The Sextantenverkauf and the SEO Test
This SEO test was launched spontaneously with the broadcast of a German television Gameshow "Schlag den Raab" to test the amount of visitors that can be attracted based upon key words which were 'invented' and broadcast during the Gameshow.
Results and Recommendations
• Established blogs are quickly indexed by Google. Using a combination of blog entries and landing pages, the search engine listing (ranking) can be quickly improved for the key search terms.
• The newer or more obscure / unique / original the key search terms are, the higher the chance of quickly occupying the top search result positions. In the same accord, the key terms also need to be current and fresh (in the media) to generate traffic.
• First Mover Advantage - Predicting specific media events or preplanning in advance presents the opportunity to have the top search results for key terms and the chance to attract and convert traffic before competitors enter the market or media coverage swamps the internet with masses of information.
• After implementing standard SEO measures and gaining increasing visitor numbers, unless the offer or information available actively engages the visitor, the bounce rate will typically be high. SEO in combination with a strong selling proposition will draw in and convert visitors into customers.
Background Information
This study was based upon events in a German television Gameshow "Schlag Den Raab" (Beat the Raab) in which the well known late night television moderater Stefan Raab challenges a television viewier to compete against him in a range of intellectual and sporting activities for the chance to win the 1 Million Euro jackpot. On 09.June 2007, from five potential candidates, 'Peter Dietrich' won the chance to compete against Stefan Raab. The challenges were unknown to both contestants in advance. The five hour long telecaste was followed by 3,43 Million which represented 17.8% of TV viewers (the top rated program for this day).
The "Searchmachine" (game 8) challenge was based upon the searching with google.de. Based upon a start word (eg beer), a new word has to formed without any spaces (eg. beerdrinker). The google search engine was used to search for the newly formed word. The winner of the challenge was the person who had more the least results (but more than zero).
A note of interest, in the German language often multiple single words can be connected together to form a new word. As an example Fahrgastausstiegswunschtaste is a combination of "Fahrgast" (passenger) + "Ausstieg" (exit) + "Wunsch" (wish) + "Taste" (button) and can be loosely described as "the button which passengers should press in order to signalise that they wish to leave the bus".
Search Machine Challenge
The search words and results were as follows:
| Start word | Stefan Raab (google results) | Peter Dietrich (google results) |
| bier (test round) | bierfenster (6) | bierbauch (205,000) |
| euro | eurohans (464) | eurowechselstube (3) |
| wurst | wurstbier (80) | wurstwarensgroßhandelshaus (0) |
| sex | sexbier (67) | sextantenverkauf (1) |
| holz | holzbier (80) | holzbier (80) |
| holz | holzwein (153) | holzwurmfalle (6) |
Peter Dietrich, the challenger, won this challenge. He also defeated moderater Stefan Raab for the entire competition on points to win one million Euro prize money.
SEO Test
As a result of the online challenge a SEO Test Page was create as a test to attract visitors to a website based upon the search terms used in this television program.
On a 'testing website' a single webpage was constructed that contained the search terms used in the challenge. The following steps were taken to optimised the page rank of the 'test page' when searching for the search terms. For the test, "sextantenverkauf" was selected as the primary search term. As part of the test, two selected search terms (wurstwarensgroßhandelshaus and bierbauch) were completely excluded.
- Webpage was linked using the search term "sextantenverkauf" from 2 external websites (which both are in the google index)
- Webpage was linked with the search term "sextantenverkauf" from the home page of test website (which is in the google index)
- Webpage contained search term in the URL
- Page Title and Meta description and Meta Keywords contains all search term (excluding two terms)
- <h1> and <h2> tags plus bold text contained search term
- The search terms were dispersed throughout the page content which was formed from Lorem Ipsum Blind text
- Random images were included in the page that had file names and alt tags matching the search terms
- addition of google adsense ads
- addition of google search in the pages content.
Initial Results - 27.06.2007
Google Analtics tracking was included. The webpage was completed and uploaded on 09.06.2007 (within a few hours of the 'search machine challenge') however was first crawled and indexed by google on June 16. This immediately generated 164 visitors, on the following day 145 visitors. All visitors were direct visitors and access the website from google after typing in the key words.
Visits between June 9 and June 26
| Search Term | Site Visits |
| sextantenverkauf | 182 |
| wurstbier | 62 |
| holzbier | 31 |
| holzwurmfalle | 23 |
| eurowechselstube | 18 |
| holzwein | 11 |
| wurstwein | 9 |
After the first peak, visitor numbers dropped to between 1 and 5 visitors a day.
