WAS EDELMAN GOOGLEWASHING…?
Here’s an interesting spin. Like McDonaldization, Walmarting is a pejorative referring to the way chains pave over all things special in communities and Seth Finkelstein suggests that the flog (fake blog) may have been intended in part to Googlewash the word.
Writes Seth:
The “Wal-Marting Across America” story, where a Wal-Mart PR firm sponsored a “fake” blog (“walmartingacrossamerica.com”) about a couple’s trip involving various Walmart stores, contains this interesting Google aspect:
It was a great way to redefine the term Wal-Marting, which is mostly used pejoratively to mean, among other things, how big box retailers mow down small businesses.
I was interested if the Googlewashing, i.e. crowding out search results, worked here. So far, all it seems to have generated is very poor results (#2 hit now). And at the cost of much negative reaction .
The idea above seemed to be, in part, to use the blog and the link behavior of bloggers to get prominent placement. But – again, so far – the blog ranks very poorly on a search for “Wal-Marting”, or “WalMarting”. I think what’s happened is that the PR people drank the blog-evangelism Kool-Aid, and were misled by hype about blogs.
Blogs can in fact be obscure in Google, especially if they are new and have few links, which was the case for this “flog” (PR blog). A-lister’s blogs, established and popular, tend to rank well. But that doesn’t mean any blog is going to do well, which is the sales-pitch.
Ah, Jim and Laura, the gift that just keeps giving and giving.
Thanks for the post – but note, the following part is from the Business Week article, not original with me: “It was a great way to redefine the term Wal-Marting, which is mostly used pejoratively to mean, among other things, how big box retailers mow down small businesses.”
I was using that as a springboard.
Shalom Seth,
First, thank you for stopping in, for reading and, most importantly, taking the time to write a comment. It’s all about the conversation.
Yes. I was posting on the fly and didn’t have a chance until now to come back and get the formatting right. I’m about to fix it now.
B’shalom,
Jeff
[...] WAS EDELMAN GOOGLEWASHING…? Here’s an interesting spin. Like McDonaldization, Walmarting is a pejorative referring to the way chains pave over all things special in communities and Seth Finkelstein suggests that the flog (fake blog) may have been intended in part to Googlewash the word. Keep reading… [...]
[...] One of the interesting observations made about Wal Mart’s flog — Wal-Marting Across America — was that it might have been attended to sanitize the term walmarting, a pejorative for destroying what is special in our communities, in Google searches. The positive use of the term did rise to No. 2 on Google, but I checked this morning and it’s history. [...]