SEO Consult Blog

On the 1st of April Year after year Google deceives millions of its loyal users by plotting an outrageous feature or revealing a major coup to its services. It really does amaze me that people are unaware of their history and to the extent of which they like a joke, probably to promote the company ethics as a human company.

It dates back to the year 2000, releasing their “MentalPlex” algorithm as the next generation of discovering exactly what a user is searching for - telepathically! Unbelievable, or not so as many were completely flabbergasted as to how they could possible create the technology to do this.

April Fools day 2002 saw the release of Pigeon Rank, the theory behind the much deliberated PageRank. Obviously there was no relation between PageRank and Pigeons, but that the system was highly technological and expensive, the irony was that Google did actually give away some secrets to the actual PageRank algorithm.

My personal favourite hoax was 2004, which saw Google advertise job opportunites for a head quarters on the Moon! The purpose was to develop a new operating system to be called LunaX (get it?) and that Google was creating a research centre on the face of the moon.

Google Gulp was the next April Fools, a beverage that reportedly increased a consumers ability to search engine optimise and improve intelligence. 2005 also saw the release of the invite only Gmail, is there a parody in there somewhere?

In 2006 Google changed their homepage to display as Google dating, offering an online dating service in which you where guaranteed to find your soul mate, claiming that “dating is a search problem – Solve it with Google Dating”. Brilliant.

Another great hoax was last years TiSP, an unthinkable acronym for Toilet internet Service Provider. This was a fictitious broadband service that was activated by dropping a fibre optic cable with a weight on…down your toilet! This would then be carried through your drains to be recovered by a Plumbing Hardware Despatcher (PHD). 60 minutes later you would be connected to the internet via a free Google wireless router.

So that was the history, but what will this years be? Be prepared…

Related posts:

1. Another PageRank Update Due
   After the furore of the last PageRank update, where many sites lost PageRank score due to links to blog sites, it’s pretty much impossible to...
2. Got That Sinking Feeling in the Sandbox?
   Google Sandbox … fact or fiction? Well Google has as good as admitted to the existence of the phenomenon known as the Sandbox effect, the...
3. Google PR Update, What this means for SEO Professionals
   Google have today initiated its Toolbar pagerank export, but what exactly does this mean for your website? Absolutely Nothing! A lot of SEO consultants will...
4. Google PageRank And Its Relevance To Search Engine Optimisation
   With the impending PageRank update we thought we would help our readers out in the understanding of ranking, the algorithm and Google in general. Among...
5. Search Engine Optimisation and Link Quality - Part two
   This blog follows on from my blog on Wednesday, on off page links so far we have covered links in frames, free for all links...