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| Several contests have generated significant media attention online. | Several contests have generated significant media attention online. | ||
| ===Nigritude ultramarine=== |
===Nigritude ultramarine=== | ||
| *'''Dates:''' | *'''Dates:''' | ||
| *'''Keyword:''' Nigritude ultramarine | *'''Keyword:''' Nigritude ultramarine | ||
| *'''Prize:''' | *'''Prize:''' | ||
| *'''Sponsor:''' | *'''Sponsor:''' | ||
| This contest was created by ] and ran from ], ] to ], ]. Two prizes were awarded for the top position in a Google search: one for the top position on 9am GMT on June 7, 2004, and a second prize awarded at the close of the contest on 9am GMT July 7, 2004. | |||
| There were about two hundred competitors, who deployed an astonishing variety of dirty tricks, from ]ing upwards. The competitive conditions encouraged intensive, free use of techniques that would have otherwise been used in a more conservative manner, and it is entirely possible that some normally-legitimate SEOs took a dirty approach for the occasion. ]s and ]s were hit by the contest, and needed to be constantly policed to prevent "nigritude ultramarine" ] from lowering their ] below acceptable limits. Public wiki sandboxes were especially vulnerable. | |||
| On ], ] Vice President and ]ger ] was announced as the contest winner. Dash stated that his goal in entering the contest was to "prove that real content trumps all the shady optimization tricks that someone can figure out". Instead of resorting to such tactics, he simply wrote a weblog entry and asked his readers to link to it. Another competitor took this idea further and wrote the ''Nigritude Ultramarine FAQ''<sup></sup>, which placed sixth overall, won the "Judge's Choice" award, and remains a valuable source of information about the competition. | |||
| ===Afterlife=== | |||
| Since the end of the formal competition, the evolution of the for ''nigritude ultramarine'' remains an enlightening area of study. As of ], ], the top two Google results are the blog entry that won the competition and the ''Nigritude Ultramarine FAQ''. | |||
| It is known that Google generally tries to detect and penalise dirty tricks, and ''nigritude ultramarine'' makes an obvious test case. An important open question remains whether Google has treated ''nigritude ultramarine'' specially in any way; the notoriously secretive company has refused to comment. It is possible that they have applied special attention to the "nigritude ultramarine" in order to improve the results in this prominent case. However, as of September ], the Google results do not appear hand-crafted, and several insipid pages appear high—although lower than they did during the competition—on the search page. More likely, but also unproven, is that Google has studied the techniques applied to ''nigritude ultramarine'' in order to improve their dirty-trick-penalising code. | |||
| Comparison of search results for ''nigritude ultramarine'' during and after the competition is complicated by the change the competition has caused to the meaning of the phrase. Before, it was purely a nonsense phrase that could not possibly be searched for by anyone looking for any real resource. Now it refers primarily to the competition itself, and is a natural phrase to use to find information about the competition. (As of ], ], the highest Google result that is an official competition page is SearchGuild's, which is ranked 18th.) It is also natural for someone to search for the phrase to find out why it appears on so many webpages. (The Nigritude Ultramarine FAQ, ranked second as of ], ], is an excellent resource for this.) | |||
| Furthermore, due to the nature of web searching, any web-based reporting about the ''nigritude ultramarine'' competition, including this encyclopedia article, feeds back and affects the search results in question. (As of ], ], this ] article ranked 3rd on the results page.) This effect was previously noticed in the reporting of ]s, and takes a more complex form in this case. | |||
| ===References: Nigritude Ultramarine=== | |||
| * | |||
| * | |||
| * | |||
| * | |||
| ===Seraphim proudleduck=== | ===Seraphim proudleduck=== | ||
Revision as of 09:45, 23 January 2006
In SEO (search engine optimization) contests, webmasters compete to rank best on Google for a given (usually nonsense) keyword or keyword combination. They have become an often important method for webmasters to promote their web sites and gain web traffic. While the contestants compete for prizes, fame or glory, the organising body often benefits as well.
History
The nigritude ultramarine competition by SearchGuild is widely acclaimed as the mother of all SEO contests. It was started on May 7, 2004 and was won two months later by Anil Dash.
On September 1 of the same year, webmasters were challenged to rank #1 on Google in three months time for the search phrase seraphim proudleduck.
