UK Webmaster Forum

The question is "does Google take notice of SEO contests?" I would argue that they don't but one of the participants of UK WW SEOContest2008 thinks differently, here is a text from his blog where he argued that Google take notice:

* because he is supposed to be the referee :D
* because it's all about challenging Google main service : web search (and its relevance)
* to see how the engine react in this special case, if the first results looks good despite the lack of context, the strengths and weaknesses of the algorithm, and so on
* to see how SEOers try to rank (their methods and tips)

A seocontest is useful for seo consultants, in order to better understand how Google works, but it can also highlight the vulnerability of search engines. That's why Google engineers are probably reading us in order to tweak the beast (hi, we can assure you that we are the best resource available on the seocontest2008, and thus that we should be ranked first ;p).

Search engines are reacting differently on this contest, and Google is doing well. In fact, since seocontest2008 is a totally new word, it's hard to determine what websites to show to the user, and you can try to fool SE by writing random content with "seocontest2008? in it, or gaining links from strong websites whatever their topic.

Look at the results on Yahoo! or Live : not really good isn't? Yahoo! results are very strange, and nor our main competitors nor our seocontest2008 is on the first page. Well, we don't mind since this time it's Google-only, but it's interesting to see the differences, and to notice that Google results seems far better. (http://www.seocontest2008-sphere.com/does-google-care-about-seo-contests-and-seocontest2008/)

First week of SEOcontest2008 is behind and buzz about it still growing. There is over ten thousand pages now shown in Google search results for the term seocontest2008. In addition to the competing domains there are pages from webmaster forums and blogs around the world on many different languages.

There has been also no so positive development - WordPress deleted number of SEOcontest2008 blogs participating in the contest from it's server, declaring them as a spam sites that violate terms of service. Now to stay in the contest webmasters who were using WordPress hosted blogs will have to start from nothing again with different domain. This news just proves one more time how vulnerable you are when using free hosting...

Yahoo spiders finally started to pick up some results for SEOcontest2008 and now showing almost 150 thousands related pages while MSN Live is in the middle with little over 20 thousands search results.

There has been a lot of obvious spamming going on: tons of registrations on numerous forums under the name seocontest2008, comments on popular blogs with the same name as an anchor text and link back to the competing site, purchased blog posts and much more...

The positive part is that quality pages with real content and those who are using legal optimizing techniques are moving closer to the top of Google SERPs or keeping theirs positions near the top.

At the moment only about 70 members confirmed participation in the UK Webmaster World SEO contest and there is still room for more entries. Complete list of contestants with forum user names and registered URLs can be found on the SEOcontest2008 entries thread.

If you are participating in the UK Webmaster World SEO Contest 2008 or follow it from the sidelines - feel free so submit your comments on the bottom of this lens or vote in the poll.