SEO FINAL POSITIONS

[gwaradenn]

Good job all and congratulations Imfreakz.

[Brycec]

Yes I did - thanks, I am doing that all today.

[seosean]

Hi,

I was just looking over the final standing and had a question - not that it I was close to winning or anything so it does not matter for myself. But I thought the rules where no black hat techniques yet many of the contestants where buying links which as we all know is frowned upon by the search engines like Google. Would this not disqualify anyone who bought links?

[Brycec]

I am assuming by this you mean buyuing links on high rankign sites to boost their rankings?! - do you have proof of this?

also its a tad late now for us to do anything about it, prizes have all been paid - you should ahve made this known earlier and we could have looked into it.

Wait till worldcup2.

[bleuken]

wow, a new world cup competition! I will join this again and try to win the SEO CAT.

Hi Brycec, did you send already my prize (iPod)? Thanks!

[Brycec]

They arrived at our office todya and have been sent off via dhl I believe.

[seosean]

Hi Brycec,

I understand it's a tad late now and I should have spoke up a little earlier but here is the proof anyways - even if it's just for future reference.

Please note, I have only provided a few examples of proof for each of the following contestants (if needed more can be provided). You or anyone can find out quite easily if someone purchased a link, all I did was a yahoo search for each contestants links. I have only researched the top 6 contestants.

SEO FINAL STANDINGS

1) http://www.imfreakz.com/competition/ - dewaji (IMFreakz)
Proof of buying links:
- http://www.articletrader.com/ (link under "Advertise Here" section in right hand column, link was purchased via reverselinks.com, click on "Advertise Here" and you can see this)
- http://www.bramptonlistings.info/ (link is towards the bottom after the categories in the section with "Your Link Here", click on "Your Link Here" and you can see these are paid for links to increase PR)

2) http://www.sphereteam.com/ - Team Seosphere
Could not find any proof of paid links

3) http://www.pogung177.com/aussie/ - pogung177
Proof of buying links:
- http://www.onlineprojectcenter.com/ (link under "Need to be list here ?" section in right hand column, click on "Need to be list here ?" and you can see these are paid links to increase PR)

4) http://pinayspeak.com/ ricos
Could not find any proof of paid links

5) http://perth.rayofshadow.com/ rayofshadow
Proof of buying links:
- http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:XsjhJrRZhWYJ:www.dighosting.com/+http://www.dighosting.com/ (Google cache showing link in purchased links displayed on this site on the lower left bottom, you'll also see http://www.pogung177.com/aussie)
- http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:ctSjdyNodB0J:www.isnaini.com/2007/03/06/review-sebulan-di-text-link-ads/+http://www.isnaini.com/2007/03/06/review-sebulan-di-text-link-ads/ Google cache showing link in purchased links displayed on this site under the section "Teman" on the right hand column, you'll also see http://www.pogung177.com/aussie listed there)

6) http://chasing5000.ardhinugraha.com/ ardhinugraha
Proof of buying links:
- http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:XsjhJrRZhWYJ:www.dighosting.com/+http://www.dighosting.com/ (Google cache showing link in purchased links displayed on this site on the lower left bottom, you'll also see http://www.pogung177.com/aussie AND http://perth.rayofshadow.com/ there)
- http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:bJoTXcfodS4J:osmirror.com/links.html+http://osmirror.com/links.html (Google cache showing link in purchased links displayed on this site at the very bottom of the page)

[Brycec]

thats a shame - will keep better watch of this in world cup 2 if its part of ruleset.

[netexpert]

What a scam!

see this page: http://www.deanbarron.com/busby_seo_challenge.html

Maybe the next time you guys run a competition it will be fair, but I doubt it.

Hope you enjoyed the FREE publicity.

DB "the top google result" period.

[Brycec]

Net Expert

I just want to rebut a few of your points raised.

First you start off saying we don’t know who we awarded the prizes to – yes we are aware that the winners are teams – we never said teams are not allowed.

So we where not cheated out of anything – and neither where you.

The image you show is NOT pointing to the data centre that we were using - as a result the rankings change dramatically especially at the point where you are looking at.

I don’t understand how you where suddenly top 10 spots when challenge ended when clearly your ranked 59th on a different data centre – sorry that just seems to contradict itself.

“My guess is that the entire competition was fixed from the beginning and that
they probably didn't really even award ANY prizes to ANYONE” – ok so basically what your saying is we controlled all of the teams the results and didn’t pay out any money – needless to say receipts could be issued, comprehensive data for updates to the leader board can be provided… really I am baffled you would make such a claim but clearly you felt we have manipulated the system somehow – would love to see how we managed to scam that many people, when you’re the only one that’s complaining!

“Busby SEO Challenge Winner” - I would ask that you respect the efforts of the actual winners and remove this.

Finally if you’re so dead certain that it is a scam, could you please point out to the world – what it is the Busby is getting from this scam – our certs go down because there are more people using the keyword Busby which is rather unique as far as keywords and companies normally go – so how about we spam our own keyword with high ranking pages – and we let he competitors link to anywhere on the Busby site because of a original rule mix up – however most linked to the seoentrants page – so even if that page was getting linked – it itself was not optimised at all and got a terrible ranking. Also to point out countless hrs of work that’s been put in could have been better off doing something else more business orientated.
So thank you for competing if you feel we are scam artists that is your choice – I would simply suggest you do not continue to paint Busby Web Solutions in a defamatory light – because to this we will respond, you remove the text about you being a winner and if you think it’s a scam I would suggest not entering into the next seo challenge we have which is just around the corner.