A few folks have suggested that we pick a day once a week to yahoo-bomb Elliott's name to help promote him to the Top Ten Items Searched list on Yahoo Buzz. As far as I understand it, we would coordinate efforts to enter his name into their search engine as many times as possible.

Here's their webpage: http://buzz.yahoo.com/

If you're interested, please sign up for duty in this thread ASAP. Suggestions for a particular day or other possible strategies are welcome from everyone. It would be particularly helpful to hear from those who have done this before, either on Lycos or Yahoo or similar search engines. Those of us volunteering to coordinate this effort will let you know how this moves forward, so do visit this thread regularly.

If interested, please also PM other possible yahoo-bombers to come post in this thread. We need to be sure we have enough folks to give this an honest try.

I will re-edit this top post with important updates and plans as needed.

--Alien

I'll help when I can!

I'm happy to participate - we might wait until the single release or album release week for impact.

I can do this whenever I have the time.

I have spread the news to Elliott_Yamin@yahoogroups.com, and posted a bulletin
on my myspace. E fans unite! :etrain:

Count me in - just let me know the date. I agree with coordinating it with the release of his single.
Also if I remember correctly not only do you have to Yahoo his name but you need to click on one of the sites that comes up. That's what I was told anyway.

Would be glad to help, use Yahoo every day

I'm in. Just let me know the details. Maybe the Moosak fans? I go there once in a while.

I mostly use google... and I was wondering if google alerts count as a hit on google? just curious.

That's one of the questions I have as well. Do we need to click on any links? Also, what do we search exactly? I'd suggest, for example, "Elliott Yamin Wait for You", but perhaps simply "Elliott Yamin" is better.

Sherwood is stepping up to help us coordinate here and hopes to post more about yahoo buzz soon.

Can someone who knows the Moosak folks get in touch with them? They'll obviously be crucial here.

Thanks, and hopefully we'll get some more folks posting in here!

--Alien

Reporting for BOMB duty!! Just lemme know when to strike the target...

(Wow, I feel so military-like. Do I get a badge, sword, canteen...;) )

YES! A response back from Elliott_Yamin@yahoogroups.com

Good idea! When will this Yahoo-Bombing take place?

:cheerleader:

Happy to help! Just let me know when!

I'm ready! :rocker:

I'm in. Agree that it would be better to start once the single is released.

I'm down.

Just say when

I'm interested! ;)

I would love to be a part of this too!!!!! Yahoo won't know what hit them.

Me, too! :etrain:

I hope we aren't getting scanned by the FBI and CIA here :rotfl:

When it's all set to go, I'll let them know at Moosak.

Ooops, good point. I wouldn't put it past Homeland Security: "Rabid Elliott Yamin fans pose the newest and most deadly terrorist threat--from within our very borders!!!!" :)

As much as I dislike war metaphors usually, I have to admit that I like the idea of "yahoo bombing." In the last election, google bombing got a lot of press and made a big difference in news filtering on the internet.

BTW, are enough site members seeing this thread? It's tucked away in a new section, and we need to figure out how to lure people into this part of the forum more often. Once Sherwood joins us, we may try to pin this thread (or a similar one) up in NEws and Updates so that everyone can see it.

As for planning: if possible, I'd like for us to give this a go with Movin' On's release, assuming it ever comes out on I-tunes and is released to radio stations. But perhaps it's better to wait for, emm, "Wait for You"? What do y'all think?

Count me in to help.

I posted your message and thread in News and Alerts this a.m.

Thanks, Nancy. You're a peach! :)

Moosak sistas are ready to go, just waiting on a date.

I think we wait for "Wait for You" so that we KNOW it's supposed to get radio play and this will be about the time Elliott starts album promotion. There will be something to COME UP on the search if we bomb search. The point is for others to see the name in the corner of the page and go "What about Elliott Yamin - let me search to see what the big deal is about?" We need to do it when there will be plenty to find that is current. (JMO)

Pvt. Chloewannabee reporting for duty.

