• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, October 6, 2017

Google has hired Danny Sullivan, former journalist focused on search advertising and marketing and Third Door Media cofounder, to help educate the public about search, explore and explain issues that may arise with search, and take feedback from the public to help promote solutions.

Sullivan announced the move Friday. In a blog post he explains that his new role is yet undefined, but will report into Google, the search division at parent Alphabet, and says the opportunity will give him a chance to see how search works from behind the scenes.

A Google spokesperson confirmed the hire. 

"It was definitely a surprise when Google contacted me about taking on this new position," he wrote in a blog post. "I’d retired from search and figured I was done in the space, at that point. My only next-step plans were to build a walking AT-AT for Comic Con (did it; it was great!), take some extended family trips and maybe start blogging about Thunderbirds (the new series is really fun)."

In June, he stepped down from an advisory role at Third Door Media, which owns the publication Search Engine Land, although he continues to own a minority stake in the company.

The transition didn't happen overnight. Sullivan began his professional journalism career as an editorial researcher for the Los Angeles Times in 1989. He left in 1994 to become a graphics reporter for the Orange County Register, another southern California newspaper.

The following year he left to join a friend's company, Maximized Online, as general manager to produce websites for local businesses. The company also optimized websites for searches on engines before it was called search engine optimization. In his blog post about his career, he explains that it took a lot of research.

All that research went into a book titled "A Webmaster’s Guide To Search Engines," which he published in April 1996, marking what became his new career as a search journalist.

Then in 2006, Sullivan (no relation to the MediaPost author) cofounded a company called Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land and other publications and conferences.