So where have you been this past week? Let me get you up to speed on The Ultimate Keyword Experiment that resulted in the ultimate blogging keyword – “brrreeeport”. In an oh so creative and original experiment to debunk the A-list Blogger conspiracy and test out the search engines, on February 13th Microsoft’s controversial super geek, Robert Scoble, asked his readers to use the phony baloney word “brrreeeport” in their blogs. The objective was to get “Z-list” blogs noticed while testing the reach of search engines and at the same time stick it to Technorati’s prima donna Blogoshere. What happened literally made Blog history and peeked under the search engines’ skirts!

Technorati returned 487 results for the fictitious word, pointing searchers to Z-list blogs that otherwise may have never been found. It was placed in the #1 slot for most popular search, even out ranking Dick Cheney’s hunting accident. Oh, but wait until you hear the Rest of The Story! Within two day’s time “brrreeeport” hit Google with over 452 results! At one time Google claimed over 14,000 results and some report as many as 50,000 results where claimed by Google. Now here’s the thing (and the peek up the skirt), when Scoble actually scrolled through and counted the results, he came up with only 382 (hardly 50,000). He says that this is an example of the “lies that are going on on the search engines”. MSN returned 1,369 and Yahoo returned 1,010. After blushing and wiping the egg off of their faces, a few days later Google returned only 190 results for “brrreeeport”, with MSN returning 221, and Yahoo still returning 2,130. Gee, I know we can’t trust our politians, but come on, this is the search engines. Was this an honest mistake or were the results manipulated in some brrreeeport mysterious way?

More truthiness that this funky experiment also brings up is the importance of anchor text in blogs, the contextual text that hyperlinks to another page or another site. Robot’s love text based links….it’s a gourmet delight. And don’t forget the living beings who are reading your blog. Why just put “click here” or “for more info” in the text of your hyperlink? Let the reader know what to expect if he clicks on the hyperlink. Besides we know how the search engines feel about relevant text, so let’s not disappoint them. Remember, your Blog should always be maintained with marketing in mind so it can be found. Of course, if you want to increase your ranking for the keyword “click here”….go for it! But honestly, who’s searching for a click here??? Or for that matter why are there now keyword buys for “brrreeeport”? So, what’s a brrreeeport…..and why would I want one? The answer is it’s a kick ass keyword that every blog should have today……maybe not tomorrow, but today – it rocks!