January 13th, 2004 by Jemaleddin Cole

You know, I’m sure that if you all were a bunch of slimy inter­net mar­keters you’d already know this stuff, but I’ve recently gotten myself to the number one Google search result for "Jemal", "Jemaled­din" and "Jemal Cole." Why? Well, so people who know me can find me. The better ques­tion is how.

I won­dered for a while why I was so far down in the list­ings. The only searches that would turn up my site were for my email address, and that gave a bugzilla post as the first result. So I thought about what I’d read about how Google worked.

For those who don’t know, Google uses pigeons. Okay, that was a joke. I think. Anyway, Google uses this amaz­ing tech­nol­ogy called PageR­ank. The way it works is that they rate the qual­ity of a site based on how many links are point­ing to it and they rate the qual­ity of the links by the qual­ity of the site doing the link­ing. Con­fused yet?

The upshot is that if a page that gets linked to a lot links to you, your page rank goes up. But that’s not the impor­tant bit. The impor­tant bit is that they link search terms not just to the con­tent of the site, but to the text that people use to link to the site. This is why Dick Gephart was able to link the words "a mis­er­able failure" to George Bush. (Read more about that here.)

So all you have to do to get your Google search rank­ing up is get really high qual­ity pages to link to you with your name. See, the good sites will have lots of incom­ing links, so their rank will go up, and if they link to you, your rank will go up, and if they link to you with your name as the link text, your rank will go up even higher.

Which isn’t as easy as it sound:

"Yes, Mr. Cole, I’m sure it’s a won­der­ful site, but eBay doesn’t do that sort of thing."

This is where I had my stroke of genius. What’s a great way to get your link on some­body else’s site (that doesn’t involve shar­ing guest acco­mo­da­tions with Adrian Lamo)? Comments.

See, most blog­ging soft­ware (like Mov­able­Type here) will link what­ever URL you put into the com­ment box around what­ever text you left as your name. And luck­ily, there are a ton of blogs out there with really high page ranks.

So, what I did was go to the sites I was already going to and leave com­ments with my url and dif­fer­ent vari­a­tions of my name. Within a month, I was top dog.

Admit­tedly, this was easier for a guy named "Jemaleddin" than it will be for "Jenny" or "Tom", but go search for Jenny. Today, the top link is for a blog­ger. Not Jenny Craig, not Jenny McCarthy. Jenny Levine. And no, she doesn’t have a webcam.

(Another key factor is that web designer blogs seem to have god-​like PageR­ank scores, so those sites I linked to are always a good start - just stay on topic and spell your name right.)

So get out there and increase those scores! Oh, and Dad? I don’t think you’ve got a shot in hell of beat­ing Harvey Birdman.

I won­dered for a while why I was so far down in the list­ings. The only searches that would turn up my site were for my email address, and that gave a bugzilla post as the first result. So I thought about what I’d read about how Google worked.

For those who don’t know, Google uses pigeons. Okay, that was a joke. I think. Anyway, Google uses this amaz­ing tech­nol­ogy called PageR­ank. The way it works is that they rate the qual­ity of a site based on how many links are point­ing to it and they rate the qual­ity of the links by the qual­ity of the site doing the link­ing. Con­fused yet?

The upshot is that if a page that gets linked to a lot links to you, your page rank goes up. But that’s not the impor­tant bit. The impor­tant bit is that they link search terms not just to the con­tent of the site, but to the text that people use to link to the site. This is why Dick Gephart was able to link the words "a mis­er­able failure" to George Bush. (Read more about that here.)

So all you have to do to get your Google search rank­ing up is get really high qual­ity pages to link to you with your name. See, the good sites will have lots of incom­ing links, so their rank will go up, and if they link to you, your rank will go up, and if they link to you with your name as the link text, your rank will go up even higher.

Which isn’t as easy as it sound:

"Yes, Mr. Cole, I’m sure it’s a won­der­ful site, but eBay doesn’t do that sort of thing."

This is where I had my stroke of genius. What’s a great way to get your link on some­body else’s site (that doesn’t involve shar­ing guest acco­mo­da­tions with Adrian Lamo)? Comments.

See, most blog­ging soft­ware (like Mov­able­Type here) will link what­ever URL you put into the com­ment box around what­ever text you left as your name. And luck­ily, there are a ton of blogs out there with really high page ranks.

So, what I did was go to the sites I was already going to and leave com­ments with my url and dif­fer­ent vari­a­tions of my name. Within a month, I was top dog.

Admit­tedly, this was easier for a guy named "Jemaleddin" than it will be for "Jenny" or "Tom", but go search for Jenny. Today, the top link is for a blog­ger. Not Jenny Craig, not Jenny McCarthy. Jenny Levine. And no, she doesn’t have a webcam.

(Another key factor is that web designer blogs seem to have god-​like PageR­ank scores, so those sites I linked to are always a good start - just stay on topic and spell your name right.)

So get out there and increase those scores! Oh, and Dad? I don’t think you’ve got a shot in hell of beat­ing Harvey Birdman.

Comments are closed. me by email.