Nigritude Ultramarine Stayer Winner Announced

DarkBlue’s Nigritude Ultramarine SEO Challenge: Rules, Stages, and Participants

In mid‑2004, the search‑engine optimization firm DarkBlue launched a headline‑grabber event that drew in a curious mix of hobbyists, professionals, and a few daring entrepreneurs. The prize was a simple, if oddly specific, search phrase: “Nigritude Ultramarine.” Those who could get their website to the top of Google’s first page for that term would win a tangible reward and the glory of beating a handful of competitors who had invested serious time in fine‑tuning their pages.

What set the challenge apart was its two‑stage format. The first phase, called the “Player prize,” ran for a month. Participants had to secure the number one spot in Google’s search engine results page (SERP) for the keyword on or before 7 June 2004. The second phase, the “Stayer prize,” was a test of durability: whoever kept the top ranking on 7 July 2004 would be declared the overall winner. DarkBlue released a short briefing PDF that outlined the rules, explained the scoring methodology, and noted that each entry had to be a standalone site, not a sub‑page or a redirect.

At the outset, the competition seemed almost absurd - one would usually expect a more generic term, something like “SEO contest” or “best blog.” But “Nigritude Ultramarine” turned out to be a perfect catalyst for creative optimization. It was long enough to allow for keyword stuffing without obvious spam, but short enough that a single phrase could be used as a clear, measurable target. Participants had to choose a strategy, build a site around the keyword, and then rally external links to push the page up in Google’s algorithm.

Two contestants emerged as early frontrunners. Merkey, a seasoned forum operator, spun up a new community platform specifically for the challenge. He named the forum “Nigritude Ultramarine Hub” and populated it with a series of threads, each carefully linking back to his own landing page. Merkey’s tactic hinged on sheer volume: every forum post carried the target phrase as anchor text, and the forum’s own internal link structure provided a dense web of context that Google could index.

The second contender, Anil Dash, approached the problem from a completely different angle. Dash was already an influential blogger in the technology space, and he decided to tap into his existing readership rather than build a new site from scratch. On 4 June 2004 he published a short post on his main blog, urging his followers to link back to him with the exact phrase. He framed the request as a “real content versus shady tricks” debate, hoping to attract honest readers who would share his page because of its quality rather than purely for search ranking.

DarkBlue’s announcement on the final day of the Stayer contest - 7 July - came via their message board, a modest forum that the company used to broadcast official updates. The post read simply: “Anil Dash wins the Stayer prize.” The message was followed by a screenshot of Google’s SERP showing Dash’s URL at the top of the page, with the keyword highlighted. The company noted that Dash’s win had been “unforeseen and decisive,” as his blog had climbed the rankings quickly after the 4 June call to action.

The two prizes reflected the distinct stages of the competition. The Player winner received a miniature iPod, a modest but desirable gadget that matched the scale of the challenge. The Stayer winner earned a flat‑screen Sony monitor, a larger reward that signaled a more lasting achievement in the world of SEO. DarkBlue’s choice of prizes was a subtle nod to the evolving landscape: early 2000s search optimization was shifting from quick hacks to sustained, content‑driven strategies.

Readers looking for more detail could follow the discussion threads on DarkBlue’s forum, where participants debated link‑building tactics, keyword density, and the ethics of such contests. The conversation echoed broader concerns in the SEO community about the line between legitimate optimization and manipulative gaming. By publicly documenting the process, DarkBlue inadvertently produced a living case study for marketers, bloggers, and developers who wanted to understand how the search engine’s algorithm responded to a tightly controlled keyword push.

For those still curious about the final results, the original announcement includes a Google search link that still works today: