This is my full o’ photos post on the SEOMoz, Werewolf, Search Spam.

Here is the permalink for the werewolf search spam page.

This post will alternate with the Name The SEO page every few days for a while.

The accuracy of the below data is roughly as believable as my stories during the playing of the game. If you uncover any inaccuracies (which will be many), or would like to give me correct names, then please comment them at the bottom or e-mail me at:

(dk -at- purposeinc.com)

and I will edit and correct it.

After the Google get to know the engineers, those of us lucky enough to have registered on time (all were invited), went into a room where we found tables, M n M’s, and bar mix on the table, with a bar in the back. We were seated in groups of I think about 16 people.

It was one hell of an event, and I had the time of my life. Matt Cutts photos at the bottom of this page.

Each person was given a deck of cards, Thank You Rand, they were fricken awsome, and must have taken a lota, lota work to make!

Each group only needed one deck though to play.

This is Anna and her delightful husband. They both live in Russia, and he is a Britt, Cheers mate!

The rules are in Red Italics Below.

How to Play Search Spam
Objective of game:

Blackhats, your goal is to eliminate those do-gooder Whitehats.

Whitehats, your goal is to rid the world of those pesky Blackhats.

Game instructions:

1. Someone: pass out Search Spam cards (8+)

2. All: assign a Moderator

This was our moderator. He did a great job, until after the first game of one of our players refusing to stay dead, he gave up on us, and referred to us as being like a rowdy fraternity.

The below are actual photos of our moderator patiently explaining how to play, while we behaved like a group of 4th graders.

3. Mod: tell everyone to sleep, tell Blackhats to open eyes

Everyone in the group goes face down and pretends they are asleep. They pound on the table and make noise so that no one will hear any of the other activities about to take place.

Two or three of the people get cards stating they are black hat. No one at this point knows who anyone else is. The black hats are told by the moderator, to open their eyes. This is Rand telling the black hats to open their eyes so they can see who each other are.

4. Blackhats: open eyes, kill a Whitehat

The black hats then decide without speaking who they want to kill of the other folks, who since they are not black hat, must be white hats. It was at this moment that I made my fatal mistake. When as a black hat I opened my eyes, I stopped hitting the table, so the guy next to me knew that I was a black hat.

I later killed Mario before anyone else believed what he said. His brother was sitting on the other side of him, and was also a black hat. Mario never stood a chance. He was a good looking kid while he was still alive.

5. Mod: tell Blackhats to sleep, tell Reinclusion Requester to open eyes

At this point, one of the white hats will have looked at his card and seen that he is the Reinclusion Requester. This is in reference to the fact that some people, whose names will not be mentioned, who previously got busted for buying like 10,000 paid links, and then got kicked out of Google, were then able to clean up their act, and then ask Google to re-include them in their listings.

6. Requester: open eyes & save someone (saving self=acceptable)

The Requester (Reinclusion Requester) then is able to pick someone while no one else is looking that he wants to save. If for some reason the black hats killed this person, then the Requester can bring them back to life before the village awakens. The person he saves can be himself. On the card this is Danny Sullivan. The only person who knows for sure at the beginning who the Requester is, is the requester himself and the moderator.

7. Mod: tell Requester to sleep, tell Revealer of Hats to open eyes

The revealer of hats has the ability to point to one person each night at this point, and the moderator will tell him if the person he is pointing to is a black hat, or not. The revealer of hats card is Matt Cutts. The only person who knows for sure at the beginning who the Revealer is, is the revealer and the moderator.

8. Revealer: open eyes, pick someone to see if he’s a Blackhat

The Revealer will then pick someone and the moderator will tell him if the person is a black hat or not.

9. Mod: tell Revealer if he picked a Blackhat

This is where the moderator tells the Revealer if the person was a black hat or not.

10. Mod: tell Revealer to sleep, tell all to open eyes

The Revealer then goes to sleep, and then the entire villiage, black and white hats, all wake up.

11. All: awaken, find out who died

The moderator then points out who the black hats killed. If the person who was killed was also picked by Danny Sullivan, the reinclusion requestor, then no one dies. This was often done dramatically by Rand who would pull the person in their chair away from the table.

12. All: decide on who to kill

The white hats, with the black hats hidden amongst them, then decide who they think was the real black hat, and then lynch that person. This is where it got really fun. In our first round I was one of the black hats. I was guilty as hell.

My co-black hatter looked as innocent as a cream puff shown below. The look of innocence is on his face, but if you look deep into his eyes you will see they are as dark as coal.

These two below decided I was the black hat, but most people did not believe them.

When asked to defend myself I simply kept clicking pictures and saying that I was a shade of grey. I don’t pretend I was good lier which is why I think Brent was able to take my money so fast playing poker.

The person accused of being a black hat must give his defense, and then everyone votes. If you are accused and the majority votes to kill you, you are hung and out of the game. The variation in rules happens here as to whether you reveal your card at this time or keep it a secret. Our table never seemed to remember which version we were playing, which is partially why our moderator headed for the hills after our first game.

13. Lather, rinse, repeat

The person dies, you go to sleep, and the black hats wake up again, and all of the above steps are repeated.

14. Blackhats: last standing = you win!

I came real close to this, but with only three white hats left, they killed me!

