Ah! Memory lane. Look at THIS search result:
Unfortunately, it’s based on Google’s first ever Index in 2001, which they have brought back for their 10th birthday. We were number 1-3 for about a year on Google, Lycos and Yahoo, generally sharing the results with Mark Garwell from Webplacing and Barry Lloyd from MakeMeTop.
Then after a year two things happened. The first was that our site at number one got booted from DMOZ by a zealous editor and we found out that the customers with the money weren’t looking for “search engine optimisation”, they were looking for “internet marketing consultancy” or some other term.
So where was your site ranking in 2001 on Google Matt Cutts? Go and check it out.
6 Comments
Andy · 2nd October 2008 at 10:24 am
You dirty spammer you 🙂
Dixon · 3rd October 2008 at 6:33 am
Heh! 🙂
It wasn’t 301’d back then. There was real content and everything. Were you the DMoz editor that sent me down the path of whiteiousness then??? 🙂
Dixon.
Marius · 6th October 2008 at 1:18 pm
So you really believe the DMOZ link made the difference?
Or is the same cause and effect issue like the guy with 9000 sitewide links? 🙂
Love the domain name:)
Dixon Jones · 7th October 2008 at 11:05 am
🙂
We didn’t have 9,000 sitewide links. But I take your point. I doubt DMOZ was the only cause.
Please bear in mind this was way back… I am not sure how old you are at this game, but it was the “Florida Update” when the domain took the hit – so a long time back. It was hit for the right reasons, but the interesting thing about the DMOZ listing is that it is the only domain I ever saw where (if you were ever a Dmoz editor) you could look at the domain listing history and saw a massive red warning over the history, saying that it was a doorway domain and should never be reincluded.
It wasn’t always thus… and here’s where the strategy really went “off the beaten track”… we originally set up the domain to be owned by a limited company called “Search Engine Optimisation LTD”… Belt and braces! Unfortunately, Search engine optimizers LTD complained to Compaines House (That’s the UK registry of English and Welsh companies) that the new company name might confuse people, so objected to the company name. We ended up called the holding company http://www.search-engine-optimisation.co.uk lTD… probably a bit of a clue eh? 🙂
Maybe I’ll add this to my “Internet Marketing Howlers” talk at A4U next week.
Dave · 15th October 2008 at 4:45 am
How lovely to look back into the time and search the 2001 results. Talk about nostalgia!
SEO was still simple then…
Lee McCoy · 16th October 2008 at 1:58 pm
oh my!
I was doing some rubbish stuff then:
http://web.archive.org/web/20011201013059/www.5th-dimension.co.uk/