Happy April Fools! I hope everyone enjoyed this as much as I did. I am already starting to prepare for next year!
Once every 100 years, a technology is developed that changes the way that people view their world. Today, I am fortunate enough to be able to introduce one such technology. Internet, please make way for Webfluence, the world's first and only search engine by SEOs for SEOs.
At SEOmoz, we have been trying to reverse engineer the search engines for years. Up until now, our biggest breakthrough had been the creation of Linkscape. Through studying the Internet's link graph via our flagship product, we have been able to make several observations that have helped us write algorithms that are far superior to those used by modern day search engines.
This new software coupled with the easy availability of cloud computing has given us the ability to build a world class search engine. But don't take our word for it, read the information below and try it out for yourself!
Key Features:
Never Link Build Again - Webfluence is the first search engine that enables any user to add any website to any search result. If you don't see your website in a given search result, simply click "Add result" and provide us with information about your website.
Add any website to any search result
Your addition will instantly be added to our index and will propagate throughout our system so that your addition can be viewed globally.
Remove Your Competition - See a result that you don't like? Simply hit the "remove" button and that result will be completely deleted from our index.
Remove any website from any search result
We are providing the power of the most sophisticated black hat techniques with the push of a button.
Technical Feats:
- 1 Trillion and 1 URLs - Our index is the biggest in the world. We accomplished this by utilizing our superior intellect (We Googled " * ") and our patented technology (See Steves below) to find the one page on the Internet that our competition couldn't. Our next planned milestone is 1 googol pages. Given the rapid explosion of copycat Digg/Facebook/YouTube sites, we expect this to happen on Tuesday of next week.
- Our Algorithm - In much the same way that PageRank ® was named after Google's founder, Larry Page, Webfluence's algorithm was named after our founder Rand Fishkin. The secret sauce behind RandRank ® is the use of time to help determine results. This is a metric that is generally overlooked by information retrieval experts.
- Recommended Results - Astute users may notice that on some queries, Webfluence automatically suggests pages that don't seem to be related in any way to the user's original query. This is the result of our manual reviewing staff. A long time ago a strange unidentified man in a tuxedo dropped a basket on our porch containing two twin boys. Eventually, the two youngsters, who we affectionately named Steve and Steve, grew up to become our manual review team. Now, whenever we need a page to return to a user, we just Ask Steves.
Our pride and joy, Steve and Steve (From left to right)
Which one of you bastards deleted my top position for Viagra before I collected my first affiliate check?
It was the thumbs down guy. Go get (delete) him. Ah, now it begins.
I like how all of the links are followed.
I believe the fact that deleting things is easier than adding them will mean we'll never get that many results in the database...
Don't give away the secret sauce!
Sorry, no more chewbacca..:)
It's about time you guys put that VC money to work on something useful ;)
(as our VCs shake their heads in shame)
Thanks! I've just resigned and am now waiting for the money to roll in.
Not only a beautifully brilliant piece of creative jest, but link bait as well! Nice done SEOmoz staff. You guys rock!
Wait! Why are there no relevant results for Rand Fishkin?
Are you suggesting Rand Fishkin is irrelevant?
Yo Dawg! I hear you like search engines so I put Webfluence in your Google so you can search while you search.
"Yo Dawg! I hear you like Webfluence so I Webfluenced you to the top of Webfluence so you can Webluence while you Webfluence."
I think it works better with Google
"Yo Dawg! I hear you like Google so I Googled you to the top of Google so you can Google while you Google."
Oh Glorious day!
Was I *really* the first person to stumble this site? Will anyone who *isn't* a web geek think it's funny? Does anyone know *why* the Steves look like a younger version of me? Does anyone else find *this* to be annoying?
*Yes*. *Yes* I *do*.
haha i like the "I like Turtles" comment in the code
Yeah I figured the launch date might be a problem. Remember, Gmail launched on April 1st and it's a real product.
Now I know you're April foolin' Gmail is still in "beta".
I had heard about this on CNN, but didn't think it was going live until tomorrow. I guess it's April 1 somewhere in the world.
It's close enough right?!
April 1st came early this year for many websites such as shoemoney and johnchow.
Couple this with the Governments' new tax breaks, and you have a winner!
New stimulus package tax-breaks a boon for US SEO companies : https://bit.ly/kMed
This is clearly SEOmoz's pitch to Google Ventures, and believe me they will snap this up!
If Webfluence is *all that*, then I fully expect it to be added as a fourth option to this https://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/03/3-in-1-google.html by the end of the day.
At first I thought this was a joke - and then I read that you actually have zoomba.com indexed - and was like Whoa!
Cookie? https://www.webfluence.com/searches?q=webfluence%20chip%20cookies
haha :D it was terrific,
first i thought it is real :D stupid me. Nice joke SEOMOZ :d
Randrank :D
Hilarious --- the only search with relevant results is "gullible"!
https://www.webfluence.com/searches?q=gullible
LOL you got me. Well played sir! That's what I get for trusting the sanitization of a framework.
Enjoy the rest of your April Fools!
