Are there any wagers on time before SEL/SEW and SMX/SES merge? I can’t imagine Incisive sitting by and watching this happen for more than a year before making making a move to bring Danny back into the fold. It really doesn’t make a ton of sense for there to be two competing conference curcuits in this field in the long run.

LOL. This is the first headline that caught my eye on my first visit here. Do you think these corporations recognize brilliance when they see it? You’re assuming they had a clue that Danny was – pure and simple – the reason for the success.

When this first happened I commented at Search Engine Forums wherever Danny goes, there go the SEOs. I’m not even and SEO and I knew that.

What Incisive failed to realize was that the brand was as much about “Danny Sullivan” as it was about Search Engine Watch.

Perhaps that’s beacuse the “Danny” brand was much stronger in the US than in the UK?

Many of the early folks who posted at SEW did so because they respected Danny enough to want to engage him in conversation and solicit his opinion. Now they have just followed him to Search Engine Land, where he is reinforcing the “Danny Sullivan” brand. Danny has positioned himself well as the authoritative writer on SEO, and has years of exposure to back that up. I can’t think of anyone else in the industry with that same clout (who doesn’t work at a search engine, Matt Cutts springs to mind).

It seemed that Incisive had quite a lot of time to keep Danny in the fold and didn’t work hard enough to do so. I can’t imagine why he would go back to them, as if there’s one thing I have learned over the years, it’s that large corporations don’t learn that quickly from their mistakes. Especially when it comes to appreciating their people.