What if Google had to Design for Google? a little fun…
Well I wasn’t expecting this. I did a little satirical piece about what its like to do web design in the Google Era:
And it got quite a response at places like Sphinn, Digg, Reddit, Slashdot and so on.
Like all new companies trying to attract consumers, the Kango team struggles with myriad challenges that at times seem a bit unrelated to our core mission of helping travelers take great vacations. Getting into the Google index and the indexes of Yahoo, Ask, MSN, etc is absolutely critical. It is how we will survive.
We know we will be offering great content to our users, which is the best long term strategy for success. But as a new site especially it’s hard to get the search engines to notice you quickly. So you have to do lots of things like asking all your friends to link to you and hiring SEO consultants to advise you. For every SEO consultant with advice there is another one with somewhat different advice around the corner. It’s amusing and can be frustrating trying to figure out what the magic formula is.
And it seems like much of the advice revolves on more links. Links, links links. You link to yourself so Google understands how you are structured and which pages you think are relevant and for what purpose. You need other people to link to you so Google thinks you’re important. You often have to link to other people in return. Once you get established and have a lot of people linking to you, it becomes easier because your links are worth more. Links, links, links – and not fancy Javascript links either.
The crazy thing is that it works. Google remains the place to be listed and the other search engines of course use the same model.
The challenging part for our rock-star design team is how to balance all the link requirements and still provide a great user experience. Sign up for our private beta program and we hope you’ll think we’ve only designed for a great user experience. Let us know.
- MeanGene
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145 Responses
Google Likes LinkShare…
Thanks for visiting the Affiliate Tip blog. Subscribe to my RSS feed or enter your e-mail on the top right to get updates by e-mail.Yesterday at SMX Social Media, Danny Sullivan was running through StumbleUpon and one of the sites that came up was What…
Google look like Yahoo in this way
Precisely.
I’ve written about that in a SEM topic ! Because, I’ve found many search engines using an optimization
And when I make a seo analysis I try to look for indexed pages of the seach engine on Google using
site:searchengine.com !!!
Google popularity don’t need a seo optimization. I’ve Google on my homepage
No doubt about it–getting Slashdotted and Dugg always helps with search engine traffic! Great job. Eric.
Yeah that was my first thought too: this is Yahoogle!
wahahaha
:0
As I always say; “When in doubt, throw links at it!”
Of course, another way for a new site to get noticed is to use viral marketing, by creating an amusing meme about the subject that the site is precisely struggling with, to get people to eventually click-though.
It’s very cunning and I support it.
So, Kango, how’s your hit-rate now?
by this way google would rank 11/10
[...] Kango blog [...]
ROFLOL. I actually like the layout. Excellent job. This is so funny!
This gives new meaning to the term “search engine optimization” – or should I rather say: the term gets back its true meaning? Very funny! Have you actually tried to google “Bloogle”? Heartily recommended!
lol, wonderful
Hilarious ROFLMAO – absolutely. Can’t stop laughing. Wonderful job – thanks for sharing.
I like the new look of Google.
Maybe they need to change the strategy for finding relevant content
[...] Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere we stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerpt [...]
Yea – very funny! Nice.
That is too funny.
Looks like Yahoo now these days…
Very funny indeed. The only thing you need to add considering all of the fuss about paid links lately is to add the rel=”nofollow” so that the pagerank flows properly through the site. But of course only the search engines can see that. Silly Google!
[...] mal ein paar Worte von den Leuten die meinten das Google eine andere Seite brauchen würde wenn sie sich denn für sich selbst [...]
Hilarious stuff, I have to say that this was both interesting and original awesome job!
[...] Here is his final master piece and his post-comment: [...]
Hi!
Fun and interesting !
I linked your work at our site.
Thanks!
This whole SEO thing is confusing, I saw a mock up of Googles search page how it would be if it had to follow its own rules
Brilliant. I keep sending it to editors and writers we work with, and they finally get it. Then I send it to other small site owners, and they either ping me still laughing or groaning. Viral because it is so darn true! Bravo.
