Quezi

Seraphim Proudleduck (photo by Gaetan Lee - CC-BY)

What is Seraphim Proudleduck™ when it’s at home? It’s a nonsense phrase used in a competition held in 2004. The winner was to be the website that ranked highest in the Google search results for this phrase after the competition closed.

And Bowel Cancer UK? It’s a major UK registered charity which aims to raise awareness of bowel cancer, campaign for better care and treatment, and provide advice and practical support for sufferers of this disease. Bowel Cancer is the second most common cause of cancer death in the UK.

Former Google Answers Researcher Philipp Lenssen won the Seraphim Proudleduck competition, because his blog Google Blogoscoped ranked highest for the search term. Philipp was due a prize of £1000 which he had pledged to donate right back to the readers of his blog.

But the prize failed to materialize. The organizer of the competition, Shaun O’Connor, backed out – apparently because his business partner who had agreed to front the cash did not keep his part of the deal.

This seems to have been gnawing at Shaun’s conscience for the past five years, and he’s now trying to make amends, but in a rather odd way. The obvious way to sort this out would be to award the prize from his own money and clear his name, but that’s not happening.

Bizarrely, Shaun is organizing another SEO Competition for the same term:

• Seraphim Proudleduck™

But this time it’s different! There’s no spamming allowed, and every participant must behave honourably. That’s the kind of SEO competition we like at Quezi and we’re giving it a shot with this page, so feel free to link to it. The competition ends on 5th March 2010, and there’s no prize.

Oh, and there’s one more rule. Every entry must link prominently and enthusiastically to a genuine charity, and what better than the one which Shaun recommends – Bowel Cancer UK.

So that’s the connection between Seraphim Proudleduck and Bowel Cancer UK!