The awards are judged by an esteemed panel of industry leaders and experts, the judging is a rigorous two-stage process including pre-scoring to determine shortlists and a judging meeting where entries are discussed and evaluated in detail to decide the winning entries.
From a transparency perspective, we may video aspects of the judging session to show on the evening and give entrants an insight into why a winning entry was chosen.
Become a Judge Previous Judges
Head judges
Darian Kovacs | FOUNDING PARTNER | JELLY DIGITAL MARKETING & PR | @dariankovacs
Co-founder of the Canadian Internet Marketing Conference, Forbes contributor, host of Amazon Prime’s hit show Marketing Jam, marketing professor, author and practitioner - Darian brings his wealth of experience and educational and interactive teaching style to conferences and workshops all over North America. Darian spends most of his time with Jelly Digital Marketing & PR - a firm that specializes in working with brands of all shapes and sizes. Darian's weekly show has had guests from LEGO, Starbucks, Twitter, Google, PepsiCo and Buzzfeed. Darian also contributes to The Lawyers Daily, Adweek and Entrepreneur magazine and loves spending time with his four kids and wife in Historic Fort Langley.
Judith Lewis | Founder & CEO | Decabbit Consulting | @JudithLewis
Judith is a renowned international speaker, writer, trainer, blogger and digital media consultant specialising in applying strategic understanding of digital technologies to help businesses innovate and optimise their effectiveness within the new, networked communications environment. She is a regular speaker around the world on SEO, content strategy, link building, paid media, and digital strategy, and has been recognised by her peers as one of the most influential people in the UK digital industry. Judith judges the industry leading Search Awards around the world, and has every year since their inception. She has worked with market-leading global businesses including Google, NatWest/RBS, National Gallery, Fidelity, GalaCoral, NBC Universal, Readers Digest, Bayer, Family Search, Amadeus, AMD, AmEx , Virgin.com, Virgin Startup & more. She has over 23 years of experience, predating Google in her entry into the market, and now runs her own consultancy. She has worked both in-house and agency-side. Judith also blogs about chocolate, has contributed to the book “Pimp My Site” and the Econsultancy guide to Paid Search and rewrote the large foundational Econsultancy Best Practice Guide to SEO.
Matt McGowan | Director & General Manager | Snap Inc | @matt_mcgowan
A born and bred New Yorker turned Torontonian who has lived on 3 continents, Matt has worked alongside executives and founders representing some of the world's best known and thousands of relatively unknown brands, agencies, and technology companies. Matt most recently served as President and a member of the Board of Directors at the SaaS juggernaut Adestra, an enterprise martech Email Service Provider and Marketing Automation Platform.Judges
Shannon Cross | Senior Manager, eCommerce | Nestlé Purina PetCare
Shannon is a proven leader in eCommerce Marketing, specializing in retail and brand search. She currently works in the CPG industry leading search and omni-channel marketing strategies for Nestle Purina Petcare in Canada, and consults for many of Nestle’s other brands at a global level. Throughout her 6+ years of experience, Shannon has managed digital marketing strategies for organizations of all sizes and in a variety of industries including law, healthcare, pet food, and real estate to name a few. She is a Lead Instructor at Brain Station in Toronto, educating the industry’s up and coming professionals in digital marketing, and has guest lectured at Fanshawe College and Western University. Shannon has previously been a judge for the Ontario Colleges Marketing Competition, and was a finalist in the Global AdWords Business Awards in 2015.
Jean-Baptiste Garnier | Head of Online Sales & Marketing | Foyer Global Health
Jean-Baptiste is heading Online Sales and Marketing for the International Health Insurance division of Foyer Assurances, Luxembourg’s leading insurance company. Foyer Global Health is operating all over the World and provides Health coverage for expats, digital nomads and globetrotters. Previously to this role, Jean-Baptiste acted as Deputy General Manager for GroupM Connect, and developed the Digital practice for international clients such as Europcar, Disneyland Paris, Intuit, etc. With over 15 years of expertise in Online acquisition, and long lasting interest in Search Marketing, Jean-Baptiste’s strong appetite for innovation, technology and data is still very vivid.
Kevin Gibbons | CEO | RE:SIGNAL | @kevgibbo
Kevin is CEO at Re:signal - an award-winning SEO and content marketing agency for brands anticipating the future. Kevin has presented at a large number of conferences around the world, writes frequently online and has worked with well-known brands including Expedia, Deloitte, Pottery Barn and more and was named 2018 search personality at UK Search Awards. Website: https://resignal.com.
Adam Guerguis | Digital Marketing Manager | Airbnb | @adamgrgs
Based in Montreal and currently leads organic growth marketing for airbnb LUX, Adam has more than 10 years in search marketing experience and has been working with very exciting brands in several industries, languages, and sizes like Yahoo!, MSN, Groupon, UNHCR, Skrill, and others. Adam is also a digital marketing trainer, guest speaker, digital marketing blogger since 2010, and a MSc. Marketing Candidate.
Bill Hartzer | SEO Consultant
Bill Hartzer is an independent SEO Consultant. He relies on his 20 years of direct SEO experience to provide technical SEO audits of websites, as well as technical link audits and link cleanups of websites. Mr. Hartzer is known worldwide for his research on the topic of search engine optimization and the New gTLD domain names, as well as Dot Brand domain names. He provides research and marketing of white papers and case studies related to the New gTLDs, as well as consulting related to domain migrations.
Jim Hedger | Digital Always Media Inc.
