Germany’s c’t magazin is celebrating its 40th anniversary by bringing back archived articles. They will feature informative and exciting stories on computer technology successes, investigations, and mistaken predictions. Among the highlighted topics is the rise of search engines and search engine optimization (SEO). The article from 2005 discusses how search engines ranked sites based on keywords and how Google avoided mistakes by not solely relying on it.
The writer, Jo Bager, conducted a competition called the “Hommingberg Cheetah Trout” to study the ranking mechanism of search engines and optimization trends. The competition aimed to promote participating webmasters’ websites with as much SEO techniques as possible, using the term “Hommingberg cheetah trout.”
The competition was unlike any other, having similar experiments like “Nigritude ultramarine” and “Schnitzel mit Kartoffelsalat.” It quickly gained popularity, and the cheetah trout became the fastest-rising term. The Google search results exceeded three million sites on the subject of “Hommingberg cheetah trout.”
The competition report revealed interesting insights into SEO techniques and the ranking mechanism of the search services. The articles are still available in a PDF file on the website. It will be interesting to see how new AI search engines will handle the fictitious food fish. The upcoming c’t edition will be investigating various subjects like the end of Windows 10 support and how it would affect computers that don’t meet Windows 11 requirements. It will also highlight the “Hommingberg cheetah trout” competition along with other exciting developments in the tech world.
