Comments on: Google Declares Stephen Colbert As Greatest Living American

By: Hammer

Hammer — Tue, 29 May 2007 12:45:13 +0000

I found this idea so interesting I decided to conduct a little experiment to see if my readers could get me to the top of Google as the ‘world’s smartest man’.

http://www.hammeruncut.com/the-great-google-traffic-experiment/

So far I’ve bounced back and forth from #2 to #3, but I’m still having trouble cracking Stephen Hawking. lol

By: philski

philski — Sat, 05 May 2007 10:57:24 +0000

Hi
i only picked up on this today, Great effort to rank the site so fast,
Mr Colbert is, well,, apart from a nice guy,

no1 -greatest living
no1 living American
no4 -American living
no9 -Greatest American
no10 -living greatest
22nd – american greatest

I just wish i had shares in on it,, on alexadex

Kindest Regards
Phillip

By: Joe Griffin

Joe Griffin — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 02:17:31 +0000

If we all say he is the greatest living american then why shouldn’t he rank #1. Seems like if a hundred people say he’s the man, then the man he is.

By: Jonah Stein

Jonah Stein — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 17:23:14 +0000

RE: Manny Hernandez:

I originally targeted the “letter from Stephen” page and the “Balls For Kidz” pages for the campaign in an attempt to get around the anti-bombing changes.

What Mr. Sullivan is pointing out here is that Google chose to rank the homepage first and the target pages below for “greatest living american” while they rank the balls for kidz page for giant brass balls. This is diagnostically very interesting for SEO types because one page has the words and the other doesn’t.

I wonder how much traffic this campaign has sent ColbertNation total. Google blog search indicates 17,972 posts in the last 8 days contain “greatest living american” versus 3,205 for “giant brass balls”.

My original digg sent about 26,000 people to one of my blogs before the campaign even hit Search Engine Watch.

After we started to get some momentum, I decided to run adwords to judge the impact. I have seen 27,600 impressions on my adwords campaign for “greatest living american” in the last 7 days and searches in the last week. I got another 4074 on “giant brass balls” before Google decided my quality score was too low and that I would need to spend $10/click to keep it active. That’s too much to pay for data!

And more fun than I have had for weeks!!

Jonah

PS, ColbertNation seems to go down fairly regularly even without the diggs. It’s amazing how little Viacom seems to understand the web!

By: manny hernandez

manny hernandez — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 11:26:05 +0000

Actually, Danny: as of this morning, the cached version I was getting for Colbert’s HP contained “living” and his letter contained “American”. Still it sounds like a bit of a stretch.

Maybe Google loves Colbert too much! :)
http://manuelhp42.blogspot.com/2007/04/is-stephen-colbert-greatest-living.html

By: Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 07:25:28 +0000

I’m sure they love the traffic, Jonah — and the attention, for Mr. Colbert deserves it. Then again, Colbert Nation has been down now for over 12 hours as his many fans from Digg have apparently swarmed to the web site. Let us hope that the world won’t be deprived of the site for much longer.

By: Jonah Stein

Jonah Stein — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 04:28:50 +0000

Danny

Thanks for the coverage of the story. I am glad you enjoyed the Mission Accomplish post, although I doubt I will succeed in getting 1700 Diggs for it.

Actually, getting Colbert tickets is fairly easy, I just emailed a request in in January for the April show. Meanwhile, SES had a speaker from Comedy Central, so I am sure he can hook you up.

I am not sure if I am still welcome at the Report, but I will definitely be happy to offer you a ticket next year if I can get them. I can’t imagine that resent all the traffic, but apparently some of the execs are uneasy about Viral campaigns for Mr. Colbert. Still, he gave me permission first.

Jonah

By: Rhea

Rhea — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 19:30:49 +0000

I agree with feedthebot, Colbert has giant brass balls and is the greatest living American, so is it really a case of Google bombing or finally catching on to a well-known fact? ;)

By: feedthebot

feedthebot — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 18:58:56 +0000

Stephen was the greatest living American way before Google declared it, I for one am pleased that Google has finally caught up to reality.

By: graywolf

graywolf — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 18:34:30 +0000

I’m of the opinion Google’s including a bit of language interpretation. Negative words like “miserable” and “failure” are treated differently. I suspect a campaign for “greatest American failure” would have been less successful.