SEO PR opportunity in today's Guardian

[10 Yetis]

Hi all you techy wonderkids

Anyone see the Guardian piece today about the ways in which websites can fool google into giving them higher rankings?

Not really bothered about it in the slightest myself, so no getting yourselves into one of those "black hat" v legit SEO debates.

But.... all you SEO companies could have used it as a prime "piggy backing" opportunity to try and keep the story going and getting some national print exposure by emailing the journo... (as I put in one of my previous FREE newsletters)

No doubt some of you have?

Don't forget, make sure any statements you issue to the press are flowery and exciting so as to attract the journo's, and the readers, eye...

Of course, if you were a SEO company and a client of 10 Yeti's I would have been on to you at the crack of dawn this morning getting a quote from you so we could have tried to get you exposure in the Guardian...

Hope this helps, happy coverage hunting oh yeah and,

MERRY CHRIMBO

[Jayne]

Merry Christmas Andy :D

Jayne

[mattk]

I read that story in the Guardian. The stench of bulls**t was so strong I had to turn my head away from the monitor several times ;)

Just my opinion though.

[billhilton]

I agree with Matt. The whole thing was a complete scam. I've had a full rant about it on my homepage blog, if anyone's interested.

[mattk]

Very good analysis Bill. Interesting blog too!

[billhilton]

Cheers. I mailed Bobbie Johnson, the writer, who's usually pretty good... but it bounced. Perhaps he's been swamped. :-)

[10 Yetis]

as I said, I was not overly worried by the content. It was a good way for a company to make contact with a national journo.

Best case scenario would be that you get a mention in a national which would get your brand in front of the all important marketing budget holders.

[JustOneUK]

I agree with Matt. The whole thing was a complete scam. I've had a full rant about it on my homepage blog, if anyone's interested.

"For a start, Johnson writes that he added "invisible data" - copy written in the same background colour as the page - to boost his page's position. This would have worked very nicely in 1999, but by now Google is sufficiently sophisticated to compare HTML/CSS font and background colour markups, and disregard any copy which is tagged to be invisible. Nobody knows for sure that it does this, but I'd be pretty amazed if it doesn't -"

Take a look at the footer of 2cuk.net or .co.uk and it's 1000's of pages, then tell me google delists cheating sites.
No matter how advanced google query string/ranking/search technology may have advanced, they are still in the darkages when it comes to identifying the scams.

That guardian article was pretty poor don't you think?
ranking number1 out of 11,500 sites, you can do that in your sleep.
Getting up there for a term with 136,000,000 results is a different game :lol: ....and no mention of the sandbox or other factors.

The most contentious issue being one of apparent unscrupulous people networking sites together.... I'm sorry, but if you own a lot of sites why would you not direct people to other sites you have? Indeed webdesigners pass people onto their portfolio sites in a bid to raise profile and i see no resason not to promote a website you like whether it is owned by a stranger, a friend or buy yourself.

@Bill >> nicely written blog :)

James

[billhilton]

Cheers James :-)

I wasn't saying that Google actually delists cheaters - it's plain that it doesn't - and it's also plain that footer/landing pages do work: however, I know that a lot of SEO people are sceptical about hidden text. 2cUK have plainly not been delisted, but have they actually benefitted from the white-on-white, do you think?

You're right about the networking sites together business, I think. The problem Google has is that so many people with a lot of legit sites do this that it's hard to work out which sites are dummies for spam purposes. It would need doing by hand, I guess.

[mattk]

I agree with Matt. The whole thing was a complete scam. I've had a full rant about it on my homepage blog, if anyone's interested.
Take a look at the footer of 2cuk.net or .co.uk and it's 1000's of pages, then tell me google delists cheating sites.
No matter how advanced google query string/ranking/search technology may have advanced, they are still in the darkages when it comes to identifying the scams.

James
I did a search on Google for:

uk search engine directory

and couldn't see that 2cuk site in the top 100. And by the time I got to page 10 there was some pretty tenuous sites being listed.

[JustOneUK]

I did a search on Google for:
uk search engine directory
and couldn't see that 2cuk site in the top 100. And by the time I got to page 10 there was some pretty tenuous sites being listed.
they rank for 10's of 1000's of targeted local searches, believe me..checking out the competition is what i do for a living. They are not a search engine..so they would not rank for that term anyway.

James

edit> don't get me wrong. I rank for 1000's of searches across my sites..i just don't need 10 lines of hidden text to do it.

[10 Yetis]

aaaaaahhhhhhhhhh

I feared that by making this post we would get into some SEO debate...

Mods, please stop this thread, or even remove it... It was intended to highlight a PR opportunity.

SEO threads always end in tears.. I am just a poor innocent, dippy PR who knows not what he does. :D

[JustOneUK]

... It was intended to highlight a PR opportunity.
I am going to email them...i will let you know if i get an answer this year... 8) Thanks for the PR opportunity :)

[billhilton]

I'm not so fussed about the SEO side of things. My main beef is the way the Guardian - a paper I read every day - has covered it so sloppily. The 'experiment' their writer did to get a top ranking was basically a complete con, and he's clearly a savvy-enough guy to realise that it was.