Nigritude Ultramarine

I think I'll pass on this one.

Hi Anil

I read your about page and think your aims are cool. I wanted to
comment about your opinion on the nigritude ultramrine contest though.
I signed up for a typekey thingie but was not able to comment on your
blog because I do not have your typekey registration.

background on me:
I am one of the moderators at SearchGuild (thought right now I am in
no way speaking as / for SearchGuild)
I also have a blog about SEO stuff...

"I've always had a pretty low opinion of the Search Engine
Optimization industry. Though there are of course legitimate experts
in the field, it seems chock full of people who are barely above
spammers, and they taint the image of the whole group."

There are a bunch of low lives in any marketing industry. It is far
easier off the start for people to make money by ripping people off,
but there are many honest people who aim to help others. For example I
created a directory of worst practice SEO firms and techniques
(http://www.blackhatseo.com).

There is a bunch of misinformation on the web abot SEO and how search
engines work. Some people aim to extract profits and rip people off,
others are honestly aiming to lower the cost of entry into the
businessworld by encouraging people to publish their thoughts (similar
to what your goals were on your about page).

"That being said, I do watch what they do from time to time,
especially as they've become enchanted with the power of blogs, both
from a comment-spamming perspective as well as their evny of bloggers'
PageRank."

Strong weblogs do hold a bunch of power in the eyes of search engines,
especially Google. Obviously comment spam allows people to achieve
higher rankings then they otherwise may through artificial
manipulation.

The whole comment spam thing is somewhat short sided in it's attack of
SEOs though. Recently I was interviewed about the history and future
of spam and the role bots played in them. I was looking around the web
and found this site
http://www.blogspam.org/
the #1 result in Google for "blog spam"
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&q=blog+spam

The irony of his anti blog spam site is that it uses the popularity
that movement got to increase link popularity into his site where he
is linking off to "discount cigarettes" and "Canadian Pharmacy."

My point here is there are dirtbags looking to exploit any market. SEO
just happens to be a market where automated bots make large profits
easy for greedy people.

"I suspect, though, that those of us who've made content even when
there weren't bribes involved have an advantage."

It is not your content that is your advantage, but the audience your
content has created. Most people will not become icons with large
followings who can just make a statement on their site and get dozens
of inbound links for it.

"For all the back-and-forth about how Google is or isn't evil, the end
result of PageRank is that it's a hell of a lot more work to fake your
way into being a top result than it is to just have high ranking as a
fringe benefit of just being a person who loves writing. That's a good
thing."

This is how the web was intended to be designed, but it does have
flaws. Many people can abuse PageRank by attaching other things to an
idea or site though.
It is not that hard to fake your way to the top by renting links. Most
the people who are doing well in this contest have social networks
working for them (just like your blog is working for you.)

"So, in order to prove that real content trumps all the shady
optimization tricks that someone can figure out, and because I figure
I deserve an iPod at least as much as the Star Wars Kid, I'm entering
the contest."

The feedback loops in Google are probably too slow for you to win that
iPOD. Some sites in the contest already have over 100,000 backlinks.
If you get enough of the blog community behind you then you probably
will be able to win the second prize awarded next month. It would be
amazing if you could win the first one though. If you win it will not
be because blogs are more legitimate than SEO's, but because your
distributed social network is larger than others.

best of luck
aaron :)

The current top ranked page is a blog, as well, basically relying on track-backs. Why are you doing this, again?

I do not agree, in the least, that blogs should take center-stage on search results. However, have no problem with a blogger winning the Nigritude Ultramarine contest, but we should each ALL ask ourselves: what is Nigritude, in the first place??

:

Clearly, it is a variant (or FLAVOR) of attitude. And since attitude is something only Halley Suitt can personify, as Halley Suitt, I think we should ask her views. Or we could ask ms. nigritude, ms. danah boyd (since I haven't had a chance to get around her digital-ID-blog lately...)-; (Or is that still Ms. danah boyd?) Or we could ask the persona of Allied, but she can choose not to reply, of course.

:

Still, Ultramarine is a mystery unto itself, so why bother??

Anyhoo, never look at page-ranks and all that kind-a stuff, so dunno what the hail I'm talking about, in this case. (Few other cases, too, 'spose... ? ...;-D)

jt~

;-D

Ooh this is un unexpected twist ... I hope Google Blogoscoped can hold.

You're not going to stay mad and then try to sue someone are you?

