Is Dean Hunt for Real? (Can Matt Cutts Confirm?)

Dean Hunt, the man who made a blog post saying that a store owner would sue his blog for ranking higher in Google, had plans all along to create a "viral campaign" to generate traffic. His site is too new and cruddy to rank so well for a term that he refuses to disclose.

Is Dean Hunt a liar?I read with interest about Dean Hunt’s bizarre Google request where an online store owner threatened him via email since Dean’s blog ranks better than the store for a particular keyword term. He writes for a partial SEO-themed blog, yet he needed more advice from individuals on a number of forums (with a link to his story, of course, one of which was removed).

I wrote about the story myself (since I think it’s a good lesson regardless), but I can’t help but wonder if this was all a scam. I mean, after all, Dean wrote on October 4th that he will be creating a viral campaign with the intention to promote his site via related sites. And since his site is still really in its infancy (138 blog posts in 6 categories since June), I don’t think that his blog could truthfully rank better than an established online store.

Without providing the search terms in question for verification, nobody is really able to believe that Dean is actually telling the truth.

Well, maybe Matt Cutts can — if Dean really told him.

So — which is it?

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5 replies on “Is Dean Hunt for Real? (Can Matt Cutts Confirm?)”
  1. Ha – I saw that

    but what I meant was – traffic wise. Your story is now on digg – say it hits the homepage – that’s more traffic and then more links. Also – I have to say it but if he could think this up – it’s really creative IMO and then maybe he deserves it…

  2. He already hit Digg’s front page (twice?) and Slashdot is having a ball with him from what I see. I’m not sure if my little blog will make it, though it would be nice. 🙂

    Hopefully they’ll call him out for it too, and hopefully they won’t be evil about it and avenge the situation by crashing his web server a third time.

  3. says: Perry

    Dean is brilliant! He writes things people read. Aged crap is still just crap. Watch Dean and lear how its done.

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