Thursday, November 13, 2008

Eon

Power company E-On is hoping to build the first new coal-fired power station in the UK for a generation on the site of its present station at Kingsnorth in Kent. At a time of climate crisis, it's an obscenity.

They've been the targets of all kinds of action, from last summer's Camp for Climate Action, to a series of smaller action on April 1st (Fossil Fools Day), to their graduate recruitment stalls being so heavily targeted that they just gave up, with more action coming up at the end of this month.

One easy, comfy action can happen from this computer you're looking at. The tactic is called google-bombing.

The more links to a site, the higher it climbs in Google rankings. So, if enough people make the word 'Eon' link to the No New Coal site, pretty soon it'll top the list of anyone searching for Eon. (This tactic was successfully used a few years ago to make 'swivel-eyed loons' link to UKIP).

Two weeks ago www.nonewcoal.org.uk wasn't in the top 50 sites when searching for Eon. As I write this it's already number 13.

So a simple online action can help us get our electronic placards in their face without getting out on the cold winter streets.

If you have a website, blog, myspace, bebo, forum account, etc then please place a link to http://www.nonewcoal.org.uk.

Ideally you write 'eon' and place a hyperlink to http://www.nonewcoal.org.uk from that text.

Anyone can do this! Blog comments/forums are easiest. Good websites are most effective.

If you're wondering what else to write, you could copy or edit this.

To get a top 10 google ranking probably won't be to hard, but to pip Eon to the top will require a lot of effort so tell your friends, consider putting this simple action in your newsletters, spread the word online...

Notes:

* 1. It works best if you mention Eon several times in an article.

* 2. If you are posting the link in a blog post then put Eon in the title and the tags.

* 3. The more important the site the more kick nonewcoal.org.uk gets from the link.

* 4. If you leave comments on blogs or other sites, they usually ask for a name and have an optional web address. If you make your name Eon and your address nonewcoal.org.uk, it doesn't matter if the comment itself is coal-relevant or not.

* 5. If you are really determined then consider setting up a fake site like the EON Corporate Social Responsibility blog that way you can link loads of times to nonewcoal.org.uk from a site that is very relevent!

* 6. Why not take this is seriously as a real world action and forward it to people with green blogs/campaign groups etc?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You might also want to consider E.ON aswell. Currently the highest activist link for E.ON is an indymedia feature at number 15 (published yesterday though, so might make it higher).

And these results are for google.co.uk - using scroogle.org (which goes through US google) they're lower down.

merrick said...

Good point Mish, and I've gone back and done it from a previous post.

'E-On' is probably worth doing as a third choice.

Still, the callout's gone out for 'Eon', so let's get that to the top of the hit parade first.