In the first quarter of 2005, people were competing for the term loquine glupe, spawning web sites ranging from shampoo advertising to holiday resorts. The page that won in the end looked rather boring, and used lots of questionable techniques like "keyword stuffing".
A competition in progress as of January 1, 2006 is SEOLogs' redscowl bluesingsky, another set of made-up words. It is scheduled to end on March 1, 2006.
A contest that had been announced earlier - but only started on January 15 2006 - is the one by V7N SEO forum administrator John Scott and another search engine optimizer, WebGuerrilla. In this particular contest, both competitions use the same search phrase v7ndotcom elursrebmem, but each has its own set of special rules.
The basics
All these contests appear to be based on a number of common factors:
- In simple words, a SEO contest invites webmasters to trick the search engines. Some webmasters resort to spam, while others use white-hat optimization techniques (like providing good content covering the competition, or optimizing page titles).
- While there are many search engines around, they all seem to focus on Google in particular. Google is known to be a difficult search engine to rank well on, especially for new web sites.
- Most SEO contests expect people to optimize a single web page for a non-existent phrase of two silly words. The main reason for this is to keep existing web sites from getting a head start. But at the same time it makes sure that regular internet searchers won't be bombarded with "spammy" results when searching the web for "regular" information.
- Blogs seem to do well at these challenges, indicating in a way that pages with valuable content are preferred by search engines over regular websites, especially when it comes to newsworthy and fresh information of a temporary nature.
The differences
Certain special rules and limitations are invented to set contest apart from the rest. Often, these limitations will make it harder to benefit from the ranking algorithm - including quirks - of the targetted search engine. For example, the January 2006 Redscowl Bluesingsky contest issued by SEOLogs is open for new domains only. That means that the contestants cannot benefit from the ranking advantage old web sites are thought to have over new ones. An example of that is the age advantage Anil Dash' blog page had over the well-received but brand new Nigritude Ultramarine FAQ - respectively ended 1st and 6th in the Nigritude Ultramarine challenge. Most likely, the Redscowl Bluesingsky game will be won by a domain of the style redscowl-bluesingsky.com which is bound to attract natural links, and benefit from the fact that the URL is made up entirely of the search words.
Another special rule that fits well with the 'purpose' of SEO contests today is the obligation to 'link back' to the organizing body - often a search engine optimization blog or forum. Since a web document's ranking on major search engines like Yahoo!, Google or MSN Search is mainly determined by internet hyperlinks pointing to that document, forcing webmasters to link to a web site is quite a powerful way to increase its web presence... Good example are the contest announced by V7N and its counterpart by WebGuerrilla. While the first of these originally required the contestants to link to V7N forums, the second forbids its players to do just that. Instead a special link to Google engineer Matt Cutts' blog is imperative. Because of this rivalry, both the rules and prize money on both these SEO contests were updated regularly up until the official start date of January 15, 2006.
Notable Contests
Several contests have generated significant media attention online.
Nigritude ultramarine
- Dates:
- Keyword: Nigritude ultramarine
- Prize:
- Sponsor:
This contest was created by Dark Blue and ran from May 7, 2004 to July 7, 2004. Two prizes were awarded for the top position in a Google search: one for the top position on 9am GMT on June 7, 2004, and a second prize awarded at the close of the contest on 9am GMT July 7, 2004.
There were about two hundred competitors, who deployed an astonishing variety of dirty tricks, from Google bombing upwards. The competitive conditions encouraged intensive, free use of techniques that would have otherwise been used in a more conservative manner, and it is entirely possible that some normally-legitimate SEOs took a dirty approach for the occasion. Weblogs and wikis were hit by the contest, and needed to be constantly policed to prevent "nigritude ultramarine" spam from lowering their signal-to-noise ratio below acceptable limits. Public wiki sandboxes were especially vulnerable.
On July 7, Six Apart Vice President and weblogger Anil Dash was announced as the contest winner. Dash stated that his goal in entering the contest was to "prove that real content trumps all the shady optimization tricks that someone can figure out". Instead of resorting to such tactics, he simply wrote a weblog entry and asked his readers to link to it. Another competitor took this idea further and wrote the Nigritude Ultramarine FAQ, which placed sixth overall, won the "Judge's Choice" award, and remains a valuable source of information about the competition.
