It is now clear that both Chris Sherman and Barry Schwartz will leave Search Engine Watch together with Danny Sullivan.

As our regular readers will know, Danny Sullivan, the most respected search engine expert and reporter in the world, is leaving the site he himself founded: Search Engine Watch.

This is obviously a serious blow to the company that owns Search Engine Watch, Incisive. Danny Sullivan’s name and insights are what attracts many readers to that site (including us).

However, the site has a strong brand, and if Incisive manages to attract the right expert writers to fill the void left by Danny, the site could survive as the main search engine oriented site on the Web.

This is why it is so hard for us to understand why Incisive has not done all it can to keep the other experts that write and blog on SEW.

It is now clear that Chris Sherman and Barry Schwartz are also leaving the site and will start blogging on Danny Sullivan’s new site Search Engine Land. But that is not all: Phil Bradley, Bill “SEO by the Sea” Slawski, Jennifer “JenSense” Slegg, Brian Smith, and Greg Sterling are also joining Search Engine Land. The only editor left at SEW is Elisabeth Osmeloski.

In a post on his own blog Barry Schwartz notes that he has not been offered any deal by Incisive:

“But get this, Incisive has not once called me or emailed me about my future plans after Danny made his announcement. I have yet to hear from them, even up to the time of writing this post. I guess they assumed that Chris and I would stay on at SEW. You know what they say about assuming things…”

Danny Sullivan has managed to outsmart Incisive completely. He has recruited some of the best and most well-known search engine experts on the Web to his new site, turning it into the new Search Engine Watch before its launch.

The most serious blow to Incisive is that Chris Sherman is leaving. Many insiders believe that he is the only one that could replace Danny as editor in chief of Search Engine Watch and leader of the Search Engine Strategies conferences.

Incisive has clearly failed to understand the most basic truth about the knowledge economy: What really counts are not offices and brands, but human capital and talent. If you loose nearly all of your brainpower, you loose it all, in this case the site, the conferences, everything.

Danny & Co may now join Webmaster World and their conferences or he may start his own series, and he will easily beat Incisive and their venues, because ultimately Danny is the brand, not Search Engine Watch or Search Engine Strategies.

Our guess is that by December 2007 Search Engine Land will have a Google PageRank of 6 or 7 and nearly as many visitors as Search Engine Watch. Search Engine Watch will stay on as a leading site for some time, not at least because of its huge “back catalog” of content, but unless Incisive manges to recruit some more high quality writers, SEW will fail completely.

More about the rise and fall of Search Engine Watch:

Danny Sullivan Poaches Search Engine Watch With New Blog (Inside Google)
Will SEW survive without Danny, Chris and Barry? (Bruce Clay)