My Google Blogoscoped has been pushed to number 2 again. The first ranked entry is, again, highly SEOd spam. Well if you wanted to have seen a real blog win, I suppose you should have linked to me while there was still time -- now I believe neither one of us is going to get top on the first round. However, best of luck for the second round next month, I think you have a good chance!

Google rankings also are affected by what result one clicks on after doing a search. So you might want to ask people to do a search for "Nigritude Ultramarine," then find and click your result.

"Google rankings also are affected by what result one clicks on after doing a search."

This is potentially highly inaccurate information. The last majur search engine which was founded on (or heavily used) this principal was Direct Hit. They were bought out by Ask Jeeves only to be quickly replaced by Teoma's technology.

Within the first year of Direct Hit they had to rewrite their spam protection about a half dozen times.

Alexa is used to measure traffic by looking at clickthroughs and there are special automated programs in existance which aim to manipulate their numbers (which were highly inaccurate anyway).

Rick, in general I think you are wrong -- it does not matter to Google rankings if someone clicks on them. That's because they can't track it, unless the site one lands on has AdSense running, or unless it's one of the rare instances where Google hands out tracking URLs (they do that sometimes, others, like Yahoo, do it all the time).

For example my blog will turn up like this in the Yahoo results:
http://rds.yahoo.com/S=2766679/K=google+blog/v=2/SID=e/TID=YS55_1/l=WS1/R=3/SS=96462811/H=0/MI=other/*-http://rdre1.yahoo.com/click?u=http://blog.outer-court.com/index.html&y=02B692EF8F1980C4&i=483&c=8540&q=02%5ESSHPM%5BL7xppxsz%3F%7Dspx6&e=utf-8&r=2&d=wow-en-us&n=E9E45H3T6F1K1OSR&s=14&t=&m=40C33B1F&x=0119407C128FE0F2

That's how Yahoo can track me when I click on it. However on Google my blog would turn up like this in the search result:

http://blog.outer-court.com/

... and there's no way Google can know wether or not I clicked on it.
Or do you believe Google has a special way to find out where you clicked, e.g. by cookies/ JavaScript?

While blog content can certainly equal the quality of non-blogged content, I think the effect it has on linking may have been a bit unforseen by Google.

Are links from blogs worth as much as links from a non-blog site?

Done. Just placed a link to your Nigritude Ultramarine article on my weblog.
Cheers!

My sense of justice has pushed me into linking to a blogger. Good luck.

Please, don't discount all the SEO in one quick move. If Google had a perfect algorithm there would be no black-hat or even borderline SEO. But all Google has at this time is a finite algorithm that can be realtively easy fooled and could miss some important pages at the same time.

If you have the quality content you have to package it in the right way to make it as search engine friendly as possible, if you care about making in to top SERPs, of course.

If you look at blogs model you will find that, in addition to making content publishing as easy as 1-2-3 for non-techies, blog technology *does* go an extra step in the SEO direction to ensure that blog content is ranked by Google as high as possible. And if you recall it was a problem for Google, which took some measures to limit blog influence in the past.

You are using SEO help of your blog provider every time you publish a blog post! In a sense you are taking a SEO advantage of someone else who still uses plain web site design.

So don't bash SEO in general if you did encounter some unscurpulos individuals using it. If there is a way to fool the system there will always be people wanting to take advantage of it.

I am rooting for Philipp's nigritude ultramarine blog [blog.outer-court.com] because he has topics relevant to nigritude ultramarine informarion: Google, SEO, spamming...

I've never seen any evidence that 'the influence of weblogs' has been limited by Google - except the highly intelligent stuff that both Blogger and MT have done to avoid the benefits of comment spam.

I just thought I should add that I think Anil should post some other links through to the other articles about this SEO stuff - particularly the ones that told us to be aware of the liklihood of an influx of wiki spam links because of this contest. I think once you have this floor, it's worth using it to educate SEO people about the damage they have on the web community at large.

Good luck with winning this competiton.

What would be interesting is if you could start a new weblog under completely different name, and never make any association (reference/link) from/to anildash nor MT/TypePad, and don't even tell anyone about it. And, see where you end up in PageRank after a year.

What this will show is how much power good content indeed has for gaining in PageRank. This experiment can only be done by someone who is already successful, like you, Joi Ito, and Kottke. There has been many theories going around about the fact that good content is secondary to being in the market early on, and leveraging the PageRank of associated/affiliated sites.

Good luck and I too am throwing my tiny, meager blog into the group of people supporting your campaign. Peace.

