I first heard Bill's name from David Harry (another incredible mentor and original SEO) over a decade ago. David explained that Bill was one of the only people, as an ex-patent and intellectual property attorney, that was hunting down Google's search patents and decoding them.

I started reading SEO By The Sea, diving into the (and let's not kid ourselves) ultra-complex language of the patents. Thanks to Bill's brain, he was able to demystify the language in these papers to help me understand and shine a light onto the dark road in front.

Specifically, it was Bill's work in late 2010 and 2011, before Hummingbird, that helped us see the future. The future of Entity. The future of Knowledge Graph, and the connections between content, tangential, semantic topics, and what the NEW relevance would become. Bill's work gave me the springboard to get out in front. Get ahead of the curve.

Today, Bill and SEO By The Sea are my go to look into Search's crystal ball. What he has given the SEO and search community are priceless. There will never be enough thanks and gratitude for all the work.

But this is a start: Thank you Bill.