Work
Twenty years of making data available and useful at scale — as a practitioner, a consultant, an author, and for the last thirteen years at Google. Here’s the path, starting from the end.
Search Advocate — Google
January 2019 – present · Israel, then Switzerland
I’m part of the Search Relations team, working on Google Search Console and Google Trends. The role splits in two.
Educating the search community. I’m a regular contributor to the Search Central blog, I present at events around the world, and I’ve produced two YouTube series from scratch: Search Console Training and Google Trends Tutorials, both part of Google’s official Search documentation.
Building new capabilities. I work with the Search Console and Google Trends engineering teams to lead developer-focused features, including the URL Inspection API, Bulk data exports to BigQuery, and the Google Trends API. This is the part of the job where advocacy turns into product: user feedback becomes a spec, and the spec becomes something engineers build on.
More about my work on my Google Developers profile.
Analytics Advocate — Google
July 2013 – January 2019 · UK
My mission was to find the right data for the right purpose, and to present it in a way that made it usable — helping Google leadership and users make better decisions.
Data platforms. I came up with the idea and led the development of an internal large-scale data platform, then served as its product manager. The project ran across engineering, legal, and marketing, with the goal of making internal data more accessible, secure, and impactful. I was PM for two such platforms.
Product excellence. I worked with product and engineering teams to shape product vision, and acted as a bridge between those teams and the people using what they built — carrying feedback and ideas back into development.
Thought leadership. I published Google Analytics Integrations (Wiley, 2015), wrote over a hundred articles for major outlets, and produced 11 official Google case studies. I presented at over 100 events in 20 cities, including audiences of more than a thousand people.
Founder & Editor — Online Behavior
2010 – 2022 · Israel, then UK
I built Online Behavior from the ground up to a well-known portal for marketing measurement and optimization, publishing work from thought leaders across the industry. Over its life it reached more than a million people, and I edited hundreds of articles and built partnerships with content providers across the field.
The site became the demo property for Google Analytics’ global sales team and a testing platform for the engineers building the product. I sold the business in 2022.
Alongside the publication, I consulted on measurement and optimization as a Google Analytics Certified Partner, delivering training programs, analytics account designs, and analysis to enterprises including Google, 888 Holdings, and Playtika.
Author — Search Engine Land
May 2009 – April 2013 · Israel
For four years I wrote for Search Engine Land on behavioral targeting, conversion optimization, web analytics, and search marketing — covering the field as it was still deciding what it was. Archive of my articles.
Head of Web Analytics — Seperia
December 2007 – July 2010 · Israel
I led the analytics and conversion optimization service at Seperia, an international search marketing firm, working hands-on across a broad mix of technologies to optimize sites for major internet players targeting over 50 countries and 35 languages.
The work covered conversion optimization strategy and planning for clients, pre-sales analysis of prospects’ sites, and positioning the company as an insight-driven service provider. I held certification as a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant (2008) and Website Optimizer Authorized Consultant (2009).
More valuable than any of it was learning what it takes to deliver professional services to a high standard — and getting close to some of the most interesting internet companies in Israel and beyond.
Co-Chair of Marketing — Digital Analytics Association
November 2006 – April 2010 · Israel
I joined the association (then the Web Analytics Association) as the field was still young, and within a few months became Co-Chair of Marketing. For over three years I worked with the most prominent people in the discipline to grow it and make the case for it.
I managed the marketing volunteers and defined the association’s strategic and operational marketing activity. Two projects I created and led:
- Web Analytics Without Borders: helping Save the Children build a data-driven culture from scratch, to enable durable change in thousands of children’s lives.
- Web Analytics Championship: a competition giving analysts an opportunity to share their knowledge and interact with the wider community.
In 2010 I received the Web Analytics Association Presidential Award for this work.
Web Analytics Manager — Spiral Solutions
August 2005 – January 2007 · Israel
This was my first job in the field, and where I discovered it existed. I was responsible for online competitive intelligence and web analytics, merging data about the company’s own sites from WebTrends with competitor data from Hitwise. The work was to trace where competitors’ traffic came from, compare it with our own referrers, and identify which affiliates and advertisers were worth partnering with.
I still remember the first time I heard the phrase web analytics. After getting involved with Hitwise, I started asking the IT manager questions and discovered there was an unused piece of software sitting on the servers: WebTrends 6.1. I read a dozen whitepapers, researched the subject, and took ownership of it. That was the beginning.
Teacher — Institute for Gifted Children, Tel Aviv University
June 2004 – July 2005 · Israel
I developed and taught courses on world cultures, philosophy, and creative thinking at the institute, which is part of Tel Aviv University, and was coordinated by the writer and educator Dr. Erica Landau.
Educator & Leader — Habonim Dror
Jan 1999 – July 2003 · Brazil, and internationally
Early in my life I was deeply involved with Habonim Dror, a youth movement that handed me a great deal of responsibility while young. I was responsible for the educational and administrative side of programs for dozens — sometimes hundreds — of teenagers, and organised events and summer camps at scale. By 21 I had run events for over 200 people and represented Brazil in Russia, the United States, and Argentina.
It remains one of the most formative things I’ve done. Emily Dickinson put it better than I can:
We play at Paste —
Till qualified, for Pearl —
Then, drop the Paste —
And deem ourself a fool —
The Shapes — though — were similar —
And our new Hands
Learned Gem-Tactics —
Practicing Sands —
Education
M.Sc. Operations Research & Decisions — Tel Aviv University
Sep 2003 – July 2007
After my BA I became interested in statistical and mathematical models, and went to Tel Aviv University to study them properly — game theory, data mining, economic models, and Markov chains.
After an initial attempt to write my thesis on the role of creativity in decision-making, I had an idea I’m still proud of: using Markov chains to optimize websites. The model maps onto a website almost exactly — pages as states, visits as transitions. Two decades later, that’s still roughly what I work on.
From the abstract:
This work shows that it is possible, and appropriate, to represent online behavior of Internet surfers using Markov Chains. This conclusion was led by the fact that users (surfers) behave in a non linear manner while visiting websites, and switch from one page to another with no direct relation to past behavior. Even when there is a linear behavior in the website where some pages are a pre-requisite for others (such as in a buying process or in a guided tour through a product), it is possible to adjust the model into an n-order Markov chain, where the next page a customer will visit is affected by the nth pages the customer has visited before. In addition, using Web Analytics tools it is possible to group several pages into one, which allows the whole buying process to be merged into “one page”. The use of Markov Chains to analyze online behavior allows website owners to discover the pages that contribute to their website the most. This knowledge is particularly important to define landing pages for specific campaigns and to optimize pages in order to improve conversion rates.
B.A. Business Management — PUC Minas
1999 – 2003 · Belo Horizonte, Brazil
Four years at PUC Minas, spent reading widely and meeting people who mattered to me.
My final research, Green Corporate Strategies, worked through the literature on environmental strategy and the ISO 14000 family of standards. As a trainee at USIMINAS — the largest steel complex in Latin America — I examined the company’s environmental management directly. The thesis became an article in the Brazilian magazine Meio Ambiente Industrial.
Languages: I work in Portuguese, Hebrew, English, and Spanish, and present at conferences in all four.