A few thoughts about
the ゴッゴル Google Ranking Contest
(Tokyo, 12/21/04) The ゴッゴル ranking contest has ended. The results are in and the winner is a page named "+Diary+: ゴッゴル". Congrats.
At the time of this writing, Google shows more than 1,750,000 pages indexed for the target word: ゴッゴル. Without a doubt, this makes the ゴッゴル contest the largest keyword game played on Google rankings so far. Kudos to the contest's organizer for this feat.
However, the organizer's claim to a "SEO Contest" is, in my opinion, way off the point. The ranking contest was just a game. And SEO had barely a part in it. SEO techniques, clean or not so clean, play only a minor part in achieving top search engine rankings. By far the most important decision is the selection of the target word or words. Only a SEO fool would choose to compete head on with everybody else. First you choose your keywords to your advantage, and then if others compete with you, you'd better start thinking about SEO, on and off page-wise. So much about the real world of SEO. Ranking games are just that, a game.
Did the top-ranking page deserve to win this game? I guess so. After all, the blog entry was about ゴッゴル, all the comments commented about ゴッゴル and all the trackbacks tracked ゴッゴル.
Did Google do a good job at ranking all the ゴッゴル stuff? Yes, I think so. Google's mission is to deliver the pages with the best relevancy. Insofar that ゴッゴル is a fantasy word, who is to decide what exactly the relevancy is? Google indexed all the ゴッゴル pages and must have found a common theme among all the blog entries filled with comment/trackback spam. After all, if almost everybody says the same, comments the same, trackbacks the same, it must be "right".
Is there anything we can learn SEO-wise from the top-ranking page? My clear answer is: No, nothing. Outside of a ranking game, a blog that would allow and indulge in comment/trackback spam in the way which was needed to win the game, would hardly find any sane readers.
One disturbing thought although remains to be scrutinized. What if a ranking game organizer targets a real, meaningful word? What if that organizer lures participants with bigger, really alluring prices? Would those same ゴッゴル bloggers pimp their blog for a shot at a price, and let's say the obligation at the game's end to turn the page over to the organizer? I mean thousands of ゴッゴル bloggers did just that, granted without having to give away the page, but price-wise for as little as having a slight chance at winning an "iPot" or some other raffle price.
Bye-bye ゴッゴル...
ゴッゴル, Goggoru or Goggor...
(Tokyo, 11/15/04) The Japanese SEO community is jumping on the "Goggle Keyword Contest" bandwagon.
The success and media attraction of competitions like the "Nigritude Ultramarine" keyword contest has not gone unnoticed in the Far East either. Since October 17, webmasters in Japan are battling for the best keyword ranking on Google.co.jp.
The keyword is , a fantasy word in katakana, one of the Japanese scripts which is mainly used for loan words from foreign languages. In English the keyword would be written as "goggoru" or "goggor". Although the keyword has no obvious meaning, it is clear that the contest's organizer were trying to find the closest phonetic word resembling "Google" that was not already included in the Google index.
The contest is rolling along with full force, having just reached the half-way point a few days ago, Google.co.jp's search results are showing a whopping 917,000 indexed pages. According to the organizer's website at www.seo-association.com that's a record for keyword contest related pages in the Google index. After the contest's end on December 20, the best webmasters will receive a price from an assortment of gifts that resemble a raffle at your local bazaar.
As expected with such keyword ranking games, so far the top contestants are blogs which battle it out over who gets more trackbacks. An interesting aside is the organizer's website which presently ranks 2nd because contestants are required to link to them, although without the keyword as anchor text. It looks like once the contest is over the organizer's reward is going to be a high Page Rank website ready to go to battle in the real commercial SEO world.
, a fantasy word in katakana, one of the Japanese scripts which is mainly used for loan words from foreign languages. In English the keyword would be written as "goggoru" or "goggor". Although the keyword has no obvious meaning, it is clear that the contest's organizer were trying to find the closest phonetic word resembling "Google" that was not already included in the Google index.
