There’s been outrage across the UK today as HMV released the 2011 X Factor Winner’s single for pre-sale, but actually named the winner as Amelia Lilly 5 days before the final takes place.
It comes in a long string of X Factor ‘fix’ claims which the public love to get in a stew about as Simon Cowell sits back and enjoys the publicity.
But was it really a gaff by HMV, or was it some sneaky
SEO tactics coming into play?
Being the first website to get a relevant page live could play into their hands when people begin to search for ‘X Factor Winner’s single’ or ‘Amelia Lilly single’ on Sunday night (n.b. other winners are available). Google will have had chance to crawl the page and add it to the index, which it will not have done for sites which choose to add pages once the results have been announced.
And with all the furore and media coverage created today, the HMV page will undoubtedly have got some juicy links pointing to it which will all help push their rankings along nicely come Sunday night.
Of course, following
Google’s recent freshness update, it could quickly work the other way if the Google decides to show the more recent results following Sunday’s final when people are searching. It is certainly a time related query so HMV may well see themselves slip down the rankings as more recently created pages and news articles are crawled.
I’m sure during the period in between HMV will sell plenty of X Factor single as the public flocks to buy them as soon as the announcement is made, outweighing any potential negative publicity they may have acquired. We’ll be watching the rankings with a keen eye to see what happens on Sunday evening and if HMV’s cheeky strategy pays off.
Come on Amelia Lilly!
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