My thinking on this is that you should be right at the top of the list. However, there seem to be more than a few bogus manipulations at the top. Ah well.

It's crazy that Google does not take into account what would clearly be the most useful information: what result to searchers click on. Taking it a step further: which do they click and do not return for a different entry.

Did you know that we're living in a Cameltoe World?

I think you bring up an interesting point however, I think if it came down to it, there really is no valid way to enter this contest without a sort of 'spamming the search engine' oriented approach. Nigritude ultramarine, collectively meaning; blackness, the state of being black, and a blue pigment made from the powdered lapis lazuli (Of or from a place beyond the sea, as there were 5 results on websters.com).
And so, without spamming the search engine, you might expect a site with descriptions of jewelry or rare stones, or maybe even a web site that talks about the nature of colors and art.
I agree that manipulating a search engine for the mere purpose of manipulating a search engine is wasted energy. Let the search term Nigritude ultramarine turn up 0 zero results, let sleeping dogs lie. Maybe down the road a rare lapis stone will be found with black pigment, in which case the term nigritude ultramarine would the be the most eloquent descriptive choice of words. I think web logs are genuine and deserved to be among the highest ranked in search results. But I partially see you contradicting yourself, and see your approach to the contest as spam oriented as the next guy. The contest is over and the site that deserves to win by any means necessary, because the contest itself was merely a test of manipulating a search engine, not genuine results.

The contest is not completely over, there is another prize being given out July 7th.

I've been helping out at IMR, which is currently 6th place.

All I can say is that this has been a fun contest, and that IT'S ON ANIL!

Here was my Ultramarine Hulks late entry that I "hijacked" my main page with for 36 hours or so the day before the contest ended - Google ranked it #518 - guess Hulk wasn't able to SMASH Google! ;-)

Hi Anil. The effort to get high Google PR and link text into any site is not a small one. While spamming is a tactic, I prefer building relationships that will hopefully endure past the finish of the competition. While that did not get me to first in round one, I will be having a good shot at the second with my Nigritude Ultramarine entry

I like to think of the competition as being something to raise the profile of SEO. Even bad publicity is good publicity - so hopefully there will be more people talking about how you can get to the top.

I see many sites ever day that if only they did their onpage optimisation a bit better, had better internal and external links, ... they would be higher on the search engines. With several sites I have helped, one link from me, plus the addition of in one case only two words on the page, and they were able to get to the top of a competitive term. Another site was a change in title, meta description, addition of about 4 words on the page, plus a link from me got him to the top within a week.

I have seen Webpronews comment that says the contest proves how easy it is to manipulate Google Nigritude Ultramarine winner announced - I prefer the alternate view, of how much effort is required if you want to get to the top against so much competition.

Of more interest to me is the effect of the duplicate page penalty, the noarchive penalty (I'm still sketchy about this one), and the instability of Googles serp rankings when there are so many new links being thrown at sites.

Regards
T2DMan - Time2Dine entry

First, to repeat, Google does not take into account which results searchers click on (which is a big mistake in my opinion as it is probably the most crucial bit of information in determining which results meet user needs.

Question: sites like news.com are putting titles in their URLs but I haven't seen much evidence that Google counts this very highly. Anil wonders if MT should do the same. Most of the "Negritude" sites do *not* print the phrase in the URL.

Currently, you are number one...you could win if you kept it up by July 7.

-Vaughn
Nigritude Ultramarine

Anil-

You were number one at Yahoo. All this fuss over Google, and everyone is ignoring the others and losing because of it.

At least you did not stoop to their level, so hold you head high -- be proud dude. Keep on keeping on. These guys will be out of job soon enough, and no skills to show for it.

I'm in this Nigritude Ultramarine challenge now (in the mid teens), but to be a "true competition" this would have started with everybody on an equal playing field. That is, the contestants would have all been assigned some weird domain name to run under (like 'hdiquwehr8923.com' or something) along with the challenge phrase. Then the contestants would have to register the assigned domain names, set the sites up from scratch (personal home page, forum, blog, whatever) and go from there. The contest would run for 4 months allowing time to build up content and PR value. Now if somebody wants to run that one I'd be interested in playing.

What exactly do you mean, you didn't win? I thought the goal was to be #1 on the search Google results for the phrase. And there you are, at #1. What about that constitutes not winning?

Jerry, there was a time deadline of 9am last monday morning, which I missed by about 30 hours. I'm guessing that, had I entered the contest a day earlier, I would have won.

