There was a fan­tas­tic atmos­phere of antic­i­pa­tion and excite­ment at the UK Search Awards last night. After all, it has been an incred­i­ble year in dig­i­tal — with dozens of great cam­paigns, and lots of inno­va­tion from brands and agen­cies alike.

The organ­is­ers had done a ter­rif­ic job of spruc­ing up the venue at The Ball­room, South Bank, and the place was look­ing sim­ply stun­ning.

@matthewroberts Founder and CSO of @linkdex takes UK Search Per­son­al­i­ty 2015. Woohoo! Con­grats! #searchawards pic.twitter.com/lhQC1RglQB

— Lena Robin­son (@LenaRobinson) Novem­ber 26, 2015

After win­ning the award for Best SEO Soft­ware at the US Search Awards last month, the pres­sure was on to see if we could con­tin­ue our win­ning streak on our home turf. And we weren’t to be dis­ap­point­ed. When James Mur­ray announced that Matt Roberts had won this years awards for the Search Per­son­al­i­ty of the Year… the entire Linkdex table sim­ply erupt­ed. And with­out want­i­ng to dwell on the top­ic, Mat­t’s gen­uine pas­sion for search, and great con­tri­bu­tion to the indus­try over many years (I think every­one who has met or worked with him will agree) is well-deserv­ing of this award. James Mur­ray, who pre­sent­ed and also judged the awards, had the fol­low­ing to say:

“The UK Search Awards pro­vides an essen­tial func­tion to the Search indus­try as it gath­ers togeth­er the best of Search and sets a stan­dard for all to aspire to. As a judge it’s always dif­fi­cult to bal­ance the rel­a­tive mer­it of an increas­ing­ly strong field of com­pet­ing entries, but this is espe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult when it comes to award­ing the Search Per­son­al­i­ty of the Year, as we are try­ing to find one indi­vid­ual who exem­pli­fies the best of Search. What we are look­ing for is some­one who not only is bril­liant with­in their dis­ci­pline but who active­ly seeks to change the way we think about Search and the drag the indus­try with them to a high­er place. Matt has great vision, he sees the world we oper­ate in dif­fer­ent­ly and wants to alter the way we cur­rent­ly view rel­e­vance in Search. He inspires, edu­cates and chal­lenges us all to do bet­ter. For those rea­sons he is a wor­thy win­ner of the UK Search Per­son­al­i­ty of the Year.”

Con­grat­u­la­tions every­one who won yes­ter­day, and espe­cial­ly to Medi­a­Com, Mon­ey­Su­per­Mar­ket and MEC who were also cel­e­brat­ing.