Let the bombing commence....

[Lord Penquin]

One way we can get our forum to show up in a search for "culdcept" instead of the more specific "culdcept forum", is by googlebombing. Perhaps CommanderGarak can help us out with the explanation on how to do that.

[Captain Garak]

Actually, I had never heard of that term before, but here's an article describing how to do it:

- www.wordspy.com/words/Googlebombing.asp

I'm not really a fan of that sort of thing, since it's really not the "honest" way to go about accomplishing your goals. In fact, if a service like Google or Yahoo ever discovered that this was how a site obtained a high ranking, I would imagine that they would penalize them in some fashion.

However, if our Members are surfing a website and posting in a Forum, there's nothing unethical about posting a link to culdcept.proboards27.com/ somewhere in your post. If you have an opportunity to link it to the word Culdcept as opposed to using the full Culdcept Forum title, what's the harm? Also, there's nothing bad about asking other sites to link to us, which is what I have been trying to do over the last several weeks.

Of course, anyone who does have a website and who does want to put a link to culdcept.proboards27.com/ on their site (and who wants to call it just Culdcept), I don't find anything to be wrong with that. It could look like this:

- Find out more about Culdcept here!

To do that in this board's markup language, you would do the following:

1) Enclose the following statement in square [] brackets:
url=http://culdcept.proboards27.com/

2) Type the word "Culdcept" (without the quotation marks) following the bracketed statement above.

3) Follow that with the following statement in square [] brackets:
/url

To create that link in more "traditional" HTML, you would write the following:

<a href="LINK">Culdcept</a>, where LINK = culdcept.proboards27.com/

I just wouldn't encourage that sort of activity....#nosmileys

[Lord Penquin]

Granted, it's a "back door" way into a listing that way, but a lot of people looking for culdcept info would simply put "culdcept" into the search string, and not think to put in "culdcept forum". We already have over 70 members, so I'm not trying to artificially inflate that membership with people who aren't interested in this forum. Obviously, if they are searching for culdcept, they are looking for info on the game. We appear to be doing well with our current tactics (puttiing posts on other boards, listing the site with google and yahoo). I was just thinking of a way to get us listed on the first page of a "culdcept" search, that's all.

[Captain Garak]

I'm not criticizing you, sir. After all, if you want to talk about Culdcept, Culdcept Forum is the place to do it! It would be nice for players to know that we exist, and in order to do that, having a listing that hits earlier than the 11th page of Culdcept search results would probably help.

[Lord Penquin]

The way I learned about this is from someone "google bombing" President Bush. Some lefty decided it would be cute to have a search for "miserable failure" to pull up the biography of George Bush. Glenn Beck, a conservative radio host has retaliated, having his listeners fight back. Now when you do a search for "miserable failure", the President is #2 on the list. Michael Moore (the anti-war, anti-bush, anti-common sense person) is now listed at the top of the page.

[Captain Garak]

If I were to say, "As it should be!", would that be inappropriate?

[Lord Penquin]

I will decline to comment, because once I open that can of worms, I'll go into a 3 page rant on the whole war/anit-war, war on terrorism, etc.. It wouldn't be pretty. It would be the truth, but it some people don't want to hear the truth.

[Captain Garak]

Understandable, my friend.

Anyway, I changed my signature over at the TNL Forum to reflect the link as I describe it above. That's actually a pretty good idea, and I hope that other Members here will think about doing the same....

[dtcarson]

FWIW, I put in Culdcept Forum when I want to come here, and this is the first hit
If someone is wanting to discuss the game, and has any experience with things like this, the top choices in my head would be
culdcept forum [now that i'm hanging out on more fora]
culdcept chat
culdcept message board
I don't know if anyone calls things 'BBSes' anymore, except for the few telnet-based ones still extant.

and re: 'miserable failure', it's getting big--hits 3 and 4 go to Jimmy Carter and Hillary Clinton, hit 5 goes to an article discussing the quote, then it looks like it discusses the phenomenon itself. Just goes to show, the internet really is the ultimate level playing field.