Rimm-Kaufman Group Acquires Vanessa Fox’s Nine By Blue

The Rimm-Kaufman Group has acquired Vanessa Fox’s company, Nine By Blue, for an undisclosed amount consisting of 100 percent cash and stock deal.

The acquisition includes hiring the talent behind Nine By Blue, including our very own Vanessa Fox, a Contributing Editor here and at Search Engine Land, as well as the Blueprint search analytics and diagnostics software. Blueprint will be integration into RKG’s technology suite.

As many of you know, Vanessa Fox worked at Google years ago, being credited with founding Google Webmaster Tools.

“We are thrilled to have Vanessa, Blueprint and the Nine By Blue team join RKG,” said George Gallate, CEO, RKG. “At RKG, we unashamedly see digital through the lens of search. By using data to understand customer intent, we make marketing smarter, particularly search and social, both to build brands and create customer fulfillment. Nine By Blue is a like-minded company that shares our values of smart people using smart technology, and we’re excited about what we can achieve together.”

Vanessa said:

“Beginning with my time at Google, I’ve been passionate about providing concrete education and actionable data to site owners everywhere to help them better connect with their customers through unpaid search,” Fox told us. Vanessa added “for me, this is a great culmination of the time I spent pre-Google in UX, usability, and education. I’m so excited about the opportunity to bring the educational and data-driven work I’ve been doing with Nine By Blue to a larger audience. I’m proud of what the Blueprint developers have built, but this is just the beginning. So many possibilities exist for better actionable data and metrics that truly transform marketing and put SEO in the forefront of marketing and product development.”

Two years ago, RKG also acquired another online marketing agency, AudetteMedia.