Well done m8
[...] would Google look like if they designed it to rank well in their own search results? According to the author, this “satirical piece” has been Dugg, Redditted, and Slashdotted to death. It’s [...]
It’s sad how corrupt the world is, even google. Good satire though.
Lets see if this gravatar works!
wonderful!
Like it a lot!
How the G-Men got to where there are with such a simple page in the first place really is an impressive feat.
[...] Kango hat da einen netten satirischen Beitrag geschrieben: [...]
This is the funniest thing I’ve seen today. Great job:)
. . . You now have Goohoo! Or, Yahoogle!
Thank you for the good laugh. I love it.
Lovely, absolutely lovely.
What about an “add your site” button?
Thanks for the fun.
That was ultimate, I enjoyed every click…
Hilarious. I’ve been writing on the blatant manipulation of search engine results. In particular the bunfight over Brad Callen’s new “Affiliate Elite” software. The man himself is nowhere near the top results on Google or Yahoo for his own site. The top spot on Google is taken by a Greek guy calling himself “AffiliateElites.com” with no PageRank and just 42 links – most of them from two other PR 4 and 5 sites. #2 or 3 spot on Google for the same keywords is held by a bozo touting himself as “The Official Affiliate Elite Site”. Go figure.
Nice …
Very Creative…
You know the pains webmasters go through to ensure good SEO for the websites. A very nice presentation.
You forgot the AdSense ads! Shame shame shame.
Clever post chaps! Gave me a chuckle to say the least. Thanks for sharing
Fun. Thanks for sharing this.
LMAO!!! Great post.
I’ve heard from a reliable source that if you sell your soul to them, you can get an invisible keyword rich link to your website from the Google homepage (PR 10).
Google would look terrible. Because of this simple look of google I use google and not yahoo or so
hehe.. so many stuffs.. in the begin I liked it, I was thinking to do the same in my page.. hehe.. maybe I will do, I will se how the user will react.
Real smart !
@ Kalena Jordan,
If Google put adsense on their homepage… with their traffic… imagine how much money they’d make!
You farking bastards read my mind!
Seriously though, I’ll say it better when I figure out how to do so.
[...] funny send-up was an amusing little side-project created by the folks behind the Kango travel site (they talk about it here), but it hits the mark all too well. The dirty secret of almost every Web page on the planet is [...]
Google’s PR is a pyramid scheme – not sustainable, as it works ‘circular’ – it will collapse (very telling is the fact that Y & MSN never implemented something similar, whereas they usually are copycats….)
I totally agree. This was an awesome read.
[...] Kango Blog » What if Google had to Design for Google? a little fun… (tags: google search seo fun humour) [...]
This is absolutely freakin’ genius! But, with hundreds of millions of backlinks any website, even a bare-bones, no-content site like Google can get highly ranked.
What’s funny is that Google doesn’t even rank for the keyword “search engine”, so maybe their optimization sucks.
this was very funny. great work. all my sites lost PR during the latest PR downgrade
, so I would try this technique to get to where they were :O
[...] è solo una ‘provocazione’ ironica lanciata dal team di Kango, ma è divertente vedere cosa accadrebbe se Google ottimizzasse le sue pagine per renderle [...]
You left out Google Ads running down the side. That should add a little bit more clutter.
Ha ha ha! I wish that we could keep our pages as minimal as Google. It would save me an awful lot of hours trawling for linking partners!
[...] la homepage di Google è tutto tranne SEO frendly, in aiuto arriva la provocazione del team di Kango che propone una versione “ottimizzata” di Google. Vi invito a seguire l’evoluzione [...]
I think Google took your advise. I just went to http://google.com, opened the source, and counted 43 links.
Yeah, funny!! But fortunately you would never search for the Google Search Engine in the Google Search Engine…
funny
HA HA – That is funny!!
and so true!
Hilarious! And true!
great!
