Chris Elwell may have been credited for making the SEO space, specifically the conference event side of things. He was responsible for acquiring Search Engine Watch, with Danny Sullivan back in 1997 or so while working at Internet.com and with Alan Meckler. In 1999, Search Engine Watch was doing well and they kicked off an SEO event with a conference in San Francisco. It had 250 or so people at the first event, including Google had a booth at that event.
We talked a bit about the various spin offs and acquisitions throughout the years and how the company became Jupiter Media. He said the highest number of attendees had over 6,000 attendees at the event. Then he and Danny Sullivan started a company named Third Door Media and the brands Search Engine Land and Search Marketing Expo. They bootstrapped the company in the early days and we discussed those early days. Mike Grehan, who I interviewed here, gave the company the domain name SearchMarketingExpo.com.
We then talked about Danny Sullivan’s departure from Third Door Media. He said from day one, Danny wanted to build a company that transcended him, which he did. Chris said he was not surprised by his departure, although I was. I did interview Danny Sullivan earlier on and here is that video of him stabbing in the back. We talked about him coming back to SMX and speaking as a Googler, maybe.
