Keith Ledger – The New Internet Ghost
This posting is about an Internet Ghost called Keith Ledger, aka Heath Ledger. Some (mostly in the US) have also referred to him as Keath Ledger.
What is an Internet Ghost? A term that everyone is searching for but doesn't actually exist. (see internetghost.com)
It is likely that you got here because you searched for Keith Ledger. But who you were actually after is Heath Ledger, the Brokeback Mountain and Batman actor who died tragically, at the age of 28 in his New York apartment, after an overdose of prescription drugs.
Searches for the term "Keith Ledger" on Google were highest in Canada, followed closely by the US, then Ireland:
Heath Ledger was one of the most misspelled names in Net searches, following his death and again towards the release of the new Batman movie where he stars as The Joker. As a result many sites have been set up with spam, porn and nasty trojan viruses, intended to trap those searching for Keith Ledger or Keath Ledger.
Consider this a safety net, to warn you before you get there:
Stop now! Go to the Heath Ledger IMDB page: here.
Heath Ledger (the real one) - A tribute by Channel 10:
What is an Internet Ghost? How does SEO use Internet Ghosts?
I started using this term more and more in my daily work, so I thought I'd give it a definition.
There are two types of Internet Ghosts:
1. The Retro Internet Ghost - is a shell of a concept, a domain, or an idea that no longer exists in the real world, but still has remnants on the Web. The ghost (for example the old website of a company that is no longer trading) caries many inbound links, and appears high in search engine rankings. A retro ghost site can be bought out by another business that will then capitalise on its old reputation and build a new one, with ready-made SEO popularity. A great example of this is Internet flop boo.com, an ecommerce fashion startup that burned its way through £125 million ($ 188 million) in just six months in the late 90's. It famously went bust in 2000, with its remaining assets being offloaded for about £2m. The ghost of boo - the domain name boo.com was then launched as a travel website by Web Reservations International, with ready-made SEO links. It is a variation on what commercial lawyers call "good will", but with the difference that it often remains floating in limbo until it is picked up.
2. The User-Driven Internet Ghost (also known as the Search Engine Apparition) - this one is a little more spooky, and comes to be when users search for a term that doesn't exist on the Internet, usually because it is commonly misspelled, or is a new term that came to be through a campaign, a celebrity statement, or an event that brought it to public consciousness all of a sudden - whereas it was not known before.
What tends to happen is as follows:
- a. The public starts to search for the term on the Net, but can't find it.
- b. SEOs and spammers notice the new search trend, and immediately create sites specifically designed to trap the traffic to the new or mistaken term.
- c. The public goes to these SEO and spam sites, but can't find meaningful information, only the keywords and lots of Viagra advertisements and so on.
- d. The pubic creates many more searches with the ghost terms, a demand that fuels more spam sites, thus creating growing cycle.
An example of such an Internet Ghost would be searches for "Olivia Dukakis", created by users looking for Olympia Dukakis. I cover this in more detail here, but for months people have been looking for information about "Olivia Dukakis", and all they got was spam.
As an Internet Ghost Buster, I try to create entries for these ghosts, investigating what the users really want and giving them this information. This breaks the Ghost-Abuse-Cycle (if I may use this term so boldly), and allows the term to die peacefully. Sometimes putting ghosts to rest also serves a wider, more news-worthy purpose, in cases such as the story of Entela Hysko, a woman who was unknown on the Net, until she died in a car crash with an Albanian media mogul. Within hours her name became the target of blog-spam, but no one outside of Albania knew who she was.
Of course if you Internet-Ghost-Bust, you not only provide a public service, but also get legitimate traffic to your site. Hence, both of the above are additional tools in the arsenal of the good SEO/SEM expert.
Jane Smith (jane85smith@gmail.com) is giving you free love and you should be ashamed of yourself!
If you're asking yourself: "who is Jane Smith?" then you must have received an email from her, coming from the email address jane85smith@gmail.com. She also writes from live.com and various other addresses.
Don't respond, don't worry, hit delete. Forget about it. She's not worth it: she's spam.
It's the oldest trick in the book, but still works every time.
The same power was at play here that made the "I love you" virus so effective - playing on people's basic need to be loved and the instant suspension of any rational thinking. The "I love you" virus arrived as a love letter attachment to an email which bore the same title. These three words caused millions to open it, and get infected.
And now Jane writes to you: She's hoping to meet new friends. She came across your profile, or your picture. She liked what she saw. Maybe you two can be friends...
Of course she saw your picture. Get over it.
Delete Delete Delete! If you still want to get involved with a lady - you could consider the Ashley Madison way...
The mystery of Entela Hysko – And how her name became a small Internet snowball
I'm still piecing the puzzle together, but for those of you who have spent an hour or two (or three) trying to figure out who Entela Hysko is, here is my analysis of how you got to hear about her.
It's one of those Internet phenomena, that you look at and think: this is an example of something that can happen on a much bigger scale. It's a mini-Internet-storm, but one that you can model future hurricanes on, or perhaps Net-avalanches.
It all starts with the tragic death, in a car accident, of Albania's biggest media mogul, 40 year old Dritan Hoxha. Hoxha died in Tirana on Friday 23 May 2008, when his Ferrari Fiorano crashed into a tree.
Hoxha founded Top Media Group, which spanned radio and TV stations, including a highly successful pay TV platform. He was a big name in Albania.
The news item which reported Hoxha's death also mentioned that the police confirmed that a 27 year old woman, Entela Hysko , was with him in the car at the time of the crash, and also died as a result.
What seems to have happened afterwards, is that the Internet was flooded with searches with the name "Entela Hysko", all trying to find out who she was ('who was the mystery lady in the Ferrari with the media mogul?'). But alas, this information was not available anywhere, and the only thing that came up was the same police report, replicated in news pieces in Albanian, Slovenian and Serbian.
What made things worse for those searching for Entela Hysko, was that quite a few websites, this one included, contain a feed of the most searched for words on Google, taken from Google Trends. When Entela's name became one of the top trended search words, the sites with Google Trends feeds were the only places (in English) that contained the words "Entela Hysko" - and as a result, they themselves got hit by large numbers of clicks that came from these searches.
It followed that site owners, baffled by the spike in traffic on their sites, all driven by this unfamiliar name, started searching for answers. Naturally, they googled Entela's name too, which conversely only made things worse. A snowball effect started, bringing further sites into this recursive pattern, and making the phenomenon even bigger (including pushing the term further upwards on Google Trends).
I hope that this entry may help to end this growing effect, especially bearing in mind the young woman who tragically lost her life in the crash.
UPDATE ON 29 MAY 08 - I've heard from several people who have expressed disgust that Dritan Hoxha death was all over the news and Entela who was with him barely got a mention.
One of her friends produced the following video and placed it on YouTube: