April Fools 2008 : The Search Industry’s Recap

Happy April Fools Day! April Fools can be a fun but scary day for news reporters like myself. On one hand, we get to make up stories and fool people into thinking they are real. On the other hand, we have to determine which news stories are real and which are fake and not be fooled ourselves. Below is a recap of stories I found throughout the web, focused on mainly search, designed for April Fools Day:

Let’s start off with Danny’s Microsoft’s $1 Million Guarantee Program To Win Searchers article. I hear it fooled several people already.

Over at my Search Engine Roundtable site, I decided to change the name from Roundtable to Search Engine Squaretable and post tabloid-like news such as Microsoft Buys Yahoo So Google Buys Microsoft in Hostile Takeover, Berkowitz Replaced By Lanzone at Microsoft, Danny Sullivan Starts Four Door Media, Matt Cutts Transfers to Performics – Will Assume Lead SEO Role. Wait, did I say Danny started Four Door Media?

Let’s move on to Google hoaxes. As you can image, there are a ton of them:

• Google Launches Future Search, TechCrunch
• Google’s April Fools’ Day Hoaxes Go International, Google Operating System
• OpenGoogle, Google Operating System
• Google, General Electric, US Dept Of Energy Announce Open Platform for Power Generation, Rimm Kaufman
• I’m skipping April Fools this year, Matt Cutts
• Build Your Very Own Google Airplane, TechCrunch
• Exclusive: Google’s Index Now on Your Wrist with GWatch Launch, Marketing Pilgrim
• Exclusive: Sneak Peak at Google DreamAds!, Read/Write Web
• gDay with MATE, www.google.com.au
• Gmail: Google’s approach to email, Google
• Google April Fool’s Jokes Galore, Google Blogoscoped
• Google buys Facebook, InfoWorld
• Google Calendar, Google
• Tomorrow is the Annual Day Without Google, Alt Search Engines
• Google’s April Fool’s Joke for Japan (Probably), Google Blogoscoped
• Google Street View Cars Forced to Paint Road Lines While Driving the Streets of Nashville, Sitening.com
• Google Print Local Finally Ready for Launch! Local Advertising Will Never Be the Same, Search Marketing Standard
• Google Talk goes green, Google Talkabout
• Google to acquire U.S. government: What this means for IT, InfoWorld
• Google Book Search now smells better, Inside Google Book Search
• My new start-up: I Google For You, Salon.com
• Announcing Project Virgle, Official Google Blog
• YouTube RickRolls Users, TechCrunch

Wow, that is a lot of Google related April Fools jokes!

Anything about Yahoo and Microsoft? Yes, of course. According to InfoWorld, Microsoft, Yahoo agree on buyout price. If you look at the InfoWorld URL, notice the april-fool words in the URL.

Any forum ranter? Yes, Cre8asiteforums Staff Taking Time Off via Cre8asite Forums makes for a forum spammers dream. Notice how the forum is all upside down, with new forum names that look funny and an upside down logo.

Is it too much? Are you sick of all the fake news? April Fools Joke Spam Invades Google News from Search Engine Journal thinks so. But just hold tight, I doubt we heard the last of April Fools day in our industry.

Postscript: Here are some additional stories from the day:

• Introducing AdSense for conversations, Inside AdSense
• April Fool’s Day ‘08 Around the Search Industry, Search Engine Roundtable
• April Fools Stories I Wish Were True, BruceClay.com
• Introducing FrankRank, a new ad ranking algorithm, Inside AdWords
• My tattoo, Matt Cutts