Jim Wilson of SearchEngineForums
 

On a more somber note...

Some of you old timers around here who did any digging into SE's have likely spect some time at SearchEngineForums.com.

SearchEngineForums.com, JimWorld, and the GetHighForums, etc., etc. was created by Jim Wilson and garnered lots of support across the web, both Mainstream and High Competition areas.

Jim wrote a regular newsletter that I'm sure many of you subscribed to.

Payment for help from him or his community, was to go out and help someone else!

As with any community, sometimes people did not see eye to eye with Jim. For quite awhile, I moderated the Excite Forums and a couple others and ended up leaving to go on and put up SEMatrix for the adult SEO community to gather, and freely discuss things that could not be discussed at Jim's because of his desire to keep his community open for all ages.

I may not have agreed with Jim as to how he ran his forums, but I respected him 100% for running HIS sites the way HE wanted. Those forums gave so much back to guys like me, and I always tried to give as much if not more than what was given to me.

If you remember Jim, or spent any time over there at SEF...and you are interested in the online memorial that has been put up in his honor...please visit:

Jim Wilson Memorial Site

Jim was one of the best SE people I had ever known, to say the least his JimTools site was what I originally based my own work on. To hear him pass away like this is really like losing one of your role models in life. It's truly a sad day in the SEO world and I wish his family my dear condolences.

Charles

sad thing

i have been reading and posting SEF for some years...i just found from your post his death. :/

very sad. how old a guy? says he died after 18 months of congestive heart failure and some strokes.

I've been reading some of what John Cokos wrote of the last times he spect with Jim, and reading the History of what Jim did and what sprang up from his efforts.

The line that I think says it all is the last line of
http://memorial.jimworld.com/legacy/

He passed on with a warm heart, and the knowledge that he "left it better than he found it".

Jim was definitely in his late 50s, maybe early 60's.

I'll dig around for some pictures real quick of when we were speaking together in Copenhagen at one of the first SEO Conferences to be held in Scandinavia.

I'll post a few in this thread.

i've been on those forums for years now and first time i hear this
also .

Sad very Sad:(

This is sad news.... I know he contributed alot and SEguru was very fond of his contributions.

Mitch

I owe a lot of my early sucesses in this industry to Jim Wilson's SearchEngineForums and Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Watch. The information gleened from those sites is largely responsible for making us our first million. The man helped shape the marketing online and his contributions will be missed.

Very sad. I knew Jim had been sick, but didn't realize it had gone so far so fast. I've been reading his sites for many years and he'll be missed.

anon posters made those boards almost worthless.
they chased away many ppc SE reps with their stupid anon accusations. Jim and his admins embarrassed many operators by siding with the anon posters who felt cheated out of 2 bucks, giving credibility to the idea that programs made there money by cheating people 2 dollars at a time.

RIP

I never knew who was behind the forums, but that was a cool community at one time.

I think I learned some valuable information on his forums.
Not as popular now that they changed their style on the searchengineforums.com page.

It is also hard considering that google is all anybody really talks about since they are the only site sending any decent traffic.
And if you ask anything related to "adult" the moderator thejenn will edit your whole post within minutes.

Well anyways a big :thumbsup to Jim for a great community

After a few days of being verbally attacked by a number of anonymous posters on Jim's forums one of the dirtbags actually stated that he was going to try to hack into my personal website and try to find pictures of my children to put on his porn site.

Even after calling and speaking with Mr. Wilson directly he refused to remove or edit the post. I have no idea how these statments had any relevance on an internet advertising web forum.

After 2 days (of threatening to contact the FBI and trying to calm my freaking out ex-wife) a more intelligent moderator removed the illegal posting.

Any good Mr. Wilson may have done by operating a web forum was more than outdone by his callous, unprofessional and spiteful attitude.

Sorry...but that's how I feel about him. I do feel for his family during their time of loss and wish them the best.

Tell us what you really think. :)

Janet was a big cause of a lot of frustration for me, back in the day, and a couple of his other mods had extreme stances where they shouldn't have...

at its inception tho, JimTools was a great set of tools to work with and until the inmates started controlling the asylum, Jim had a great community going... if I recall correctly, end of 98, first of 99 was when things really started to sour...

I am sad for his family :(