrics 101 (San Francisco)
- Domain Roundtable (San Francisco)
- Search Marketing World (Dublin)
- Search Marketin Now Webinar: Engaging With Customers Through Social Networking
- Search Marketing Expo West (Santa Clara)
- Search Marketing Now Webinar: SEO Strategies for Large Web Sites: Using Content to Build Links and to Drive Traffic
- SEMpdx Hot Seat (Portland)
- WebmasterWorld Pubcon 2007 (Las Vegas)
- BlogWorld Expo (Las Vegas)
- SMX Local and Mobile (Denver)
- Search Engine Strategies 2007 (San Jose)
- Gnomedex 2007
- BlogHer Chicago 2007
- Search Marketing Expo Advanced Seattle 2007
- WebSearch University Philadelphia 2007
- SES NY 2007
- BlogHer Business NY 2007
- SES London 2007
- SES Chicago 2006
- Pubcon Vegas 2006
- SES San Jose 2006
- Alliance of Technology and Women: Enhancing Communication
- SEW Live Seattle 2006
- Pubcon Boston 2006
- SES NY 2006
a) no hot picks? I find it difficult to express my dissapointment.
b)”And his web site ranked for the most curious things. Until one day.” - and then? What happened, i’m have a “Lost” anxiety attack now.
c)I cant decide whether the look in the seagulls eye is one of deep thought or an evil squint.
nothing else.bye.
Well, I suppose we’ll see what happens and then I can update the story.
[...] About [...]
HAHAHA ..
DaveN
You took the pic at the top….. impressive - give up the day job and become a photographer!
Hi Vanessa, I think I need to get out more. (on the web). I just found your blog… guess I’m slow. I’ve never met you as I don’t do the conference thing, and just now know what you look like. You’re quite the little cutie, huh?…much cuter than Matt. LOL Nope; I didn’t do a search for nude pics either, but found your Wiki bio page. I frequent Matt’s blog and now have another one to read from time to time. Keep up the good work for your employer.
[...] About me [...]
Holy $#! , you were easy to find, just as you said. I checked out your site and went to some video interview where some freaky drooling bald guy was interviewing you. He looks like the stalker type. He acted like he knew what you were talking about but by his expressions it looks like he’s just checking you out and has no clue what you are saying. You were wearing the same damn hoodie that you had on at the bar (limoncello, yummm) I can’t believe that. I have no idea what this blog crap is about and don’t understand the techy stuff you write about. I really enjoyed talking to you and your friend at the bar at…… Drop me an e-mail some time, it’s your turn to buy the drinks.
Welcome to Seattle Vanessa!!!
vanesa i am your biggest fan and you and zac are so cute together but the pics i saw after hawaii i didnt know if you guys were still together so are you?
[...] About me [...]
i am planning on attending SES in SJ. can you recommend speakers / tracks to attend (or those not to attend?) my main goal is to develop a basic SEO strategy for all SUGF.com company websites (organic and paid). thx. matt
Hi Matt,
If you are looking for a basic strategy for both organic and paid, you can probably hit all the foundational sessions at SES and get some great info. The trouble you may run into is that those sessions may run against each other. How basic you go depends on how experienced you are now. Intro to search marketing is a great foundational session, for instance, if you’re new to the field.
The universal search session looks interesting, as does the benchmarking session. An Analytics session would probably be good to pick up also. The landing page optimization session looks like it might be pretty interesting too.
Some of your choices should depend on the type of site you have also. If you have a dynamic site, or a lot of images, etc., you might check sessions on those things to get some tips.
And then, I’m always a fan of the site clinics.
See you there!
Vanessa,
You crack me up. To be so powerful in the SEO community and have such a lax attitude is refreshing.
I was at SES San Jose (I was the bald dude in the second row when you were talking to two ladies in the front row just before Marissa’s keynote) and found your presentation very comical (though not too helpful) and I just had to find out if the URL you listed at the end of your presentation was real or just more quirkiness. To my surprise, it’s real and that makes you even more quirky.
Thanks for the comic relief, it’s nice to have a lighter side to the industry.
P.S. I was accidentally an ass to Matt Cutts . . . ooops. He was looking for a power plug and I denied him–only to realize later who he was. Open mouth insert foot.
Payne
[...] Another example of using this level of reputation management and transparency comes from the corporate world. Vanessa Fox, once a director for Google’s webmaster tools teams who is now working for Zillow, was fairly popular in search engine and webmaster circles. Someone noticed that one SEO was ranking within Google for her nude name and clued her in. There weren’t any pictures, just a link and a short paragraph. It was just enough for the search engines to grab hold of. So she played along and went off and took it a step further. She registered VanessaFoxNude.com. Vanessa didn’t post any pictures that one might expect to see on such a domain, but rather offered a personal blog of her own thoughts and opinions. She explains a little more on her about page. [...]
[...] use my blog and say Happy Birthday to Vanessa Fox sometime this month? Vanessa has the best “About Page” I’ve seen in a blog and she’s taught me a few things . To that I say thank you [...]
I need some help on this one.
Why the heck do all the sites that point to us rank higher on the query than we do? Also, why is freakin’ Vanns.com at the top of the SERPs when we have a zillion sites pointing to our site right now?
Here is the query and my 4 year old is bugging me to get off the computer so I am not going to URL encode the sucker.
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2006-23,GGLG:en&q=Sharp LC-42D72U
Help!!
David
Hi Vanessa,
Nice to meet you at SMX Local in Denver! You gave the best presentation at the show. Thanks for all your good advice about starting up online communities and making my way into the search world…. you rock!
-Brett
[...] Local Mobile was freaking awesome! I met Vanessa Fox, who wanted a t-shirt but we didn’t have any her size. And yes unfortunately we have not had [...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-l-pozner/murdoch-puts-stake-throug_b_68707.html
[...] was able to meet up with Jim Boykin (www.jimboykin.com), Vanessa Fox (www.vanessafoxnude.com), Neil Patel (www.pronetadvertising.com), and a bunch of other Internet [...]
Hey Butt,
Me and Karen were checking out your site and i went to show her the one from Aunt Brandy and no such blog!!! Where’s our family famous tats???
Love ya get back to us when you can get away from Buffy!!!
Vanessa, Where do you live?
[...] Webmaster Central Blog and Search Engine Land. To see her LONG list of credentials, check out her About Me page. Her posts on her personal blog, however, tend to be less professional and mostly [...]
You mentioned thegoat blog at SMX. Just wanted to send you the link to the SteepandCheap Daily Dose emails that are written by Rocky, the same guy who writes thegoat. They are hilarious. http://www.steepandcheap.com/steepcheap/fuel_your_addiction.html
You have to subscribe to the Daily Dose
Enjoy!
Vanessa I saw in some on the conferences you were amazing your presentation skills are pretty good and I really enjoed all your presentations.
ill put a request for you to add me in your facebook profile. I just read how to be a friend of you
very cool. ill do my best to be at it
http://www.vanessafoxnude.com/2007/07/24/how-to-be-my-friend/