送交者: slashdot 于 2006-2-14, 22:04:58:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113995925243274011.html
(if it requires subscription, here is the full article; and this page too, will join the rank)
PORTALS
By LEE GOMES
In Contest, Players Vie to Position
A Site Atop a Google Search
February 15, 2006
Remember how your parents used to tell you that when you encounter people you don't like, you should just ignore them? This story will help to show why that's true.
John Scott is a member of the occasionally shadowy fraternity of "search engine optimizers," or SEOs. These folks are paid to boost a site's ranking in search engines like Google, a maneuver that is likely to pull in more visitors and thus, in many cases, more business. Depending on whom you talk to, SEOs are either the Saint Bernards of the Web, helping to rescue lost sites, or glorified spammers.
Mr. Scott, who runs a Web site where SEOs gather to discuss their calling, is the sort of person who is considered brashly plain-spoken by friends and annoying by detractors. Back in December, he announced that he would be sponsoring a contest. Four weeks later, he said, he would be announcing a nonsense phrase. The contest winner -- and the recipient of $4,000 -- would be the Web site listed first by Google for people searching for the phrase on May 15. There was one catch: The Web site had to mention Mr. Scott's business.
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Enter Greg Boser, Mike Grehan and Todd Friesen, other SEOs who, mainly by virtue of previous online arguments, fall in the category of "John Scott detractors." They decided to have a little fun with the contest and change the rules. They would pay even more money to the winning site, but only if it mentioned the blog of Matt Cutts, who oversees Google's search engines, rather than Mr. Scott's business.
The attempt by the three to hijack the contest only called more attention to it, resulting in back-and-forth smash-mouth comments on SEO Web sites for many weeks. When the time came for Mr. Scott to announce the search term, what might otherwise have been a neglected publicity stunt was the talk of SEO-dom.
The phrase, announced by Mr. Scott Jan. 15, was "v7ndotcom elursrebmem," which is the name of his business, plus the words "members rule" spelled backward. Within minutes of the phrase's unveiling, domains containing all major permutations were registered. Within a few days, Google was already reporting tens of thousands of links. Last week, the figure exceeded three million links, more than the ones for Junichiro Koizumi, the prime minister of Japan.
Visit any Web site where SEOs gather to discuss their trade, and you'll find arguments about the contest. One of the points of disagreement is what, if anything, the event actually proves. Mr. Scott says it exposes holes in the way search engines rank pages; others say the techniques being used in the contest have long been known to -- and discounted by -- Google and the other big engines. "This is so 2004," remarked another industry veteran. (It so happens that 2004 was the year of the Internet's first big SEO contest, when the phrase that paid was "nigritude ultramarine." The victor wasn't an SEO, though, but a blogger, Anil Dash, who simply asked other bloggers to link to him.)
It is unclear how many people are actively trying to win the current contest, but there are many, attracted by the prize money and the chance to win bragging rights. The top spot changes hands daily, even hourly.
Jim Westergren, a 24-year-old SEO in Sweden, has been the leader for many of the past few days. In an interview, he explained some of his tactics -- or as many as he was willing to share -- for getting links. (As they ply their trade, SEOs are known to employ a mix of "white hat," or licit, and "black hat," or highly questionable, methods.)
Mr. Westergren says that he uses as his base of operations an older Web page he controls, because they are given more weight by Google than newer pages. He has swapped links with other SEOs he's friendly with, and he has paid hundreds of dollars for links from some pages that are ranked highly by Google.
Mr. Westergren says he will go only as far as using "gray hat" methods, including purchasing links. But he says that being a front-runner makes you a target for the black hatters. They might, for instance, "promote" your site via the sort of spam that Google is known to frown upon. The end result of that, says Mr. Westergren, is that your site could be demoted.
Like the Internet, the contest is international. There is, for instance, the "Taggle Team," a loosely affiliated network of 20 mostly anonymous French SEOs, some of whom display black hats atop their Web pages.
Several other groups are trying to win the contest by soliciting links via an entirely different route: aligning themselves with charity groups and promising to donate the prize money. SEOs grouse about that tactic, saying it makes the contest a test of heart-string tugging rather than the hand-to-hand combat of SEO-dom.
There are still four months to go in all this, and, as they say on TV, only time will tell how it will turn out.
Google's Mr. Cutts said in an interview on an SEO Webcast that he is keeping an eye on the contest. Mr. Scott said the contest is already the biggest in SEO history. His antagonists said they are sorry they ever got involved. And Mr. Westergren? He said, "If you link to me in your article, that would be very nice."
Write to Lee Gomes at lee.gomes@wsj.com