The annual Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference, San Jose, CA. edition, came off last week in fine fashion with leading Bay area sponsor Google throwing the big party, code named The Google Dance. A key question is when will Seattle host its first major conference as the second Search capitol of the Western world? Yes, San Jose is the hub for Google’s HQ in Mountain View and Yahoo! in Sunnyvale, but consider Seattle’s growing Search footprint with Microsoft, Amazon, InfoSpace, Marchex, and the fact that Google Sitemaps aka Google Webmaster Tools (and now Google Webmaster Central), plus a large part of Google Video, Google Pack, and even more, all came out of Google Kirkland. Your editor garnered exclusive interviews with Google’s Vanessa Fox and Amanda Camp as well as Dr. Eric Schmidt in a private press conference. Watch these pages for special reports in the days ahead. [24×7]
AtomFilms Gets MTV’d for $200m
Who could forget Seattle’s pioneering start-up and wayward media son, AtomFilms, who departed to SFO after building Shockwave.com and AtomFilms.com into two of the Web’s leading entertainment sites? Not MTV Networks or parent company Viacom. They just acquired the atomizers, who have since added AddictingClips.com and AddictingGames.com to their portfolio. Sale price? A cool $200M. On Monday, MTV also announced a video syndication deal with Google who will splice video ads into the MTV clips. [24×7]
Time Magazine’s 50 Coolest Websites and the E-City
Farecast, Zillow, WhitePages.com and Pixsy, all of which have their roots in Seattle, have been named to Time Magazine ‘s 2006 List of the 50 Coolest Websites. Amazon.com, AmazonConnect and IMDB, the Internet Movie Database, were also honored. [24×7]
PRWeb Sold for $28M in cash and stock
PRWeb of Ferndale, Wash., has been acquired by Lanham-based Vocus, which make software for corporate communications and public relations. The transaction was for $20.8 million in cash and 494,543 shares of Vocus stock.
Vocus (NASDAQ: VOCS) says the staff of privately held PR Web, founded in 1997, will remain in Washington state.
PRWeb’s press releases are indexed by major search engines, distributed to thousands of news sites, including Google News and Yahoo News, and delivered through more than 20,000 online feeds, collectively reaching tens of millions of consumers and thousands of journalists daily. [24×7]
Marchex Launches More than 100 Enhanced Local and Travel-related Web Sites
Seattle-based Marchex has announced that it has launched enhanced versions of more than 100 local and travel-related Web sites across its network of more than 200,000 Web sites. This list of 100 Web sites includes several of Marchex’s hotel and restaurant Web sites. (Story in SiteCynic) [24×7]
Seattle’s SearchWrite Gets Local In Inside Entrepreneurship
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer spotlighted the top local search marketing tips that should be a part of every growing company’s marketing plan. Inside Entrepreneurship columnist Susan Schreter interviewed SearchWrite’s Larry Sivitz on everything from search optmizing Title tags for local visibility to which local directories to register with and how to test local pay-per-click. SearchWrite is a certified Google Advertising Firm [24×7]