Can I ask what framework you guys are using these days. We have pretty much settled on CodeIgnitor at the moment
You know it's sad when a client sends you an email about this and doesn't get what day it is. I think i'm going to just turn off my blackberry now until April 2nd :)
Danny you big kidder you!
A better April fool might have been "Dover tache a fake - scandal rocks the facial hair world" ;)
There is always next year! 8{D
Hey - don't disrespect Danny's stache! It's a vital part of SEOmoz's future plans.
Sadly, it's easier to "Remove" than "Submit" and all the witty entries I saw earlier today are gone.
Wow I thought it was real at first, then after looking around I figured out today is April 1st. So stupid
I've just added all my pages, and all my client pages, so I will be able to brag about my #1 position for the really big keywords :D
I hope that Steve's don't remove my entries
We'll hold off predators long enough for you to brag to all your clients that you have them ranking #1 straight out of the gate for all their top keywords at the web's newest search engine. ...and EVERYBODY knows the web is all about what's NEW, right?
You are the world's BEST SEO! Oh wait. That slot seems to have a result already.
DArn! I was hoping it'd be called Rankfish ;)
Just gave it a test drive. Created an entry, deleted an entry, added a new one - didn't quite see the edit option. This is going to take off, but perhaps to easy to send automated requests to.
CAPTCHA my friend. This search engine is COMPLETELY spam proof. Nothing could possibly go wrong. Nothing!
Oh really?
+1,000,000
You win.
Why does the webfluence logo look like a cookie?
Why don't more things look like cookies?
There aren't enough cookies on the internet.
a new meme in the making...
Speaking of cookies-Working for a military website man of our great veteran members are from WWII, Korea, Vietnam etc. Less than web savvy of couse (no fault to them)
Trying to explain to a 60-85 year old veteran that they need to enable cookies on their computer always gets the result of "Turn on cookies on my computer!? huh"
actually, i was going to say that it looked like the old intellivision game atlantis.
now that was some serious video gaming...
Oh Sh..! Foiled again!
Very clever.
Someone has too much time on their hands!
Reported on TTGLive earlier today:Dubai has announced it is to become home to the world's first hovering hotel. The first hover-hotel will be a 20-room boutique ‘pod’ floating above the ground. If it proves to be a success then plans for expansion are already in place, including a family-friendly version.Suspended 1000m above the city of Dubai, guests staying at the hover hotel will be treated to unparalleled views of the city’s landscape and the deserts beyond....etc.etc.
I guess it was a joke...
Thought it was real for a second
You almost had me.. thanks to twitter I found out that it was a hoax.. I almost blogged about webfluence.. that would've been embarrassing.. lol
Is it April already? ;-/
I love it, it is truly great, however I hope that also the spammers do not remove the good sites :(
we will wait and see, but this is amazing thanks :D
Wow... Web Influence... new search engine...
and there is no PageRank but RandRank... LOL :)
Crafty but you didnt fool me!
Did you see the Google Gmail hoax? It TOTALLY got me until I clicked a link...
HEHEHEHE - I love that you expect the 1googol of pages to happen next week!
*sigh* if only it were as easy as a click to remove your competition! SEO would be reduced to a hilarious cage match!
Thanks for the great laugh, even if I was a day late in seeing it.
Webfluence rockt!
I like the PageRank named after Larry Page.
I suppose it's already April 1st somewhere in the world...
(This blatantly duplicate sounding comment was made just a tad to slow. I have a new nemesis: Geordieromer)
The similiar results is my favourite function
hahaha. This is epic! I am going to out rank google for its terms.
I actually believed you until this:
In much the same way that PageRank ® was named after Google's founder, Larry Page, Webfluence's algorithm was named after our founder Rand Fishkin
RankRank!! :)
I love twitter, i was waiting for this announcement! Now im not going to be able to go to sleep.
wheres wmail?
Good post, though I think this may have topped it:
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/03/31/breaking-internet-explorer-81-eagle-eyes-leaked/
This actually worked, the designers in our agency got really excited, then I had to send em another email saying it was fake!
Brilliant! You had way too much fun doing this.
So.....are you seriously thinking about making a bigger better search engine and testing the waters! (White Hat, of course)
I dunno, the waters seem fine to me (adjusts hat). What do you guys think?
The results seem both relevant and topical. Well done.
I'm hoping the links will turn up again somewhere and I'll get a couple of do-follows ... like "look at all these idiots that submitted something ..."?
Pretty elaborate, must have too much time on your hands.
Incidentally I assumed the big cookie was a clue and that the data was just logged in a cookie to redisplay on a per browser basis. But I did catch a couple of other peoples submissions so it seems you wasted real resources on this ... did anyone try injections or x-browser actions?
I had the same thought, so I went ahead and added a few results. What the hell, why not...
Has April Fool's day been moved to March 31st in the US? :-)
Nah, but it was technically past midnight GMT when Danny posted, so we figured it was already Q2 somewhere in the world, hence a good time to launch our new mega-product.
Interesting, very interesting.
loading my keywords as we speak. muhaha
"We are providing the power of the most sophisticated black hat techniques with the push of a button."
That's awesome, no white hat guilt!
https://www.webfluence.com/searches?q=chewbacca
wow, webfluence sounds fantastic!