15. Whitehats: kill Blackhats = you win!

Yeh, whatever……

16. All: sign up for SEOmoz Premium Membership = you win!

I am extremely grateful to Rand for his work and organization on this event. Bottom line, he has gotten a boat load of links from me, and tons of praise about his tournament. He is clearly a link baiter extraordinaire, and I’m not just saying it because he is thinner and better looking than I am.

So below are tons, and tons of pics. I will comment where I know a bit about what is happening in the photos.

I would love you to send me your stories of the Werewolf tournament so I can put them on this page. This was a historic event that will be talked about in the SEO world for decades to come. No shizzle.

Rand, schooling an early group in the night.

I think the werewolfs are choosing this guy to be killed. This is even funnier if you realize that the girl in the orange shirt is an attorney that is now working for Rand. 😉 She actually will not be suing anyone, but I believe will be writing a blog about webmaster legal issues.

The fact that the guy in the blue shirt now is sitting up, and the attorney is heads down, leads me to believe that they did something wrong. There was lots of this during the early part of learning the rules. By the end of the night, I still did not really understand what I was doing. ROFL

Somebody is getting woken up here.

Rand was moving around the room so fast, and was super animated. I love being around people like that.

This shirt alone is link bait. If I knew his site, I would have linked to it just because of the colors on the shirt. It is as if it is from an entirely different shirt universe than the other ones.

That is Rhea in the purple cut off on the edge of the photo.

This is just the funniest picture of them all. I can not tell you the names of any of the guys or even exactly what was being said, but I just love it.

I don’t know if this guy was a black hat, unlikely because there is only one out of the 16, or a reinclusion requester, or a revealer. This is what it looked like during the night, everyone head down, usually banging the table, and moaning.

I believe that is Taylor Pratt in the baseball cap on the left.

As the pubcon game wore on, the mood improved and everyone started to become a bit more jovial. These appear to be three black hats realizing they have the chance now to kill someone, or perhaps their fangs are still covered in blood after a recent kill.

I am not positive, but I think this picture catches Rand as he is pulling a recent kill by the black hats away from the table, just as everyone wakes up.

This is my table as it was just filling up.

There were black MnM’s on the tables. A nice party touch!

This was my nemesis. I think her name was Natasha? She was the first one to accuse me of being a black hat. She was visiting from Russia, and we had the time of our lives in a bitter battle.

This poor guy just got voted off early for no reason.

She also was very obviously photogenic.

This is Myron. He was very influential in the Alliance! To be discussed below.

Here is one of my San Diego bretheren Merrick Lozano, the one close to the camera.

This is what it feels like when someone accuses you of being a black hat, when you are really innocent. Oh the shame of it all. Wait a second, I actually was a black hat.

Here I am being accused again. Notice Natasha standing up in the left of the photo. We killed her off, but she would not die. This lead me to name her the Vampire.

Here I am being accused again. I was as slippery as teflon.

I was waiting all night for this, but I could not have gotten away with saying it. When accused of being a black hat, my brother here said, and I am paraphrasing,

“Don’t be like that! It is who I am, I was born this way!”

The second game begun, shown above.

The two dark haired guys at the head of the table, and including all the guys on the right side of the table, and me standing, formed THE ALLIANCE!. We bonded together like a bunch of meat heads and decided it didn’t matter whether one of us was a black hat or not, but that one by one we would kill off the other side.

This is a desperate plea by an innocent white hat that he is innocent. The ALLIANCE did not care. We killed him, innocent or not.

Here is a photo just before our moderator got sick of us, and took off.

This is a photo of the ALLIANCE as they stood on December 5th, 2007. Never before has a group formed with a more insignificant purpose, and stuck together better against such mildly strong obstacles, and accomplished a more insignificant reward. Men, I was proud to serve with you! Mario by the way almost F*&#@% the whole thing up, and we almost had to kill him.

This picture perfectly shows the power of the alliance just before the guillotine came down on the other players.

This is Mario having just barely survived with his life after mutinying against the ALLIANCE.

The ALLIANCE (minus Myron) right after we killed off the last of the other team. It turned out by sheer luck that we were all white hats after all, and that we had killed off the black hats. The celebration ensued.

Game three began with Natasha as our moderator.

I can’t even remember what moment it was, but this gentleman was claiming, how is it possible that I am the black hat two games in a row? he was.

This game was played by the veterans, and the previous winners.

Matt Cutts, the guy doing the pointing was one of the black hats. The woman with the red hair doing the pointing was the other black hat. The guy between them, Tony Adam, was a white hat, and either the reinclusion requester or the revealer. I believe he was the reinclusion requester.

Matt was saying over and over, I am not a black hat (lie) I know because I am Matt Cutts! (the revealer). Hering Matt Cutts swear that he was Matt Cutts and people not believing him…priceless.

Matt, desperately pleading that he is not the black hat.

Matt, and his evil cohort trying to convince others that this poor guy is a black hat. Do any webmasters out there who have been delisted have any sympathy at all for poor Matt?

Matt, trying to get a vote started against the guy next to him. It was just a little too little, too late.

I am a huge fan of Matt and his work, and it was so much fun to see him have so much fun.

So please comment below so I can name the people correctly, correct my bad quotes, and improve the whole post.

I would also love to hear your werewolf search spam stories from the event that I can add. Feel free to e-mail me (dk -at- purposeinc.com) your pubcon werewolf party stories and I will add them to this post.