Good job on the #1 Out of curiosity, did using proxies help you there in any way? I've wondered how many top search rankings might be including the use of proxy-type programs. Example: Proxy traffic by a million hits a month - traffic ranking increase shows site 'popular' Proxy IPs as thousands of seperate usernames. - Many websites 'members' vote for your site Proxies in special design could perhaps make some of those websites out there very 'popular'. How many sites with private SEO teams, and PR departments etc do you think probably include the use of stuff like that? Since it's possible, it makes me wonder how many might be using it. It would be nice to think none of them were so that all this SEO work pays off according to the effort. But when high SERPS can mean lots of money to some of them larger online businesses - doesnt it make you wonder how many of them have some 'front' company with a thousand computers in 'outsourcing' to India .. with a thousand black hatters sitting behind computers , and each of them with perhaps 100 proxy IP custom programs. That would be crazy to think that within an hour - any of their sites could take #1 through 20 in SERPS. I've thought about that before, with all those parked domains of keyword domain names that are taken by just acting as landing pages with a few links. It appears they're just keeping all keyword domains out of sandbox.. getting them broken in as far as being over a year old etc. A couple years ago I was making a site for a 'niche' that no one had done yet online. I couldn't get the first choice domains as they were already taken , yet sitting pretty much dormant with some of those directory links. Within 2 weeks from then my site was up , it started to take SERPS - and then something odd happened. 2 or 3 of those dormant domains came alive - and i mean ALIVE! lol I saw their almost identical ads and SEO , so i went to that site that had been a parked space - and it was suddenly out of nowhere ..alive with an 'archive' of forum stuff, and at least 1,000 pages of content.. it looked as if it had been running the whole time. Darn near every page they had was parallel to my site. In their homepage paragraph they claimed to have been operating online for over 4 years. But yet, I'd watched those domains for a good 6 months or so prior..and they were just floaters with handful of directory links. So I wondered, do the 'big dogs' lay in wait? ..do they use others as their marketing analysis to make sure something will work by watching you do it ..and then if it does, or if they just dont like others doing it without their presence.. is it common practice to have those sites with ready-made content waiting to pop out overnight? It was the weirdest thing I've ever seen..