Results tagged “nigritudeultramarine”

A few months ago, two companies in the search optimization space teamed up to start a contest, based on a challenge to see who could be the first result for the gibberish phrase "Nigritude Ultramarine". Winning the contest consisted of being the top result on Google for that search either on June 7 (the "player" prize) or a month later, on July 7 (the "stayer" prize).

I've had a fairly poor impression of the Search Engine Optimization Industry, so I entered the contest on June 4. My site became the number one search result late on June 8, so I missed winning the first round, but I held the position for the rest of the month (and my site is still the first result, as of this writing) and won the Stayer's Prize.

My prize was a beautiful Sony monitor. Michael Robertson and the other folks involved with the contest were cordial and prompt, and the monitor arrived in the middle of last week. In fact, I've been in the middle of moving, and just after we'd settled in, the first ring at our doorbell was from UPS, bearing a big Sony box courtesy of Amazon. Now that's a housewarming gift.

But more interesting to me has been the reaction people have had, first to my entry in the contest, second to my ranking in the search results (the term people seem to favor in email is "dominance" but that doesn't sound very humble) and finally their response to my win of the second-stage prize.

There are a significant number of really supportive emails, of course. People generously linked to my original Nigritude Ultramarine post, and I think they felt a sense of accomplishment in helping me win. There's nothing the blogosphere loves more than angry mob justice, and I probably benefitted from tapping into a bit of angry mob antipathy towards the SEO industry. Though many, perhaps even most, people in the SEO industry behave ethically, the reality is that much of the SEO industry has treated the weblog medium with an attitude ranging from crass opportunism or exploitation to downright abuse, in the form of comment spam, referral spam, and fake, content-free blogs.