Hilarious!!! Can’t believe I missed this when it was originally published!
Thakks! I will use yours advice!
I think the reason Google has such a huge usage is due to the lack of its nonsense on its search page
Internet catalogues from year 2000 and up was considered ”old-fashioned” and ”pre-Google” – well, working in the IT hardware business, I can tell you: They the been reviewed. I know of no one, that professionally buys IT hardware by goggling it. They go to business catalogues ( entry cost real money and not back links). In these catalogues, they are more secure on the content and not wasting time on ridicules sex, search and fraud pages only trying to earn money on add sense, build exactly as your lovely, ironic and humoristic demo proves.
Goggles success is on the brink of killing them, because of the SEO industry misusing the page rank system. Companies selling retail and not detail, more and more put their money in business related catalogues instead.
Then there is the ethical and graphic point of you to consider- as you point out in this blog: Pages look like s… and the meaning and the real message gets lost, because they try to “Goggle optimize” it … yeeekes …
That’s exactly why, I spend some of my free time on ODP as a volunteer editor.
Thanks for a good laugh and a clear statement
Just a quick add-on:
Remember the movie quote: “ If you build it, they will come!!!” – well, you could rewrite that to:
“If Google uses page rank – Web owners will crap up their sites.”
I’m scared …
This was probably the greatest post I have ever read.
That was amazing!
Very good presentation at all.
Now google have a lot of links
Good stuff! It´s so true… everybody is writing and designing for Google these days. It´s the most important thing, if you cannot be found in Google, you have no chance at all…
Best,
OK
Very funny
Can Goo Gle I would say
That was amazing!
Very funny
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We do a bit of SEO and this post is absolutely priceless. Thanks so much for making my day a little easier and a lot more humorous.
hi,
The content of the links are good and it will help and get the attraction fro the visitor , If the links of the page is arranged in a proper maner the it will give a good and STRONG sound for the index .
SEO effect is not likely very good , is a good innovative idea probably to consumer usage
by automation translation
Is content optimized how could it be that only simple repetition can right away?
If only google had to follow their own rules, they would change the rules and crap we had to deal with every day to stay on top. Great mock up!
Wow! I’m new to the SEO stuff as I just started my own business, and so I’m trying to get out of the Sandbox and follow everything that is suggested by the SEO community. I must say, it ain’t easy. And to see that Google isn’t playing the same game is funny, but at the same time understanding. The interent has been initiated spam and nonsense, that having quality content is a great thing to have. Entertaining example to say the least!
Sadly real
nice lesson about how to optimize your website for google
Seems like it’s an old article, but I saw it for the first time. Loved it.
~Sahil
If I link to Google, would that be considered a reciprocal link? Then it would reduce Google.com’s ranking for the term “google” when you use Google to find itself.
Did I just create a wormhole? Because I have a headache.
Lol. I think they will lose all that PR. hahaha
Haha, very nice. Imagine google like on last one page
. Fuy …
Thx for sharing,
Best
So true….
Is web design an art, or a science? The answer, of course, is that it is both. And therein lies the rub…
Bruce Arnold
Website Designer (or should I say Artistic Engineer?)
Miami Florida
This is one of the best and most creative blog posts I have ever seen!
)
hi, its’s nice blogger.
i like the new look of google..very creative blog
I have some 125X125 Ad space if Google is interested. I can also feature them in an article, for a smal fee of course.
Nice Diggs.
well their it is
that’s why evrybouthe use google and yahoo is down,
becouse google has a nix not fool page and yahoo? forgett it
i never used yahoo i always usw google
well what’s about the msn surch its the same like yahoo
i think its rubisch to boild a companie for a websurch maschine in times like that google has the power and the others are far away
Sehr gut! danke
That was amazing , I enjoyed in every click…
Fantastic!
It would look like MSN or Yahoo!
Wonderful, I like it very much
Give us more of this stuff.
