It's been quite a week - first a slashdotting, now an article in Newsweek. The print edition is coming out tomorrow, but you can read the article online here. I think the title is supposed to be "Hotwiring your Search Engine Rankings," though.
Congrats to Earl Grey, as well, who was mentioned as the black hat in the article - he's also the only reason I'm mentioned. It was Earl (from the spam debate) who referred the reporter to us. Thanks, Earl. I owe you a big one.
I'm a little humbled by all the attention - hopefully it's something that will be positive for all of the industry.
P.S. This is a version of the article that was going to be in Wired, and thanks are due to Brad Stone (I'm linking to his brand new blog) of Newsweek (who wrote both versions) for keeping the story alive.
P.P.S. This photo is not representative. I'm no fashion model and the shot with the sunglasses was only one of dozens - I guess they don't like my eyes :) (which reminds me, thanks to Gabriela Hasbun for making my mom and I look so great).
P.P.P.S. Why is my mom in the photo? Gillian actually founded the company in 1981 (under a different name, of course) and we've been working together through good times and bad for 8 years. I couldn't ask for a better business partner.
randfish, regarding the "can take a year to rank" phrase, Brad had clearly heard the term sandbox before when I talked to him. When faced with the many-faceted nuances of the subject, I suspect he pulled back and punted--which is a reasonable choice, all things considered. It makes it sound like Google might yet rank that site, when we know that's not the case. :)
If it makes you feel better, I don't think that industry-savvy SEOs are going to read the article and think that the "peppered" comment actually meant that you were trying to spam a bunch of forums with links.
The article just got slashdotted, too - that's twice in a week now... it's crazy.
Nice bit of exposure and two worthy people to represent the white side and the dark side ;-) Congrats
As for the false statements and mistakes - believe me I have seen worse - that's what happens if soemebody who's not specialized in something tries to write about a special topic like SEo - all kinds of twists are inevitable.
Software download - hmm why didn't they provide a URL for that??? LOL
It's great to see you been talked about there no matter it contains lots of false statements and all. Good work! It's your week, I think. :D
..off topic
You changed your avatar, huh? Nice one though. ;-)
Congratulations.
Amazing exposure for your business and SEO generally. The yellow shoes are going to stereotype us all. I have a pair on order.
Just Jokes.
Congrats Rand. 12,000 backlinks for shoe-store.net? Nice work. Great article, huge exposure. I think you're going to have a busy 2006.
Looks like the Newsweek link has changed - https://www.newsweek.com/2005/12/19/hotwiring-your-search-engine.html
Well Rand, now your name is mentioned in Dagbladet, one of the biggest newspapers in Norway. The article is called How to trick Google, and is a mix of the Newsweek article and The sparring and spin of the Google Dance from the Guardian.
The article is boiled on two articles, and are IMO not very good. But, now you are famous in Norway also. :-)
It's your time to shine brother! You are a nice, helpful person. Enjoy!
congrats Rand. That Earl Grey dude, whoever he is, deserves lots of credit for this also.
You deserve. Keep up the good work
The article just got slashdotted, too - that's twice in a week now... it's crazy.
The snowball phenomenan is fun ;) Enjoy the ride while it lasts because it goes as fast it comes. The good part is that it will happen again some day, and again, and again...
congrats guys! nice work.
Nice article, congratulations.
It boggles my mind to see "hard money Loan" referred to as a kind of commercial loan though.
The picture in connection with the text reminds me for some reason about Ford Fairline. Congratulation Mr. Rock'n Roll SEO.
Congratulations to both of you. There is just one funny little fact related to the news week article that made me laugh so hard I got tears in my eyes.
yep - thats definitely rock n roll seo! congrats on the publicity guys
Is that Johnny Knoxville in that picture?! ;-)
Heh, congrats Rand - couldn't have happened to a more deserving person.
Illicit software downloaded from the internet. And where do i get that software as it may be fun? Strange i dont know what the software is when it was me that was using it. I said `dont use my private detectives site becuse it has my old home adress on where i used to live and of course he used it. I guess it is true what they say about reporters.
I noticed a number of errors/mistakes in the article, but as I didn't get to see it before today, there's not much to do (not that I'm complaining - this is a great thing for us). Individually:
- "the owners hired a Seattle consultant" - actually, they hired our company, not just me. Gillian was the primary contact with them and Matt built the site, with myself and another team member (now gone), helping out.
- "Fishkin also peppered online bulletin boards and shoe-enthusiast Web sites with links to his client's site" - we did link building, but we certainly didn't spam bulletin boards. Most discussion of Shoe-Store on discussion borads came naturally, as a result of people buying there. We did do a lot of link building, of course.
- "High-priced and in some cases slyly unethical" - a gross misstatement, as in my estimation and our clients' views, SEO is incredibly cheap, especially since we only get paid when they make money (we're 100% commission with the 2 clients mentioned in the article)
- "even if their true popularity doesn't warrant that elevated status" - this would be a very hard subject to tackle - does Paris Hilton deserve to be famous? If this is unrepresentative, so too is public relations and many, many news articles.
- "Google, which moves more cautiously, can take up to a year to rank new sites" - This is an interesting one, but I think from Brad's perspective, it's the most accurate description he could get. I only wonder if he got this directly from Matt when they spoke.
- "He posts his findings to his ad-sponsored Web site, seomoz.org, which draws lots of links and thus itself has high rankings" - Not sure which rankings he's referring to, as SEOmoz sees less than 10% of its traffic from search engines.
- "betting that major search engines misinterpret these ad links as legitimate measures of popularity" - this would be a question of intent. When Brad asked me about it - I told him it was a way to boost visibility, branding and get a few clicks, and that Google wasn't counting it (though I couldn't tell if Yahoo! and MSN were). I think he made his own determination.
- "But for now, such tactics appear to work" - that makes it sound like I used paid links to get Avatar's rankings back up - not true at all. We have a new blog feed for the site, got some press releases out, got linked to by a couple .edu sites... but, I guess that's how it is.
- "their rivals were probably out shopping for an SEO of their own" - let's hope not! Of all our competitors for Avatar, only 2 I know of have SEOs actively working on them.
That Earl Grey sounds like a really cool guy. Congrats on being on that site ;)