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[Seraphim Proudleduck Challenge]

Ali Toy [PersonRank 0]

Sunday, September 19, 2004
19 years ago

Can you help me – i found this site searching for nigritude ultramarine. I am participating in a similar contest and am having no luck. My website is http://www.geocities.com/ali_toy2004 – basically I want to be top ranked site in google for the search term 'seraphim proudleduck' but I have not much idea on how to achieve this.

Can you help? If so, my email address is ali_toy2004[put at-character here]yahoo.co.uk (not my every day address, just for the duration of this contest) and the competition website is http://www.salmonbones.co.uk/

Thanks if you can help or not.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

19 years ago #

Thanks for letting us know about the competition, and good luck to you! Though I can't help you in getting a number one position, please read the front page entry for information on how to win the 1000 pounds *without* making a first place – just by linking to this blog.

Kimspitstop.dk [PersonRank 7]

19 years ago #

Bonusprice?

A PR7 website if you rank on top in Google Images!
Look nice to me, but what is the top ?

Does Google images have some sort of rank?
Is no.1 the first images to the left on term:
   "seraphim proudleduck" or?

NB: No images achive any rank* at the moment

Kim Anton Hollenner
(I vote for Phil *****)
http://metaname.blogspot.com

Scott Moonen [PersonRank 2]

19 years ago #

Does anyone have a gut feel for how TLDs versus sub-domains play into Google's PageRank?

With a little bit of playing around with DNS and .htaccess, I can have a single script backing up thousands of randomized pages on thousands of randomized subdomains (e.g., aaaa.?.com/aaaa, qrst.?.com/wxyz, . . .).

It's really just one domain, with just one script, so storage is no concern (but bandwidth is as Google would traverse it all).

Would such a scheme contribute significantly to a site's PageRank, or would Google diminish the contribution because it's all from the same TLD?

Just wondering if it's worth the effort of participating with such a scheme. :)

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

19 years ago #

My gut-feeling is this:

- It only matters to Google how big and how far-spread the link network is. Nothing else. Some minor adjustments might be made to consider domains superior to sub-domains superior to folders BUT this would exclude too many well-meaning sites (like Blogspot, which are always something-dot-blogspot-dot-com) so I don't really believe it.

So if you...
- create a closely connected site with 10,000 pages and all link them together, and to a top page, that will STILL count very little
- create 1,000 of domains and link them all to one site that will STILL count very little, because all of these sites just get a single llink or, or are just related (a linkfarm scheme)

Linkfarms are not easy to spot and I'm sure there are many additional parameters. Still, this must be the basis for the Google ranking, as it is the only thing one cannot easily cheat. On-page content can be easily cheated. Sheer quantity (100,000 links?) can be easily created. Everything can be worked-around, expcept the SHAPE of the network your links created viewed from high above, taking the whole web into consideration.

Let me try to illustrate my thoughts with three image examples of different topology:
Weak (cross-connected link farm) http://blogoscoped.com/files/network-1.gif
Weak (circular nodes) http://blogoscoped.com/files/network-2.gif
Strong (open connections, virtually covering the whole web – the image intends to show the lines leading outside of the image) http://blogoscoped.com/files/network-3.gif

Scott Moonen [PersonRank 2]

19 years ago #

I.e., the contribution of a link from page X->Y to Y's result ranking is some weighted function of links *into* page X. That makes sense.

That would suggest that a scheme of densely interconnected subdomains might work:

aaaa.?.com (links to) abcd.?.com, qrst.?.com, . . . , seraphim-proudleduck.?.com

aaab.?.com (links to) wxyz.?.com, asdf.?.com, . . . , seraphim-proudleduck.?.com

The idea is that the dense interconnections lend weight to the seraphim-proudleduck link. The key question is whether the extensiveness of the interconnections (for just 4-letter subdomains there are 456976 densely interconnected "sites") is enough to "trick" Google into thinking this is a wide and authoritative swath of the web. I.e., is there a heuristic to throttle the weight function given that the bulk of the contributions came from one TLD.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

19 years ago #

I think you can not convince Google unless you get a serious percentage of outside links – outside being far-spread links from authority (high-PR) sites. Say, ODP, Wikis, and so on. Of course some people fool Google, it works if you find the right dose – if you cross the limit, I'm sure you get banned/ ranked badly. Myself I wouldn't create link-farms, I try to get real links by putting up real content. Google as a (nice) symptom of the real web, so to speak...

Piotr Zgodzinski [PersonRank 4]

19 years ago #

I was closely following the nigritude-ultramarine competition and it is obvious for me, that the Seraphim Proudleduck Challenge's winner will be the person who will gain more links from more different pages, having the competition keywords in the anchor text.

It's so simple, there is no magic there, and I wonder why to call this "SEO" challenge? It is about gaining links, not optimizing pages, as on-page factors have so little meaning for Google these days. When there is huge competition for the desired keywords, one person can do little on his own, he needs money to buy links, or a group of friends, to provide the links for free. For me, it looks now more like 'social-engineering' competition, because the winner will be the person who will convince the most people to provide the appropriate link. It's a good occasion for online people to team up and support their favourites, to show the strength of communities.

Does anybody disagree whit me? Is there anything that can be "optimized" to win this competition, is anything left that one can do in the SEO field that will have more significance than the social skills of the person convincing others to provide links?

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

19 years ago #

Piotr, in essence I believe you are perfectly right.

