When Google decided to acquire DoubleClick nearly a year ago, many in the search marketing industry were very concerned that Google now owned a SEO company – Performics. It would be a huge conflict of interest to have a organic search index and yet at the same time be making money providing a service that helps companies to improve their positioning in that index. When the acquisition was finally approved last month, Danny Sullivan wrote an open letter asking Google to do the right thing.
Late yesterday, Google decided to do the right thing. They will be splitting Performics into two divisions and will sell off the search marketing piece. There has been lots of good coverage on this breaking news so rather than recap it here, I thought I’d provide links to various places where you will see reports and commentary.
- Selling Performics Search Marketing (Official Google Blog)
- Google Lays Off ~300 DoubleClick Employees, Plans to Sell Performics (Google Blogoscoped)
- Google to Sell Off SEM Division of DoubleClick (Marketing Pilgrim)
- Google Selling Performics — Thanks, Google! (Search Engine Land)
- Google To Sell Off SEM Division of DoubleClick, Performics: Does Right By SEM Community (Search Engine Roundtable)
- Google Gets Out of the SEO Business (Search Engine Watch)
- Google To Sell Performics (TechCrunch)
I’m sure this is just a sampling of places where this has been covered. These happen to be be blogs I follow.
David Wallace, co-founder and CEO of SearchRank, is a recognized expert in the industry of search and social media marketing. Since 1997, David has been involved in developing successful search engine and social media marketing campaigns for large and small businesses.
