nigritude ultramarine - How on Earth did this all START?!

[! !]

nigritude ultramarine :o

Does anyone know the history of this global contest- it is bizzare the way it is picking up steak :eek:

ironically Google in it's serps - is suggesting

negritude ultramarine

[Lex]

Danny lays it all out quite nicely here: http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/article.php/3360231

[seobook]

I would just say that Chris is a super duper smart marketer (and a swell chap) :)

[rustybrick]

I would just say that Chris is a super duper smart marketer (and a swell chap) :)

I would second that.

[Lex]

No kidding. A mere $800 (in prizes) bought a motherload of PR. In more ways than one...radio and TV coverage I heard and saw myself. Is it true there was a mention in the Wall Street Journal? Damned clever. Not to mention the forum exposure for Search Guild. Hats off to a stellar, well-executed idea.

[hulkster]

No kidding. A mere $800 (in prizes) bought a motherload of PR. In more ways than one...radio and TV coverage I heard and saw myself. Is it true there was a mention in the Wall Street Journal? Damned clever. Not to mention the forum exposure for Search Guild. Hats off to a stellar, well-executed idea.

Ditto all comments above - this one really panned out for 'em. Yes, it did get a brief blurb in the WSJ which I commented on (and you can see the article) at this SEOChat Forum Thread. (http://forums.seochat.com/showthread.php?t=10368&page=6)

I personally though the Slashdot Article (http://slashdot.org/articles/04/05/09/1840217.shtml) written by "Mr. Christmas Lights" was a bit better ... ;-)

alek

[seomike]

If I could drop my 2 cents in here. I think this ultramarine crap is the dumbest idea that the SEO industry could have done.

1. It shows google the techniques we use
2. It shows googles weeknesses

I know there are a ton of people that try and hop into bed with G and talk them up and do this and that. BUT the main point is this. Not everyone can organize confrences and go out to lunch with G employees and get the inside scoops.

Why in the heck would you put 300,000 pages with every technique in the book all in the same area for google to feast on. There isn't a single one of those pages that was built by a mom and pop frontpager or your kid brother trying to get his little site to rank.

When the next round of updates come around you your clients rankings start to drop in google you can thank the guy that won a 19" flat and all his buddies for everything.

SEO and SE relations is a fine line. The more you give the SE's the advantage the more they hurt you in the long run. We game their system and make money off of them no matter how white or black your hat is. If you have a technique that works you let them try and find it not flaunt it in their faces.

:D

[seomike]

Google should foot the bill or reimburse searchguild for the prizes and maybe kick in a little bonus to those guys over at searchguild.

They just saved them 1,000's of hours in R&D.

[chris]

And who says they're not? Don't worry though seomike, they tell me they already knew all of the techniques you're using anyway. Hang on a sec..."yes sergey what?"...Sergey says to tell you there are uh-hum certain searches where there are a whole lot more than 300,000 pages displaying every ranking technique in the book and that I'm to avoid saying anything about them "feasting" on them (hmmm..don't think I was actually meant to say that last part). Whilst I remember don't let me forget to give Sergey the telephone number of that new mansion of mine on that new private tropical island that I just bought with the money I just came into. <whistles innocently>


Rule 43: Conspiracy theories = great marketing Source: Chris' as yet unwritten guide to marketing

;)

[jbgilbert]

I'm "kinda" with SEOMike on this thing -- that is I feel I must put my 2 cents in...

- Google will very likely follow the contest.

- If the contest exposes some "spam" holes in their algorithmn (which it may very well do), Google will patch them.

- The contest will likely not have participation from some of the "better / best" optimizers -- too much work for too little money; no profit or benefit in advertising bad, spammy, personal or secret techniques.

[bhartzer]

So, jbgilbert, does that mean that since I didn't participate I'm a better or best optimizer?

[arttworks]

Another way of looking at these kinds of contests is to see them as search "engine trials" ...not that dissimilar from the drug trials that offer consumers some hope of seeing past all the self-interest hype of those in the business of selling and reselling "health". There's a lot of bad science behind the Google Hype, some bad history also. It is, for example, spoutted as a historical FACT that Googles link popularity based "pagerank" was a key factor in googles success. Ignored to elevate this presumption into the realm of popularly quoted "truth" is the fact that for many (myself included) the google difference, that made the difference, was googles speed and basic viewability. Fast results that you could weed through quickly is the bread-and-butter of web searching and at the time google became the #one-and-only, every other search engine/portal was serving the search engine equivalent of escargot (slow as a dead, cooked, snail).

Link popularity, as a manufactured commodity has become little more than a pyramid scheme. No one is going to win in the long-term ( except those employed in the "make work" Industry of SEO) The whole "buy yourself existence on the real Internet"-- the Internet people have some hope of finding-- as defined by the capitalized search industry, is nothing but a gigantic tax that provides no consumer-useful service in return. The only real hope to create any incentive to improve the system is to make its weaknesses obvious through trial/experimentation. Having regular contests seems to me a perfectly acceptable means to achieve the "good for the consumer" end of knowing that this system is broken and in need of repair.

My contribution to science: The SEO-Google Contest (http://donotgo.com/Blogs/blog11.htm#b11i6)