Serps
Seo contest running dates: January 16, 2004 - April 16, 2004
Total Prize amount: NA
Search engines used: Google
Keyword Phrase: serps
Places Paid: NA
Monthly Results Prize: NA
Final Results Prize: NA
Details and Rules: The competition originated in the Usenet newsgroup alt.internet.search-engines. "Serps" was chosen as the keyword for the initial competition, primarily due to the fact it is an acronym for Search Engine Results Page. Not a well known word, except by SEOs, this meant it was not a particularly competitive target, allowing for the tracking of competing sites to be reasonably easy. SEO professional Brett Tabke claims to have invented the abbreviation in 2000 in a forum post on his site webmasterworld.com. The seo competition officially began on January 16 2004, and ended April 16 2004. There was no entry fee and no prize, and the competition was open to all.
Nigritude Ultramarine
Seo contest running dates: May 7, 2004 - July 7, 2004
Total Prize amount: NA
Search engines used: Google
Keyword Phrase: nigritude ultramarine
Places Paid: 1 & 2
Monthly Results Prize: NA
Final Results Prize: iPod, Flat Panel LCD Screen & various bonus prizes
Details and Rules: Two prizes were awarded for the top position in a Google search: one for the top position on 9am GMT on June 7, 2004, and a second prize awarded at the close of the contest on 9am GMT July 7, 2004. There were about two hundred competitors, who deployed an astonishing variety of dirty tricks, from Google bombing upwards. The competitive conditions encouraged intensive, free use of techniques that would have otherwise been used in a more conservative manner, and it is entirely possible that some normally-legitimate SEOs took a dirty approach for the occasion. Weblogs and wikis were hit by the contest, and needed to be constantly policed to prevent "nigritude ultramarine" spam from lowering their signal-to-noise ratio below acceptable limits. Public wiki sandboxes were especially vulnerable. On July 7, Six Apart Vice President and weblogger Anil Dash was announced as the contest winner. Dash stated that his goal in entering the contest was to "prove that real content trumps all the shady optimization tricks that someone can figure out". Instead of resorting to such tactics, he simply wrote a weblog entry and asked his readers to link to it. Another competitor took this idea further and wrote the Nigritude Ultramarine FAQ, which placed sixth overall, won the "Judge's Choice" award, and remains a valuable source of information about the competition.
Seraphim Proudleduck
Seo contest running dates: September 1, 2004 - January 1, 2005
Total Prize amount: $1500
Search engines used: Google
Keyword Phrase: seraphim proudleduck
Places Paid: 3
Monthly Results Prize: NA
Final Results Prize: $1000 (1st) $300 (2nd) $200 (3rd)
Details and Rules: Seraphim proudleduck was created by Salmonbones. When the contest ended, over 520,000 results existed for the term. (As of January 2006, about 132,000 results still exist.)
Since different Google servers are known to show different results, the search was to be performed from the UK. A bonus prize (a webpage with a PageRank of 7) was going to be awarded to the number one position for the phrase in Google Images. However, in an unexpected turn of events, the contest organizer announced that he sold the SalmonBones.co.uk domain name, and no prize was actually awarded. (The contest winner, Google Blogoscoped, wrote more about this on their website.)