Yeah, so am I. I’m part of a really large conversation called the Internet. Am I the only one in SEO world staring in disbelief at ClaimID, which turned a third-party links page for SEO into a Web 2.0 business?

If you’re not a search person, skip the rest of this. It might be misleading. You may misread it for cynicism or think I am being negative. Please leave now and don’t allow yourself to be so deceived. But if you understand search, what the heck is ClaimID? Third party links page a-la Bruce Clay circa 2001, but executed overtly and as a business model? Bottom feeding on people with very unique names, who think this is the answer to their SEO/PR problem, and listing the faithful as “favorite examples in the wild“? Look at those names…Brian Benzinger, Stowe Boyd, Ottmar Liebert, Alex Muntada, Patrick Cormier, Derek Punsalan. It doesn’t get much more unique than some of these. They can rank themselves with a small handful of links… internals even! It’s not like their non-web offline citizens… these are all bloggers!

Link bait sure, but as a company? Building a community of followers, sure, but ones who could be enlightened with a pen light? At first I thought it was a back door way to build a resume site, but there are too many blog posts, dutifuly commented by The Creators, for a bait ‘n switch like that. This is a pea green and light blue, rounded-corner grab at something for sure. But what?

Yeah yeah, I know. I just don’t get it. Save the wild card elastic claus for somebody else, I get it just fine. It encourages users to link to a page on *ClaimID* as the definitive reference for their own identity, instead of their own page on their own domain. Nice. Like selling ice at the North Pole, I guess. It’s a business as long as somebody buys.