Afterlife
Since the end of the formal competition, the evolution of the Google results for nigritude ultramarine remains an enlightening area of study. As of November 7, 2005, the top two Google results are the blog entry that won the competition and the Nigritude Ultramarine FAQ.
It is known that Google generally tries to detect and penalise dirty tricks, and nigritude ultramarine makes an obvious test case. An important open question remains whether Google has treated nigritude ultramarine specially in any way; the notoriously secretive company has refused to comment. It is possible that they have applied special attention to the "nigritude ultramarine" in order to improve the results in this prominent case. However, as of September 2004, the Google results do not appear hand-crafted, and several insipid pages appear high—although lower than they did during the competition—on the search page. More likely, but also unproven, is that Google has studied the techniques applied to nigritude ultramarine in order to improve their dirty-trick-penalising code.
Comparison of search results for nigritude ultramarine during and after the competition is complicated by the change the competition has caused to the meaning of the phrase. Before, it was purely a nonsense phrase that could not possibly be searched for by anyone looking for any real resource. Now it refers primarily to the competition itself, and is a natural phrase to use to find information about the competition. (As of September 5, 2004, the highest Google result that is an official competition page is SearchGuild's, which is ranked 18th.) It is also natural for someone to search for the phrase to find out why it appears on so many webpages. (The Nigritude Ultramarine FAQ, ranked second as of September 5, 2004, is an excellent resource for this.)
Furthermore, due to the nature of web searching, any web-based reporting about the nigritude ultramarine competition, including this encyclopedia article, feeds back and affects the search results in question. (As of November 13, 2005, this Misplaced Pages article ranked 3rd on the results page.) This effect was previously noticed in the reporting of Googlewhacks, and takes a more complex form in this case.
References: Nigritude Ultramarine
- The challenge
- Google search for Nigritude Ultramarine
- Slashdot on Nigritude Ultramarine
- Anil Dash's winning page
Seraphim proudleduck
- Dates:
- Keyword:
- Prize:
- Sponsor:
Seraphim proudleduck was created by Salmonbones. The contest ran from 1 September 2004 to 1 January 2005. When the contest ended, over 520,000 results existed for the term. (As of January 2006, about 132,000 results still exist.)
Since different Google servers are known to show different results, the search was to be performed from the UK. Three prizes were going to be awarded for the top positions. The winner of the challenge was to get £1000 (about $1723). The second prize was £300 ($517), the third prize was £200 ($345), and a bonus prize (a webpage with a PageRank of 7) was going to be awarded to the number one position for the phrase in Google Images.
However, in an unexpected turn of events, the contest organizer announced that he sold the SalmonBones.co.uk domain name, and no prize was actually awarded. (The contest winner, Google Blogoscoped, wrote more about this on their website.)
V7ndotcom Elursrebmem
- Dates: January 15, 2006 - May 15, 2006
- Keyword: V7ndotcom Elursrebmem
- Prize:
- Sponsor:
The contest runs from January 15, 2006 to May 15, 2006. The prizes are awarded for the top five positions in Google. A number of webmasters in the Search industry have decided to give any winnings they have to charity -- whether or not they will do remains to be seen.
Controversy
On January 18 the MSN search engine V7ndotcom elursrebmem returned zero results for the phrase, but returned more than zero results for this phrase plus other keywords. This was first uncovered by Philipp Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped . What seemed like MSN blocking an SEO competition now looks like a temporary glitch, as results are back to normal.
Serps
- Dates:January 16 2004 - April 16 2004
- Keyword: Serps
- Prize: none
- Sponsor: various
The competition originated in the Usenet newsgroup alt.internet.search-engines. Serps was chosen as the keyword for the initial competition, primarily due to the fact it is an acronym for Search Engine Results Page. Not a well known word, except by SEOs, this meant it was not a particularly competitive target, allowing for the tracking of competing sites to be reasonably easy. SEO professional Brett Tabke claims to have invented the abbreviation in 2000 in a forum post on his site webmasterworld.com.
The competition officially began on January 16, 2004, and ended April 16. There was no entry fee and no prize, and the competition was open to all.
See also
- nigritude ultramarine
- seraphim proudleduck
- search engine optimization
- Google bomb
- spamming and search engine spammer
External links
- SEO Contests
- John Scott Interview
- SearchGuild Nigritude Ultramarine contest
- SEOlogs.com Redscowl Bluesingsky contest
- v7n Contest