Vanessa Fox is the author of the critically acclaimed Marketing in the Age of Google: Your Online Strategy IS Your Business, 2nd Edition (Wiley, May 2012), which has been called the "search marketing bible" by technology leaders.
She is the founder and CEO of Nine By Blue, which provides education and training, custom reporting, and strategic consulting for organizations to assist them in maximizing audience engagement and customer acquisition through organic search.
A sought after speaker, Vanessa has traveled the globe discussing the evolution of how we search for and consume information. She writes regularly about the search engine industry, searcher behavior, and technical site architecture for a variety of publications including Search Engine Land, O'Reilly Radar, and MSN Business on Main.
Vanessa previously created Google's Webmaster Central, which provides both tools and community support to help website owners improve their sites with an eye towards gaining more customers from organic search. She was instrumental in the sitemaps.org alliance of Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft Live Search. Seattle Business Monthly has called her a "cyberspace visionary."
Fox has also been an entrepreneur-in-residence with Ignition Partners and served as an advisor for several startups.
In additional to her writing, speaking, and consulting, Fox also hosts the live weekly podcast Office Hours and posts regularly to Facebook (like her) and Twitter (follow her) on a variety of technology and search related subjects.
Given her busy speaking schedule, she is highly skilled at navigating airport security. A California native, Vanessa resides in Seattle.
Recent Posts | All O'Reilly Posts
Vanessa blogs at:
http://radar.oreilly.com
http://strata.oreilly.com
Search Notes: Why Google's Social Analytics tools matter
July 05 2011
In the latest Search Notes: Google Plus got all the publicity, but Google's Social Analytics tools and new interface elements are also notable. read moreGoogle Correlate: Your data, Google's computing power
June 06 2011
Google Correlate is a new tool in Google Labs that lets you upload state- or time-based data to see what search trends most correlate with that information. Here's a look at how it works and what you can do with it. read moreSearch Notes: Connecting Google's dots
June 01 2011
In the latest Search Notes: Thoughts on how Wallet could connect to other Google services; a new tool to correlate your own data with search results; international search share; an easy way to remove your content from Google's view. read moreSearch Notes: Trying to understand Facebook's whisper campaign
May 13 2011
In the latest Search Notes: A look at the curious campaign against Google's Social Circle, the Chromebook is an I/O highlight, and Google Goggles hints at a new kind of search. read moreSearch Notes: The high cost of search market share
May 06 2011
In the latest Search Notes: Bing is going all out to claim more market share, Google News' personalization features could create an echo chamber, and Osama Bin Laden's death creates a search frenzy. read moreSearch Notes: Search and privacy and writing robots
April 23 2011
In the latest Search Notes: Yahoo extends its logging to 18 months, the practical utility of "do not track" is questioned, Bing gains a bit of search share in the UK, and writing robots stake a claim in the journalism domain. read moreSearch Notes: More scrutiny for Google, more share for Bing
April 15 2011
In the latest Search Notes: Courts continue their interest in Google while Bing edges its way up in market share. Plus: Yahoo BOSS relaunches. read moreSearch Notes: The future of advertising could get really personal
March 30 2011
In the latest Search Notes: A look at how Google is using its data to make even more predictions; Yahoo and Bing continue to evolve their search experiences; and a look at how search could change advertising and help a few other industries along the way. read moreSearch Notes: Google and government scrutiny
March 24 2011
In this edition of Search Notes: Google continues to be a top traffic source, governments and courts want to know more about Google's methods, and AllTheWeb takes a final trip to the great Internet in the sky. read moreSearch Notes: The future is mobile. And self-driving cars
March 10 2011
In the latest edition of Search Notes: How Foursquare 3.0 could shape personalization and local search, and a look at Google's mobile search dominance. Plus: self-driving cars, just because they're amazing. read moreSearch Notes: Google targets "content farms"
March 03 2011
There was one big story in search last week: Google's move to purge low-quality "content farm" material from its search results. Here's a look at the impact, the response, and what site owners should address. read moreSearch Notes: Paid links don't pay off
February 22 2011
In the first installment of our weekly Search Notes: Paid links don't yield good results for J.C. Penney and Forbes, Bing makes slight gains in market share, a new Chrome extension lets you enact your own blacklist, and Google adds more social signals. read moreAugust 10 2010
This Smithsonian Commons project is a marriage of government resources and the web's capabilities. It combines offline and online information, makes experts available in any topic you could want, provides global collaboration, and gives everyone access to valuable knowledge. And since it's driven by iteration and immediate feedback, the Commons… read moreGovernment Transparency: Using Search Data To Connect With Your Audience
April 13 2010
A couple of weeks ago at Transparency Camp, I gave a talk on using search data to help ensure that the information the organizations in attendance were opening up could be found by the right audiences. It's awesome that organizations like the Sunlight Foundation, Open Congress, and Follow the Money… read moreBuilding Searcher Personas For Greater Customer Engagement and Acquisition
October 23 2009
When we want to find more information about something, hear about something interesting from our friends, see a compelling television commercial, or need a local mechanic, chances are the first place we turn is the Google search box. Fifty percent of us in the United States use search engines every… read morePractical Tips for Government Web Sites (And Everyone Else!) To Improve Their Findability in Search
April 15 2009
In an earlier post, I said that key to government opening its data to citizens, being more transparent, and improving the relationship between citizens and government in light of our web 2.0 world was ensuring content on government sites could be easily found in search engines. Architecting sites to be… read moreTransforming the Relationship Between Citizens and Government: Making Content Findable Online
March 24 2009
Thursday on this blog, Congressman Honda asked, "how can congress take advantage of web 2.0 technologies to transform the relationship between citizens and government?" He noted that "A dramatic shift in perspective is needed before that need can be met. Instead of databases becoming available as a result of Freedom… read moreMaking Site Architecture Search-Friendly: Lessons From whitehouse.gov
January 22 2009
Guest blogger Vanessa Fox is co-chair of the new O'Reilly conference Found: Search Acquisition and Architecture. Find more from Vanessa at ninebyblue.com and janeandrobot.com. Vanessa is also entrepreneur in residence at Ignition Partners, and Features Editor at Search Engine Land. Yesterday, as President-elect Obama became president Obama, we geeky types… read moreRecent Posts | All O'Reilly Posts
Webcast: Moving Beyond the SEO Silo
April 24, 2012
More and more these days, user interaction with web sites begins with the search box on Google. In this webcast presentation you will learn: How building searcher personas can increase web site usability, customer engagement, and overall visitors...
Webcast: Top Technical Roadblocks Keeping Your Website from Being Seen by Searchers
May 02, 2012
You've architected your site to run flawlessly in Firefox and IE, but how well is it being crawled by the search engines? Building search-friendly code and infrastructure can open the door to millions of searchers looking for your products and services...
