v7n SEO contest

John Scott has launched the v7n SEO contest…

Amazingly, there’s quite a clamour to win the first prize of $4,000.

Kudos top John Scott - he created the competition to increase the profile and traffic of v7n - and the controversy at the beginning has certainly helped that.

But let’s get something straight - any SEO contest is a stupid idea from a SEO standpoint.

People are messing with Google - a company who already have a market valuation of over $135 billion, with that suggested as increasing to nearer $180 billion over the year.

Are Google watching? Sure they are - to see which aspects of their algorithm are most prone to manipulation, so that these aspects can be further devalued in Google updates over late 2006/early 2007.

At which point, SEO forums will be filled with whining from webmasters who are no longer able to maintain their rankings as before.

And they’ll only have themselves to blame, for showing Google what’s most in need of fixing.