Seraphim Proudleduck

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Seraphim proudleduck is a term made up by Salmonbone's Google contest (no longer online) to test methods and best approaches for search engine optimization (the process of modifying a web page's contents and links to ensure a high ranking in a search engine). The specific target of interest was Google's search engine.

Contest

The contest ran from September 1, 2004 to January 1, 2005. Before the competition, Google was showing no results for seraphim proudleduck. When the contest ended, over 520,000 results existed for the term.

The goal was to have the top position for the search term seraphim proudleduck in a Google search done on January 1, 2005 at 1am. As different Google servers are known to show different results, the search was to be performed from the UK. Three prizes were going to be awarded for the top positions. The winner of the challenge was to get 1000 pounds. The second prize was 300 pounds, the third prize was 200 pounds, and 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.)

Effects of the contest

Many people consider this kind of modification to be "gaming the system". It is known that Google regards some kinds of search engine optimization tactics to be illegitimate, and penalizes pages and websites that use them. It is not known if Google took any action against this competition's entrants.

During the previous nigritude ultramarine contest (mid-2004), weblogs and wikis were being hit hard, and needed to be constantly policed to prevent nigritude ultramarine spam from lowering their signal-to-noise ratio. Public sandboxes were especially vulnerable. This method of promotion was banned from the seraphim proudleduck contest.

Trivia

The phrase seraphim proudleduck has no meaning, but the words themselves do. Seraphim is a class of angels in Jewish and Christian mythology, and Proudleduck is the nickname of Adam Proudluck, a Sheffield Wednesday Football Club player.

When searching Google for seraphim proudleduck, Google asks, "Did you mean seraphim puddleduck?"

See also

• Google bomb

• nigritude ultramarine

External links

• Old Location of official contest (now a blog)
• Google search for seraphim proudleduck
• An unofficial seraphim proudleduck FAQ

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