Jim Hedger is a writer, SEO, broadcaster, and an activist. Based in Toronto, Jim has worked as a SEO for the last two decades. In that time he has spoken at most major conferences, written for many of the major SEO trade journals, worked with countless clients, and tried to help other SEOs with their careers. Jim is cohost of the popular Webcology podcast featured at WebmasterRadio.FM, on iTunes, at iHeartRadio, and available at all fine podcasting distribution outlets near you.
Cheryl Hill | Digital Marketing Director | SkipTheDishes
Cheryl Hill is the Director of Digital Marketing at SkipTheDishes, Canada's leading and largest food delivery network. Cheryl leads Skip's media buying and digital strategy across CRM, Paid Media, SEO, and Social Media via data-driven insights that connect with Canadians. Prior to Skip, Cheryl served at Metric Marketing as Director of Digital Marketing, where she established teams and led the creation of all digital products. For more than a decade, Hill also led her own successful digital marketing consultancy and honed her trade in the UK finance industry, where she pioneered a digital marketing team within the largest mortgage, insurance, and loans brokerage in Scotland.
Motoko Hunt | President, Search Marketing Consultant | AJPR | @motokohunt
Since establishing AJPR in 1998, Motoko Hunt has been providing online marketing services to various companies around the world. Her extensive knowledge of Asia and Japanese markets proves to be highly valuable as her consulting services have made a significant impact on global marketing campaigns for some of the world’s most popular multinational brands. Besides being published in industry websites and printed media, Motoko is a frequent speaker at global search marketing conferences, giving seminars and training about topics on International Search Marketing.
Alan K'necht | Public Speaker & Principle | K'nechtology Inc | @aknecht
Alan K'necht started his involvement with the digital world back in 1996 building websites and participating in the precursors to what would evolve into Social Media. Over 20 plus years he’s provided consulting services ranging from web development, analytics, search markeing/SEO and social media marketing to fortune 500 companies, government departments, military and small & medium size businesses. Through analytics, Alan has always helped clients measure and maximize their Return on Investment (ROI) for their digital marketing initiatives. At present he operates his consulting company K'nechtology Inc.
George Konidis | SEO Consultant
George has worked on some of the largest online brands in the world with an overall contribution of over 15 billion monthly impressions. George works with clients to help scale their search efforts, develop content marketing ideas, and contribute to their overall growth strategies.
Francisco Leon de Vivero | Global SEO Framework Lead | Shopify | @seofrancisco
Francisco Leon de Vivero, became passionate about Search Engine Optimization in 2007. Francisco has an extensive knowledge of SEO and SEM, working with renowned brands many of which are among the world’s top 50 most visited websites. Francisco is specialized in helping multinational companies expand into foreign markets and capture additional organic growth. Currently he is responsible as Global SEO Framework Lead at Shopify.
Carla Marshall | Head of Content Marketing | Vidiq | @Carla_Marshall
Carla Marshall is the Head of Content Marketing at YouTube analytics platform vidIQ. She has 10+ years of experience in video marketing, social media management, content marketing, DRM, and SEO. She was previously Editor in Chief at ReelSEO.com and TubularInsights.com, and the Community Manager for the ReelSEO YouTube Channel. She is YouTube Certified and a judge for the UK, US, and EU Search Awards.
Audrey Ooi | Regional Digital Marketing Manager
Audrey is a marketing expert with over 10 years of experience in traditional and digital marketing. Her specialty is in digital marketing, including SEO, paid search, organic and paid social, web analytics, and web design and development. She has worked in multiple industries for organizations of all sizes, including sectors as diverse as telecommunications, non-profit and tourism. A versatile professional, she has also worked in product management, business strategy, branding and user experience as well as co-founded a technology start-up that successfully raised investor capital. She is currently the Regional Digital Marketing Manager, US & Canada for Crimson Education, and is also the founder and CEO (Chief Eating Officer) of Tasty Tours, an award-winning Toronto food tour and chocolate tour company.
Bob Rains | SEO Executive & Growth Marketing Strategist | @bobrains
At this point, to keep this bio brief, it would make more sense to list the companies Bob hasn’t worked for and dramatically impacted. A trusted and experienced voice in SEO, Internet Marketing and Google advertising, Bob’s inane curiosity and switch flipping leads him to constantly seek new ways of doing the same old work, but in ways that satisfy both him and the client. After amassing enough airline points to get to the Moon and back (with a sweet bucket of conference lanyards,) Bob is currently running a successful consulting business from a log home on an island off the coast of Vancouver His Greatest Hits are handily located on LinkedIn
Dominique Seppelt | Peak Ace AG | @DominiqueSpplt
Dominique Seppelt is Head of SEO & Content Marketing at Peak Ace AG and has 8+ years experience within content marketing. She develops internationally scalable, innovative content marketing concepts and strategies. Her campaigns are both target audience and search-oriented, with dynamic outreach strategies that ensure that the right recipients are reached. With this approach she increases customer brand awareness and website traffic, generates leads and improves conversions and customer retention.
Aleyda Solis | International SEO Consultant | Orainti | @aleyda
Aleyda Solis is an award winning International SEO Consultant -service that she provides with her company Orainti-, a blogger (Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal and Moz), author of the SEO book in Spanish “SEO. Las Claves Esenciales” and experienced speaker (with more than 100 conferences in 20 countries in English and Spanish). Awarded as the European Search Personality of the Year in 2018 at the European Search Awards, included in Forbes as one of the 10 Digital Marketing specialists to follow in 2015, in Entrepreneur as one of the 50 Online Marketing Influencers to follow in 2016 and in Hubspot as one of the 59 Female Marketing and Growth Experts You Should be Following, she has been also interviewed in publications such as The Huffington Post and in the Google Partners Podcast.