Google was last night forced to admit to the existence of a “secret keyword” that enables websites that place it on their homepage to rocket to the top of the search results and gain huge amounts of traffic.

The elusive keyword had been subject to rumours in SEO circles for months but the announcement still sent shockwaves around the industry.

Google are refusing to divulge the actual term but it is said to be made up of 2 distinct words that are “impossible to write accidentally”. Placing the phrase in your homepage’s copy will guarantee your site the top spot in Google and 1042011 visitors each day (or 4012011 in the US).

Google originally created the term back in 1998 when the internet was only used as a hangout for science fiction fans. Now the internet has several other uses, the presence of the secret lexicon poses real issues for the search engine.

Unscrupulous SEO consultants have been quick to capitalise on the announcement. Numerous services are now available from shady SEO companies who claim to know the enigmatic edict and are prepared to place it onto websites for exorbitant fees.

Guesses as to what the term might be were being made on social media sites and webforums across the internet last night. At Mediarun, we do not claim to know what the word is but we suspect it might be “lorem ipsum”. We’d welcome any other guesses in the comments, of course.

On March 1^st the ASA extends its remit to cover online marketing communications and claims that companies make on their own websites and other online areas they control. This means that parts of SEO will arguably fall under their remit: links out to other sites, copy, meta data visible to the visitor etc.

Needless to say, as complex as SEO is there are plenty of grey areas that we suspect the ASA will struggle to do anything about – there are so many more webpages than there are adverts. That said, we’ve made a wish list of the things we’d like to see them tackle, but know that they almost certainly can’t. Still, we can but hope…

Visual pun #1872

There are plenty of examples of the below online but you’ll forgive me if I don’t help them out with a link.

1. We’ll take the “guaranteed results” bunch as read. For the googolth time (real number – look it up): no one can guarantee any search results unless they are the search engine. Also, it’s a meaningless promise. Tell you what, I’ll guarantee to get your site on page 1 for the keyphrase “large badger hats”. Think of the prestige!

2. SEM companies using Adwords positions screenshots as evidence of some kind of expertise. They are effectively saying “I have no respect for you, potential customer, you gullible fool.”

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