How To Get Googled, By Hook Or By Crook

Mr. Christmas Lights writes "There is a Search Engine Optimization contest that just started up. For those that don't know about SEO, it's basically the process of optimizing a web page and links to insure a high ranking on search engine, with Google being the main search engine of interest. There are countless debates on the best approach. Note that there are 'white hat' and definitely 'black hat' methods (using the later can get you banned by Google - a risk some people seem willing to take! ;-)" Read more on this contest below.

Mr. Christmas Lights continues: "So some folks in the SEO community decided to have a 2 month contest where they made up a nonsense keyword phrase (nigritude ultramarine), and they will award a iPod and a 17" LCD (big spenders, eh?) to whoever ends up #1 in Google a month and two months from now - read more contest details at Dark Blue's SEOChallenge and follow the progress at www.seochallenge.com.

As you can imagine, there will be all sorts of wild web pages out there - for example, take a look at this "optimized" URL for nigritude ultramarine : www.nigritude-ultramarine.com/nigritude-ultramarin e/nigritude-ultramarine.asp and I'm sure there will be plenty of other entertaining entries - you can do a Google Search yourself to see who's currently on top.

Note to Slashdot Editors: I have NOT entered the contest - buncha SEO pro's are involved and a hobbiest (at best) like me (who doesn't stray over to the dark side - I like Google! ;-) would get spanked."

Comments

What about black hat SEO

[Random Web Developer]

Are entries rejected from the contest if they are using dubious tactics? It's fairly easy to go about spamming links all over the place with the appropriate link texts and stuff like invisible text, which still aren't adequately detected.

i'll be curious to see what they come up with

[quelrods]

I'm sure their techniques will cause google to make such tricks harder in the future. Many of you are familiar with people creating nonsense link pages to drive their own rating up and the various things google put in place to make this harder. Now they need a contest on how to get delisted, I still have a domain name that hasn't been used in 3 years that is in google.

Re:i'll be curious to see what they come up with

[Amiga Lover]

I'm sure their techniques will cause google to make such tricks harder in the future. Many of you are familiar with people creating nonsense link pages to drive their own rating up and the various things google put in place to make this harder.

That can be a good thing - stop the spammers doing their thing, and forcing commercial junk that's only relevant to the owners/advertisers on a site into google. Let google evolve into something better, bit by bit.

Personally, I'm all for just creating damned good content, and people will come across it and link to it on their own. No effort other than Creating Good Content. No need to spam, flood forums with links, or otherwise make people link to you that otherwise wouldn't

Now they need a contest on how to get delisted, I still have a domain name that hasn't been used in 3 years that is in google.

heh. Yahoo still contains a page of mine that's 18 months gone as the main link to my page. Talk about out of date.

Re:i'll be curious to see what they come up with

[Uber Banker]

Perhaps this is a plan organised by Google to get the uber-|337 SEOs to disclose their methods, thus act against them.

a new topic

[Dreadlord]

This is the very first story in the Google topic BTW.

dear me

[mr_tommy]

It surely is a nice project with some very fancy prizes, but has anyone thought of what Google's response is going to be?! Wham! Thanks for telling us the techniques to beat our own system guys - we'll now be altering it so that this is no longer a problem. :S

I know this might sound controversial, but.

[James A. O. Joyce]

But I think I ought to raise a problem with Google, which this contest simply serves to underline: Google is too easily gamed. After all, just take a look at what the bloggers have done for the phrase "miserable failure". All it takes is an aggrieved group of a couple of dozen individuals and they can push anything up the ranks of Google. It's not that hard to knock someone's rank down by a bit just by getting a bunch of people to delink them. When Google recaches, their rank falls...

Re:Advertising

[popirate]

Are the winners required to share their techniques to claim the prize? Or will the winners themselves end up getting offers in exchance for their services...

Hack the contest!

[Jerf]

Hack the contest. Googlebomb "nigritude ultramarine" to http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/09/184021 7 . That's this article, stripped of all the other crap.

I'm planning on doing it, and I'm not a Google monster, but I'm not a Google slouch either; I have a pretty decent amount of Google juice for a one-man site.

Note that mostly likely, links from Slashdot to Slashdot won't count any, so no point in linking in comments here.

Re:Hmm.

[josh3736]

As I am not sure how robots.txt works, I cannot say for sure, but at the top, there is an entry for "mediapartners-google" that allows the entire site.

Does the following * user-agent also apply to Google or not? If not, he will indeed get on Google in no time flat.

Do your part

[nuntius]

1.) Do the Google search
2.) Click on the "Dissatisfied?" link
3.) Complain to Google about all the spammers.

Only you can stamp out spammers.
Show Google the power of the /. hordes.

Re:Hmm.

[bhtooefr]

mediapartners-google is the Google AdSense system, and yahoo-newscrawler must be Yahoo's news system, which might be used by Google, seeing as they get /. news fairly quick.

Comments from the article submitter

[xmas2003]

HEY ... my submission actually got accepted - that's a first! ;-)

As alluded in the "Note to Slashdot Editors" (thought they would prune that), I first want to emphasize I have NO relationships with the folks running this content - I just think it is hilarious, although it will certainly provide some insights into how Google works, and we'll see all sorts of whacky things from the SEO pro's - again, I am not one of 'em.

Second, I hadn't thought about Slashdot ranking 1st for the contest as some have suggested - now that would be a crackup! Unfortunately, Slashdot won't allow you to place in IMG tag in a post (a requirement of the contest is a small image on the page), plus I'm not a member of the SearchGuild, so I'm not elgible ... maybe Cmdr Taco or Timothy need an iPod and/or 17" LCD - go for it! ;-)

Third, you know the folk at Google have gotten wind of this contest, and if I were them, I'd put a link on the main page to their own nigritude ultramarine page. I.e. Google should NOT tinker with their algorithms, but with a link from their PR10 main page, that certainly should shoot 'em up in the rankings. I gotta wonder if the pre-IPO Google would do this - we'll see with the "new" Google ;-)

Fourth, I appreciate some of the comments from folks about my Christmas Lights and the Christmas Webcam with webcontrol (yes, you can turn the lights ON and OFF via the web) which actually been on Slashdot before - in fact, you can read my Slashdot Effect Analysis from last year. I assure you it should be MUCH more interesting this year, as due to some multi-threaded optimizations, I think I'll be able to reduce the throttle from minimum 5-second updates to 1-second updates. I'm going to have to be REALLY NICE to my neighbors, 'cause it will be quite the flickering light show in December/2004 ... although I usually fire it up for a test-run in October as part of my Halloween Decorations and Lights.

alek

P.S. One thing slight off-topic is the Google Compute project which I thought I mention to those Slashdotters with idle CPU time that want to help the Stanford Folding@Home project - this really is a good cause.

Re:Hmm.

[JWSmythe]

If the site looks like news, and has an RSS feed, they put it up quickly. Google News was ignoring FreeInternetPress.com , but once we put up the link for the RSS feeds, they picked us up. Now just about every story we publish gets posted.

And this looks like a good place to tell you about The Nigritude Ultramarine attack submarine. I'd laugh if I even show up in the top 100.