Jeremy Zawodny: Yahoo Search Blogvangelist

Jeremy Zawodny is a Yahoo employee who once worked on the search side and now returns to it, as he explains more here:
New Job (Again).

Search is also one of the things Jeremy has touched on in his personal blog, with some of the best reading dings at Google and
even his own employer, at times.

That blog, he notes in explaining his new position, has had much to do with his move into the new role of improving search products, communication about search, gathering
feedback and recruiting people.

What I find most significant is that the move positions him as the first notable blogvangelist employed by a major search company.

Sure, Google has its own blog, launched in May. Yahoo has one as well,
launched in August. It’s more active than Google’s, completely focused on search and frankly
often times more interesting. But both remain corporate blogs. They don’t reflect the unfiltered views of an individual.

Microsoft has had this type of blogger personality in the form of Robert Scoble. He’s someone who works from Microsoft, is
vocal about things there but doesn’t necessarily follow the party line. He was also instrumental in pulling together Microsoft’s recent
Search Champs initiative.

As a long reader of Jeremy’s blog, he’s always been that way as well — a personality who speaks his mind, regardless of what his employer may think. With his new role in
search, we ought to hear more interesting firsthand accounts of someone on the frontline of the search
wars.

Meanwhile, will Google and others feel compelled to find their own search personalities to speak to the blogosphere? Google actually has the longest standing unofficial
spokesperson around, in the form of GoogleGuy. However, GoogleGuy has to date only participated in the forumsphere.

Search forums have been a key public relations front for all the search engines, given how search marketers will dissect any move and report on the latest findings through
them. Now blogs seem to be opening up as a new PR front to compete in.

A recent Google Blog entry did see GoogleGuy edge into the blog world for the first time.
However, he remains anonymous. Lifting the lid on his identity (an open secret among many involved in search marketing) might give Google a search personality of its own.

Postscript: Jeremy provides more thoughts and reactions into his new role: Honesty and Blogvangelism