One day after the television program, there were 5 websites that could be found using the search term "sextantenverkauf" and this has increased over time. The majority of website listed in the search results that contained the search terms were Blogs.
Duplicated Pages
In an attempt to generate more traffic, addition html pages were created and uploaded on June 27. Days later on July 3, the SEO Test Pages were no longer listed in the google search results, probably due to webpages with identical content. As a result, from the period between July 3 and July 11 there were virtually no visitors to the website. This pages were changed and from July 12 when Google re-indexed the modified pages the visitor numbers increased.
Search Results
This is a tally of the number of google results for each search term and the position of the Test SEO page.
| Search Term | Results 9.06.2007 | Results 27.06.2007 / position | Results 25.07.2007 / position |
| bierfenster | 6 | 9 | 14 / pos 5 |
| bierbauch | 205,000 | 191,000 / - | 193,000 / - |
| eurohans | 464 | 456 / pos16 | 400 / pos 9 |
| eurowechselstube | 3 | 10 / pos 1 | 21 / pos 1 |
| wurstbier | 80 | 185 / pos 12 | 264 / pos 4 |
| wurstwarengroßhandelshaus | 0 | 8 / - | 9 / - |
| sexbier | 67 | 169 / - | 217 / 8 |
| sextantenverkauf | 1 | 356 / pos 2 | 2,070 / pos 1 |
| holzbier | 80 | 290 / pos 6 | 349 / pos 15 |
| holzwein | 153 | 184 / pos 4 | 165 / pos 3 |
| holzwurmfalle | 6 | 336 / pos 7 | 434 / pos 6 |
On the analysis from 27.06.2007 another website (fotovote.de) was found which actively competed in attracting visitors using these key words hidden by using the same colour for the background and the system text search terms (ie. not visible for visitors). On the analysis from 25.07.2007 a further website was found which contained some search terms (www.gshare.de/index/schlagdenraab.htm). Both of these websites were attempting to draw in visitors to the website using these keywords though promoting completely unrelated services.
Total Site Visitors
While it took up to 6 days for google to first index the new web page, blogs containing the keywords were indexed within 24 hours and over time changes in blogs were more quickly reflected in the search results than standard web pages.
For the period between June 9 and July 25 there were 595 direct visits from Google to the SEO Test Pages after searching for the search terms. The average time spent on the website was between 10 and 20 seconds.
| Search Term | Site Visits |
| sextantenverkauf | 350 |
| wurstbier | 83 |
| holzbier | 57 |
| holzwurmfalle | 44 |
| eurowechselstube | 35 |
| holzwein | 11 |
| wurstwein | 15 |
Final Observations
The SEO Test Pages visited primarily out of curiosity with the top search term "Sextantenverkauf" generating over 50% of direct visitors. Without any real content on the webpage, the curiousity of the site visitors was lost after an average of 20 seconds.
In the time that the Search Terms were fresh in the media, the website generated the most traffic, since this time the visitor rate has gradually decreased over time however the key search terms continue to generate new visitors from google.
The more links that direct to a webpage, the higher the page ranking. There were two sites linking to the SEO Test Pages which more than most other websites (inparticular Blogs) returned in the web searches and thus the SEO Test pages were located closer to position 1.
Blogs are useful for generating quick traffic. Using multiple blogs that each have different google crawl times it is possible to more quickly capture traffic for a specific keyword than relying purely on static web pages. For campaigns, using a combination of blog entries and Search Engine Optimised landing pages will allow content to be more quickly indexed and thus rapidly draw in increased visitor numbers. A relevant (commercial) offer for the visitors is the key to converting visitors into customers.
Information Sources:
Television show website
www.schlag-den-raab.de
Video of the "Suchmachine" Challenge (Choose "Suchmachine").
www.schlag-den-raab.de/videos/artikel/40275/
Directlink to "Suchmachine" Windows Media Video file
wms.e-tv.de
Wikipedia - Schlag den Raab
de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlag_den_Raab
Young Germany - Long German words (Reference to "Fahrgastausstiegswunschtaste")
www.young-germany.de
Television Photograhy @ Pro 7
news.prosieben.de
Google Webmaster Tools
www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/
Wikipedia English SEO webpage
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimisation
Wikipedia German SEO webpage
de.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEO
English SEO contest from 2004 documented on Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigritude_ultramarine
Wikipedia Hommingberger Gepardenforelle (German)
A German SEO competition from the German C't computer magazin in 2005
de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hommingberger_Gepardenforelle
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