BeautifulPeople.com - 'Ugly' press release triumphs over SEO

'Tis the time for online love. As you'd expect from the season – the ink still wet on the list of resolutions – queries for the term 'online dating' enjoy a viagra-esque rise as one year rolls into the next. Presumably, many wish to be rid of their singleton tag before New Year's Eve comes around again.

This Google Trends chart demonstrates the seasonal peaks experienced by the term over the past few years.



It's a busy time for those in the online dating industry and I'd imagine that competition to hook in new subscribers is fierce.

This is aptly demonstrated by the deluge of print and media campaigns currently pulling on heartstrings across the UK. A Match.com television series is doing the rounds and I'm sure the company is reaping the rewards for their hard work.




Still, if you haven't got the offline promotions to bolster traffic, one suspects you may have to find more nefarious ways to drive traffic during peak season sign ups.

Online dating website BeautifulPeople.com caused a bit of a stir today after it revealed 5,000 users had been thrown off the vanity service for putting on the pounds over the festive season. For reference, the USP of this particular website promises 'beautiful' dates for beautiful people.

BeautifulPeople.com founder Robert Hintze described the decision so:

"Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded."

Whatever your opinion of Hintze, the announcement was a clever one. At least, it is when you're in an SEO position like BeautifulPeople.com

In SEO terms, BeautifulPeople.com is in the doldrums. Online dating is a competitive market and battling for hearts and minds against the dating monsters – Match.com, mysinglefriend.com, flirtbox.com – for organic SEO rankings looks like a losing campaign. Particularly in peak season.

A quick flick through Google Adwords' keyword tool brings up a host of popular terms relating to online lurve.

online dating
online date
best online dating
dating sites
internet dating

Just for fun, compare the organic ratings between BeautifulPeople.com and Match.com on these queries.



The two are in very different leagues. That is to say, BeautifulPeople.com has ugly rankings.

Still, this episode highlights the benefits of juicy linkbait. The online media has snapped at the story and currently, Google lists 64 articles in its news feed which relate to the BeautifulPeople.com press release. I'm presuming that the print outlets will pick up the baton tomorrow.

Whether or not this tactic reaps new subscribers is another debate entirely. Of course, no shock press release will triumph, at least in the long-term, over honest SEO rankings. Still, getting users to a site is half the battle. Whether any of them will be beautiful enough to subscribe is another matter.

Ten important blogs - the top bloggers to have shaped modern blogging

Belle De Jour

Arguably, the first British blogger to break out of the virtual world and into the real one. Before the book deal, the television show and the Guardian column, Ms. De Jour entertained and titillated with her experiences as a London call girl. Witty and superbly written (to the point where a UK paper tried to out her as a journalist) and occasionally laugh-out-loud, it's worth a look for those with an interest in both the cultural importance of online copywriting and, um, the subject in hand.

Belle De Jour

Bob Somerby

Founder of the Daily Howler blog, Bob Somerby was one of the first major political writers on the internet. While often criticised for being inaccurate and biased, the Daily Howler showed that it was possible to write about politics and maintain a healthy bounce rate at the same time. Political bloggers such as Guido Fawkes have a lot to thank him for.

Daily Howler

Matt Cutts

As head of Google's Webspam team, Matt Cutts knows things. Secret things. Things that an SEO copywriter would kill for. Sadly, Mr. Cutts isn't known for blurting out algorithm secrets, or indeed, the 16 digit number on the front of the company credit card. Nor should we expect him too. Occasionally though, Cutts lets slip about the latest update or indeed, confirms popular theories surrounding SEO strategy. Every little helps.

Matt Cutts

Comment is Free (The Guardian)

While not a personal blog, The Guardian's Comment Is Free is one of the most influential collection of online musings. The Guardian has a reputation for pushing the boundaries of what a newspaper can achieve online and the launch of CiF showed that news and opinion could peacefully coexist in a virtual world. 700 writers regularly contribute to the CiF section – named after a quote from CP Scott – and, even today, it remains one of the leading sites for online opinion and conjecture.

Comment is Free

NightJack

Richard Horton – detective constable for the Lancashire Constabulary - is better known as NightJack, the Orwell Prize-winning blogger famous for his emotional insight into the secret world of the police force. He became infamous for his criticisms of police bureaucracy and his honest appraisal of the job – describing one local community as the 'evil poor' being just one controversial opinion. Horton's identity was revealed by a court order earlier this year after a landmark legal battle with The Times newspaper. The blog was deleted and Horton was issued a formal warning by his employers. The implications of this ruling, rather than the blog itself, cements its position in the list.

Perez Hilton

Love or loath the nature of his work, Perez Hilton has made his name reporting on the loves and lives of Hollywood's elite. His first blog, PageSixSixSix.com, was famous for its brutal and cut-throat reporting of some of the biggest celebrity scoops. The blog inspired countless imitators and thousands of like-minded sites and Perez is now thought to be one of the most influential people in show business; the blog has been know to launch the careers of his friends and acquaintances. Like Mika.

Perez Hilton

Justin Hall

Widely considered to be the pioneer of the personal blog, Jusin Hall started Links.net in 1994. As a student at Swarthmore, Hall began chronicling his daily life and undergraduate experiences. He revealed the most intimate details about his time at university – relationships, holidays and, at one point chronicled the time he obtained an STD from a partner. The origins of internet angst.

Justin Hall

Tom Watson

While he may have resigned his parliamentary seat under a hail of tabloid exclamation marks, Tom Watson will be forever remembered as one of the first politicians to connect to constituents through the power of blogging. In 2004, Watson won the New Statesman New Media Award for his attempts to share politics with the electorate. Politicians from both sides of the aisle have followed in his footsteps.

Tom Watson

Xeni Jardin

As the co-editor of cult site Boing Boing, Xeni is responsible for the proliferation of peculiar things. Back in the days before people realised the internet could be used to broadcast more unusual content – talking Nazi cats juggling melons and the like -this woman was spreading internet memes far and wide. An inspiration to all who'd rather surf B3ta than get any actual work done.

Xeni Jardin

Evan Williams

The father of social media, Williams made blogging accessible to all after creating Blogger.com in 1993. The simple layout and open-to-all approach brought blogging into the public domain. It now averages just over 140 million visitors per day. Williams can currently be found at his latest creation, Twitter.

Evan Williams

Google Images Adds New Filtering Option

It's been a busy month for Google. Not content with riling a large proportion of the UK SEO community with its apparent change to UK SERPs, the techies at Google HQ have found the time to implement a new option to its image search service; allowing users to reduce or raise the level of adult content directly from a results page.

It is now incredibly simple to switch between different degrees of safe search in Google Images. The level of adult content can now be easily changed by clicking on the option under the search bar.



However, I am sure there are many people keen to say that the first result - an image of Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney - fails to adhere to the use of 'strict' filtering of adult content.

Story courtesty of Google Blogoscoped