Geez you guys are right, maybe we need to post this:



So that Homeland Security sees that we are on the up and up :rotfl:

Definately in! :rocker:

*Ana

I'll help "bomb" for Elliott.
Can't during work because of security reasons, but will do in the evening!!
Anything for Elliott :cheerleader:

Yeah, I agree with Linda to "Wait for You". Better to have more activity going on than our current waiting mode, even when "Movin' On" is released to iTunes. I'm assuming there's a good strategy at play in making "Wait for You" the official single, so I think it would be a good idea to line up with the actions we hear planned by Elliott's team.

OKay, so one decision made: Let's do the first bomb with "Wait for You." That should be within the next week and a half or so, right?

Other discussion questions:

(1) I think Kagey (?) above mentioned that the search has to be done with a click on one of the links that pops up. Can anyone else weigh in on these types of matters? That is, how best to do the search? Can we do things like use the "Back" button to avoid having to re-type the search words over and over again?

(2) Which *day of the week* should we target?

Feel free to post ideas and/or other questions to consider.

--Alien

Now this is something I can support.....

but: Yahoo and Google now have developed a more sophisticated algorithm which detects these sort of all-out "hits". However, it can't hurt to try.

Count me in!

Hmmm . . .

I was wondering this. Do you remember where you heard that? I'd like to read up on how the process works. I'm assuming the algorithm must now test for multiple occurrences from the same IP address, right? So it seems that it would be advantageous for folks to search from different computer sources if at all possible (say, some from work/school, some from home). Maybe it wouldn't make that much of a difference, but I hope it's not the case that entire sets of searches get thrown out.

If anyone has more info on these matters, please speak up!

:)

Well, folks should read this for more info: http://buzz.yahoo.com/faq/

Since they focus so much on total percentages of users, I'm guessing IP addresses do matter in terms of how they calculate. We'll need as wide a group as possible on board to make the biggest impact.

Also note that it says the Buzz rating follows 2 DAYS after searches are made. In other words, Monday searches and clicks get posted on a Wednesday.

I'm inferring from this that it might be worth trying different search combinations with "Elliott Yamin" as well as clicking on different sites that pop up.

I'm in! Was relieved to find the thread wasn't about Yahoo saying E's song/cd was a dud.

LOL! Well, at least it got your attention. :)

:rotfl: Linda on that picture.


Well looks like we need to get lots of etrainers on this if IP's matter. And I agree Alien, perhaps if we just try different search combinations.

Maybe we should post it on all Elliott fan club sites? Someone write it up clearly for all to use... and we can all search for fan club sites to post. I've seen a few others out there in my Elliott Googling.

I was wondering about the same thing. It's very important to get all the Internationals in on this, especially if this is the case.

I love the idea of posting on different sites. Anybody know of any foreign language ones? I can put something up on the Hebrew one (it's not just for Elliott...people have mainly heard of Chris in these parts, but they do like Elliott too...) and I remember someone saying they saw a Japanese one? If no one else can write Japanese, I know someone from here who might do me the favour of putting it on that site, if someone can just give me the link. (Of course I can find it myself, I suppose!) Maybe someone who likes posting messages on Elliott's myspace can put one there about it, when the time comes?

I've seen McPhee up on the front page at least twice, when there was't anything particular going on with her...maybe they did something similar? This is actually a helpful thing to do, because casual searchers do look at the top buzzers on Yahoo every day, and if something interests them, they look it up. I've done that several times.

I was thinking of doing this every week or two on a regular basis, but if Ohioguy is right about the IP checking,I guess it's not a good idea. So...does everyone want to have a 'test run', or would you rather wait for a significant date? The day the single is released would be good, because then the blitz would look realistic, and we'd also get help from people who were casually searching.

Alien, I don't think the buzz results come out two days later, I think it's the next day. After I finish this post I'll look for the FAQ stuff in Yahoo where I read about it, and put it here.

Someone was asking if we should search different ways...I don't think that's a good idea, beacause if we can all agree on a specific way it'll give more power to that particular name. Remember the Lycos top 50? He was listed there as "Elliot"...if I'm not mistaken, that would catch all the "Elliotts" as well, but not the other way around. However, some people are sensitive about name spelling; maybe we don't need the casual "Elliot"s, and we'd also get his name spelled right out there!