But yeah, we're all winners!

Anil, it's a two-stage contest!

The competition runs from the 7th of May to the 7th of July.

The Player prize goes to the page that is ranked #1, one month after the competition commences. They will receive an Apple Mini iPod™ valued at $249 shipped to them within 72 hours of judging.

The Stayer prize goes to the page that has the #1 ranking on the 7th of July. They will receive a Sony Flat Screen Monitor valued at $549 shipped to them within 72 hours of judging.

Hello Anil,
It is really proud to see an Indian winning the second part of the contest, I hope you stay on top till July 7th, ill be proud to say my employees that an indian won a tough SEO competition, all the best see you with the Flat screen monitor,
I am an indian too, I am in the competition too but all I can achieve is top 20 ranking,

Hello Anil,
Well done so far in the competiton. Not long to go now.

Interesting to read your comments on the Search Engine Optimisation Industry and how you always had a pretty low opinion on it. Although nice to know you recognise there are some experts in this field, you also say, "it seems chock full of people who are barely above spammers, and they taint the image of the whole group". Very interesting that. So what technique do you suppose these "barely above spammers" are using to try to de-throne you. You don't think they would be asking people to do them favours and "Link to this post with the phrase Nigritude Ultramarine" do you? The very thought :shock:

Have a nice day.

Oh by the way Goodguy, are Indians in some way inferior to the rest of us.I say this because you seem to be looking forward to telling your employees "that an Indian won a tough SEO competiton". The last time I spoke to my Indian friends I am sure they still had arms, legs, eyes, ears and a brain like the rest of us. I wonder what people would say if I said I would be really proud if a "white man won a tough SEO competiton".

You have to be careful what you say these days.

Peace

MrUnderhill

I do apologies. I mean't to say Englishman and not White man. Silly me.

Well, it seems like you've pretty much owned this competition Anil. But are you
still even intrested in Nigritude Ultramarine anymore? I haven't seen your blog
cover the Nigritude Ultramarine other than the two articles you wrote early on.

So, the question is, did you get bored of Nigritude Ultramarine? And the other
bloggers? Did they get tired of Nigritude Ultramarine and SEO too?

Personally, I think everyone has gotten bored of the competition really. I

haven't seen much excitement at the competition forums, or even the forums

of many competitors (including my own.) I think you have single-handedly
turned this game into an impossible situation that where no one can hope to

overcome you. That's pretty cool, you have to admit. But I am still amazed at
how Google can still continue to consider blogs important in link weight. It's
obviously been shown that they can alter results more than anything else. Why
would pre-IPO Google allow this? Has anyone considered the implications?

There are so many questions this competition has brought up. Surely, Google
is aware of what is going on now. Is the press? What will the media say when
this is all over? What will it reflect on Google?

So, have you been following the competition at all? What about the other
entrants? Have you gotten to know us? (What about taking a stop by my

forums? :P) Personally, I entered this so that I would get new people to visit my
forums and perhaps join. My strategy was a bit poor, I suppose. Maybe you

and your readers can visit anyway. :P Early on, I suppose I was mad at you for
taking away my traffic. But I don't think my forum is the right demographic for
SEOs anyway. :P

Oh, and you should check out the Nigritude Ultramarine Orkut group. Not that

it has a real purpose, really. I just thought it was a bit funny to make one:
http://orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=57206

Maybe the other SEOs can join that too. :P

Well, good luck. Hope you don't get too tired of competing. :P

1 week remains

Wow, this has been an amazing contest. Everyone has worked so hard!!

This is it!! The final stretch of the competition. Good luck everyone!

Good luck anil ;)

Uh oh, the rankings are beginning to shift. I'm pretty sure you've got the power to beat these guys, but just make sure. IMR and TJ are catching up.

Hey, what about merkey ;)

TJ took over it's #2 spot. Also, Philipp Lenssen fell of the first SERPs completely.

It's really shaking up now!!

Strong weblogs do hold a lot of power in the eyes of google. Obviously comment spam like this allows people to achieve higher rankings then they otherwise may through artificial manipulation such as a wiki sandbox.

Well, as for wiki sandboxing, Philipp Lenssen had an intresting article about it here:
http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2004_06_01_index.html#108608909046269742

Still, isn't this just the same as spamming?

It's so unfair that this page is still ranked #1. :)

No it isn't, fluffy. Anil has done a better job than any of us. He should be commended.

Way to go, Anil! Just five more days!

