Who is the sexiest man in Britain?
Tom Hiddleston? Tom Hardy? Jeremy Corbyn (it's all in the eyes).
If you give it a Google, you'll find one name crops up a lot: Tom Church.
He's not a film star, nor has he graced the touchlines of any famed sporting teams - he's a British suit tailor, founder of London Startups and author of the blog TomChurch.co.uk.
Following an exchange with his girlfriend over who she thought the sexiest man in Britain was, Church embarked on a digital adventure to become that sexiest man. Here's how he fooled Google.
Pick a search phrase
Having been inspired by this exchange with his girlfriend, Church set out to become the top search result for the phrase "Britain’s sexiest man" - a term that gains around a million queries on Google per month.
People are shallow, what can we say.
Change the file name of an image to that search term
In order to push his face into the search results for "Britain’s sexiest man", Church changed the file name of this picture to "Britains-sexiest-man-Tom-Church".
With his ammo loaded, he set about exploiting Google's image ranking system.
Upload your image to a bunch of free image hosting sites
Church added his 'sexy' image to a clutch of free image websites, fine tuning the data associated with the image when and where appropriate: titles, captions, descriptions, tags - anything that could link his name with the phrase "Britain's sexiest man". These are some of the sites he targeted:
- Day Views
- 500px
- ipernity
- Flickr
- Fotki
- Fotolog
- ImageShack
- Imgur
- jAlbum
- Photobucket
- Pixabay
- TinyPic
Index the crap out of those images
Storing those images online is just half the battle - Church then had to go about 'indexing' those sites with Google, using a free service called Pingler.
By 'pinging' those pages to Google's services, Church was ensuring he'd climb the rankings when people searched his magic phrase.
Set up a Google Alert
Once all of this had been achieved, Church sat back and waiting for the search love to start pouring in. He set up a Google Alert to be notified of when Google has indexed an image to searches for "Britain's sexiest man" - receiving the first one in just 11 minutes.
Achieve sexy status
Within a few weeks, Church achieved his sexy status: by searching "Britain's sexiest man" (quote marks required), his image is now the third result.
As more websites start picking up Church's attempt and writing the word's "Britain's sexiest man" next to his name, it'll only help his cause. He's achieved his dream with a few simple internet tools and a decent topless picture.
Good for you, Church. You're an inspiration to us all. But to be honest, we're more impressed with the guy who managed to become the fifth result - that's some achievement for those teeth.
