Short history of a website called TextMeFree.com

TextMeFree.com is a website. Actually, it's a website that enables you to send free sms text messages to your friends and family wherever they live in the world. The short way of describing that would be to say that TextMeFree.com is a free sms directory.

(NOTE: Don't forget to bookmark and rate my lens, add it to your favorites and lensrolls!)

But that's not important. This is a lens about TextMeFree.com not about what the TextMeFree.com can do. Actually, I wanted to start a blog called The World According to TextMeFree.com but I didn't, I put it off, so creating this lens is the next best thing.

IN THE BEGINNING...

According to Alexa, TextMeFree.com was born on 14 Jun 2001.

(That sounds about right, actually. I'd torn my soleus muscle (in my calf) from playing badminton (not tennis!) around about May that year and as I could no longer walk until my leg was fixed, I had nothing to do but sit in front of the computer and build a website. The website built was TextMeFree.com...)

The website was built as an experiment in getting a high ranking on Google for the search term: "free sms". According to Wordtracker, a keyword research tool, there were lots of searches for this phrase but not many websites. (Yes, it was that easy to get a site onto the first page of Google in 2001.)

The design of the site was based on a freebie site that Chuck McCullough created using Gossamer Links called Find Sticky . (I pretty much ripped his site design, also using Gossamer Links and just changed the words.)

Et voila!

TextMeFree.com in June 2001

POTRAIT OF THE WEBSITE AS A YOUNG MAN

Thanks to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine we can see how TextMeFree.com looked at age 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. (My didn't he/she/it look handsome!)

TextMeFree.com aged 1 

TextMeFree.com aged 2

TextMeFree.com aged 3

TextMeFree.com aged 4

TextMeFree.com aged 5

TextMeFree UK version

GOOGLE: THE LOVE AFFAIR IS OVER!

Ever since TextMeFree.com was created in 2001 it has appeared on the first page of Google for 'free sms' and related keywords; i.e. the seo experiment with TextMeFree was a complete success. In fact it encouraged the site owner to develop many other websites and write openly about his successes in sites like HowIPromoteMyWebsite.com

However, this all changed in September 2005 when an infamous Google update banished TextMeFree.com to the wilderness of pages #3, #4, ... #10 of the search engine results pages.

FREE SMS COMPETITION LAUNCHES!

With a nod to the way the web is turning in 2007, namely towards user-generated content, a free sms competition is launched in July, 2007. This competition encouraged subscribers to TextMeFree.com's newsletter (The TextMeFree Times) to add free sms site reviews where appropriate, thus adding invaluable content to TextMeFree.com And the winner won 500 free sms that could be used at Ipipi.com

AND NOW?

TextMeFree.com now ekes out a much more modest existence from receiving search engine traffic from search engines like MSN and Yahoo!

TextMeFree.com would, however, like to formerly thank the Google search engine for the hundreds of thousands of happy visitors that Google sent to the site. TextMeFree would also like to say, in its own words, "like the Murphy's, I'm not bitter" (No, but I bloody am! Ed)

TO BE CONTINUED...