Yea, you go ana--err, anil

Well, you might notice the little smiley, but... It's not like he's actually actively tried to boost his pagerank over time. It's just that people keep on adding links, or the big glut of weblogs out there who linked in the past keep it in a positive feedback loop or something, based on his already huge web presence. I mean, it's not meant to be critical of Anil - he obviously has a huge following and apparently writes enough stuff which enough people find interesting. But that's sort of turned this contest into a "who has the most celebrity?" contest instead of a "who has the strongest link-fu?" contest.

You know, Fluffy, that makes a lot of sense. I've seen your blog entry, and you seem to be working pretty hard. It's just about popularity, I guess. I don't think I'm going to win it; I'm very unpopular. But does this mean I'm any less deserving? What about you? But does this make Anil less deserving? I don't think so.

Who really deserves to win this contest at all? Are we not all equal?

That's a lot to think about...

Just over three days left!!

You go anil. WOOOO!!

I can't wait. This is so exiting. So, be honest. You in it for the moniter?

Go anil!

Dude you'd better win that monitor for all this effort.

I know you can win this!

;)

-kassie

This is it! The end of the contest is near!

Well done Anil. You have proved that popular blogs rule the world and that it is very hard for everyone else to get a strong PR7 in 2 months. You have your hands on a PR engine. But that is not to say that hard work can't also pay off, as has been proved by each site, my Time2Dine entry included, that have worked hard for the places we have got.

Wow! It's great to see the power of blogs hitting the top of Google's SERPs! Great job, Anil!

Congrats! It's amazing that a PR 4 inner page can win the final prize!

This inner page is PR3 now, and it is still at the top of the results. PR isn't the only criteria used for ranking SERPs, but it certainly helps!

First of all I would like to say Hi to everyone and would like you all to participate in getting the site http://www.freewebsrus.com/frenchvictories first on google for keyword "French Victories" so please link to http://www.freewebsrus.com/frenchvictories/ to get this high up on google for keyword "French Victories" (without the ") I have made the code here so you can use it French Victories Thank you Daniel

This site is just way too cool. you're still 1 as of 18 sept 2004

Congratulation for your #1 place!

First of all I would like to say Hi to everyone and would like you all to participate in getting the site http://www.seraphimproudleduck.freewebsrus.com first on google for keyword "Seraphim Proudleduck" so please link to http://www.seraphimproudleduck.freewebsrus.com to get this high up on google for keyword "Seraphim Proudleduck" (without the ")seraphim proudleduck Thank you Daniel

Hi to everyone and would like you all to participate in getting the site http://www.seraphimproudleduck.freewebsrus.com first on google for keyword "Seraphim Proudleduck" so please link to http://www.seraphimproudleduck.freewebsrus.com to get this high up on google for keyword "Seraphim Proudleduck" (without the ")seraphim proudleduck Thank you Daniel

Well, seo is an interesting game. (I was able to get #1 for "baytzim" (the Yiddish/Hebrew word for testicles/balls (lit. "eggs") within a few days. Of course, it wasn't a heavily used word. Still, it's nice if you type in the name of your website and it comes up first.

What I'm worried about is too much spamming will make GoogleAdsense (and similar programs) a bad value for advertisers. Right now, it's a great way for the "little guy" to make an extra few hundred $$ a month from a legit niche site.

Apparently, more contests are taking place around the world and in various languages. For Hebrew speakers check out the latest here: http://www.nrg.co.il/online/10/ART/844/891.html

Google's results here:
http://www.google.co.il/search?hl=iw&q=%D7%9C%D7%AA%D7%95%D7%A8+%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%98%D7%95%D7%A8&meta=

And the (current) winner here: http://www.2find.co.il/לתור_מוטור/

Firstly and Most Important - Congratulations on winning the SEO Competition.

I have carried out many searches over time to find a Clearly Skilled and Honest SEO, paying for services and seeing no results is no fun I promise you.

After stumbling on this competition via searchguild.com I realised that the whole competition and Prove Yourself idea was fantastic for the likes of me to find a quality SEO that really can perform as well as claimed.

I am sick of reading the "Pay Me $199 and get thousands of Sales" rubbish spouted by so many, I shall be reading all the posts with interest and making my enquiries soon.

Once Again
Congratulations
Tylmail.com

Nigritude Ultramarine from kwc blog
Nigritude Ultramarine (Anil Dash is a MT developer, so I cast my vote for him)...

china shanghai lady infomations.

Congratulations, your are still number 1 for the keyword, even after 3 years.