That was fantastic what a great idea. It’s a shame that google is the only one who can get away with such a minimal design, I would love to see them have to struggle under the same system!
i think ist a very starge ting
its really funny and creative demo to present the Google Redesign:)
xaxa,nice.cheers m8
Wow, How smartly you change the whole look of Google? Although, It’s a great thinking. I like it. Please, try these things on some other Search Engines too.
That’s a great little demo – and unfortunately very true. I wonder if they might do it one day, just for a laugh..probably not.
It’s interesting for us as we’ve just recently re-launched our web site (http://www.qualitybagpipes.com) and many of the changes we’ve made are for Google and nobody else!
Lovely, just lovely.
Thanks for the fun.
Lovely!
Thanks for the fun.
That is the conclusion: Links, links links.
Great webdesign-example!
Nice collection.
Thanks.
Well done! 4411 diggs is still a lot. Go on with it and get promoted. Greetings Tom
How much traffic did you get in one day with that many diggs?
Great article and funny read!
That is a ton of diggs. How well is it still working for you?
Funny, but sadly true. I don’t like sacrificing clean web design to get a good page rank, but it has to be done.
Its a funny page. It would be fun too if Google had to SEO for Google
it looks like a typical 90s homepage. Most of the Web20 Pages like Facebook – only get visitors cause of ads and not thru searchengine traffic.
Now thats funny. btw you forgot the to add what the url might look like
http://www.google.com/internet-search.html
very nice post. The mention of Bookmarking as spam facilitators is interesting even though that has worked for the writer, evident by the number of Diggs
the post has received. I have expressed simillar thoughts about Emails in a post http://itcombine.wordpress.com.
Congratulations to Gene for writing a very interesting post.
Great stuff. It is amazing really that they have kept their search engine so clutter free. Probably why so many people like to use them. I wonder, are Google top dog because of better search results, or because of a clean home page?
You missed to mention 1 thing :
And we have to google to find Google.
That’s hilarious! That must have taken someone a lot of time to put that together! It was very entertaining.
Now I like an original idea, the Google presentation here has shown more than anything else not only originality, but the drive to spend the time and carry out building a great presentation.
Do you know how many great ideas are are never acted on?
Great job you got a back link from us.
Brad West ~ onomoney
That’s brilliant, must have taken a while – this makes you a fully qualified SEO surely?
Great! I like this website and the thougths on Google
We provide affordable Website Design, Flash design, Customized Web Application development, E-Commerce Solutions and website maintenance
Now that was awesome
thanks
Backlinks are great on dofollow blogs, but sites with a high pagerank helps even more because they’re trusted and have higher authority. I recently published a blog on PR5 to PR8 directories that you may find very useful.
http://www.techjaws.com/free-directory-sites-with-a-high-google-pagerank/
White never goes out of style. Google must be a fashion expert as well
It seems like much of the advice revolves on more links. Links, links links. You link to yourself so Google understands how you are structured and which pages you think are relevant and for what purpose.
I seems to work well
one thing is missing here: they should change their domain to google-search.com
Very cute. Just goes to show that when you make the rules, you can break the rules.
Funny stuff, gotta love Google. Mind you, if you set up your own Google homepage with iGoogle, then it can quickly look like that!
Well, I think if google used this they will down of visitors and it looks like unfashionable. Unlike the current google is very neat and clean but more user friendly.
Just read it – very interesting!
However, with all these links,etc you lose the main theme of the website..
Google is looking so Amazing and provide best features. I like it Design.
I put you in my rss feed. thanks for great posts.
I like the idea of redesigning Google’s face but to be honest, I still prefer the old G.
ha ha ha nice workd dood, i really whish they had to do some SEO work, only then they would apreciate the rank 10 they give to their own domain.
Is it me or is Google phasing out the text on their home page at times? It could just be that Firefox takes a while to load anything other than Google’s logo and their text box. Just curious.
You said the sad truth in hilarious way. Google is too much algo based so a genuine sites some times can’t have chance…in future ranking will be for wealthy companies…hope we are not going to face this situation.