On-page factors in Google count *nothing* in a SEO competition (more-so in Yahoo, possibly other search engines as well).
They might count *a little* when there is no competition, but in a SEO challenge, subtle changes makes *no* difference at all for the top ten.

Certainly whoever wins might talk about anything on his page and never mention Seraphim Proudleduck – it wouldn't make a difference. *Unless* Google starts to protect itself from Googlebombing and makes a change to the algorithm which needs a site to at least have the keyphrase appearing *once* in order to rank good. (Putting "Seraphim Proudleduck" in the title of my blog front-page is my safety belt. The Nigritude Ultramarine competition was further proof to me this safety is mostly unnecessary – in that competition, I briefly removed the keyphrase from the title, and there was no movement in the SERPs due to it).

So yes --
Unless someone comes up with a very smart, as-of-yet undiscovered linkfarm strategy, my approach and belief is that it must be a community effort, which I'm willing to channel through my blog; I could never win this alone.

Yannick Mückenhirn [PersonRank 7]

19 years ago #

Congratulations Philipp! You will win the competition, I am truly convinced. Bonne chance!!!

Yannick Mückenhirn ® http://noticiasinteresantes.blogspot.com

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

19 years ago #

Thanks Yannick!

And thanks again Piotr for your remarks, I took some of this to heart for the "SEO 2004" post.

Yannick Mückenhirn [PersonRank 7]

19 years ago #

Philipp, the url with the post related to "Seraphim Proudleduck" [ http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2004_09_19_index.html] is at 7th place in Google right now (09-27-04, 7:10 pm GMT -04:00). Is Google excluding you from the results thinking that you are Google Bombing them with that phrase? Its only a question, forgive me if I am telling a no sense comment. But I have the question because 2 days ago, the url of the main page of this Blog was at #1 place. Thanks in advance for your reply.

Yannick Mückenhirn ® http://noticiasinteresantes.blogspot.com

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

19 years ago #

Indeed, I see the same result. This is strangely sad. I have 3 theories right now:

- Google is penalizing me via some algorithm – they sense "googlebombing" (which in a way it is)

- Someone wrote to Google telling them I "cheat" the search results; however, the front page is still in the top 10 for a search for "google blog"

- It's only a temporary thing, and the results will be back to "normal" tomorrow or so.

This contest turns out to be more revealing than it initially looked like!

Piotr Zgodzinski [PersonRank 4]

19 years ago #

I bet it's only the usual fluctuation of the serps and that the things will be back to normal after a few days.

If not, maybe it's time to alter our links and include other keywords in the anchors, adding other related words like 'seo, competition' etc., of course not the same words in all links but in a more random manner. Anyway, I would first wait patiently at least a few days, there is plenty of time left.

I think one of the most important rule of Google is NOT to penalize pages for the off-site factors, otherwise it would be really easy to harm your competition by bombing them with links!

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

19 years ago #

Piotr, good points. I will definitely wait some days, as you say, before making any further judgments on the Google algorithm/ the Google SERPs.

While they probably won't penalize you for what others do on their sites, maybe these days the penalize on a phrase-basis? So that this blog would be "banned" for the phrase "Seraphim Proudleduck"?

If indeed phrase variation would help it would be new to me, and one more point in which Google would move further away from any kind of SEO – and into real world linking behavior. Maybe they spotted an unusually high amount of new links for "Seraphim Proudleduck".

I got another bit that would also go along with this theory. Recently, a lot of sites linked to http://blogoscoped.com/quiz/ using the phrase "Image Quiz" or similar (because that was the site's title). This was naturaly and non-SEOish. However I dropped from #1 position for this phrase to currently number 6.

Mabye something's just fluctuating, as you put it, or maybe this points at something bigger. Yes, time to wait...

Yannick Mückenhirn [PersonRank 7]

19 years ago #

Philipp, keep me informed about what will be your next steps in this contest. I think for sure that this is not about fluctuation. I think that Google are banning this site for the phrase. Its very sad, because probably we are in #1st place, I am sure that we are.

Yannick Mückenhirn ® http://noticiasinteresantes.blogspot.com

Piotr Zgodzinski [PersonRank 4]

19 years ago #

It seems that things are slowly getting back to normal, I see google blogoscoped main page on 7th place.

http://www.google.com/search?q=seraphim+proudleduck

I am convinced, that there are no such filters you were speculating about Yannick.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

19 years ago #

Looks better to me now!

Already number 5 again...

And proof there are indeed no filters applied against my site.

Piotr Zgodzinski [PersonRank 4]

19 years ago #

First AND second place right now!
This battle won, but not the whole war yet...

Good night.

Stephane [PersonRank 1]

19 years ago #

not the war yet... you're right :)

Most seraphim's participants have not really started... but show must go on now ;)

Yannick Mückenhirn [PersonRank 7]

19 years ago #

Piotr, in the moment that I wrote that comment, the main page of this Blog was dissapeared from the Google search. Only the post related to the "Seraphim Proudleduck" was at 7th position. Something weird occur at Google, I am sure of that. And yeaaahh, 1st and 2nd now!!!!

Yannick Mückenhirn ® http://noticiasinteresantes.blogspot.com

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

19 years ago #

Google Blogoscoped is virtually taking up 30% of the screen space now :)

Kimspitstop.dk [PersonRank 7]

19 years ago #

Phill,

Welcome back in the Topspot :O)

Somehow I know It can be done without
"seraphim proudleduck" in the title tag,
but when it's comes to sharp competition,
dont' U think I'ts become more and more
crucial. ...

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