• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, September 8, 2016

ClickZ, known for its editorial coverage and conference events around search and social advertising, has shuttered its events business -- ClickZ Live -- in the United States and Asia, according to sources.

Eric Enge, CEO at Stone Temple Consulting and sponsor of the latest ClickZ Live event, confirmed Wednesday that ClickZ will shutter the Live events portion of the business. 

Another source says the company will try to keep the online editorial side of the publishing business up and running from its London office. Aside from search and social, the company publishes articles on email, analytics and other media related to advertising.

The events and editorial businesses run separately, each is focused on interactive marketing news, information, commentary, advice, opinion and research, such as search to social, technology to trends.

The handful of people running the events side of the business in the U.S. and Asia have been laid off. No official announcement has been made.

ClickZ's leadership seems to view the company's direction as positioned more in research and editorial content -- similar to Econsultancy -- rather than conferences and events on search and social marketing and advertising.

For example, Graham Charlton, editor in chief at ClickZ Global, works at both ClickZ.com and Econsultancy, according to LinkedIn.

The ClickZ franchise has a long history in search engine advertising and marketing. Internet.com — at that time known as Jupitermedia — sold ClickZ, Search Engine Watch, and the Search Engine Strategies conference series to Incisive Media for $43 million, according to Wikipedia. 

Then in 2015, Incisive Media sold the three properties to Blenheim Chalcot.