Golden age of SEO contests (2006–2010) : 21 SEO contests

Blogs, directories, link exchanges and black-hat techniques: the golden age sees contests flourish, with ever more absurd keywords and a genuine community culture.

Contests of the period

Algorithmic context

2006

• Google Sitemaps becomes Google Webmaster Tools (2006), the ancestor of Search Console.
• MSN Search becomes Live Search (September 2006).

2007

• Universal Search launches (May 2007): images, news and video enter the results.
• Google lowers the visible PageRank of sites selling links (October 2007).

2008

• Google Chrome launches (September 2008).
• Google Suggest arrives on google.com (August 2008) and shapes queries.

2009

• “Vince” update (February 2009) favouring big brands.
• Google, Yahoo and Microsoft announce rel="canonical" (February); Bing replaces Live Search (June).

2010

• “Mayday” update (May 2010) hitting the long tail.
• New Caffeine indexing infrastructure (June) then Google Instant (September).

Lessons

• Creativity (blog networks, press releases, directories) makes the difference, but exposes entrants to future penalties.
• Contests become a public lab for link-building techniques.

Related guides

• Creating and launching an SEO contest
• Optimising to win an SEO contest