How do you get to the top of Google rankings in 30 minutes?

If you’ve spent any time at all building a website, you’ll know that half the battle is getting Google to rank you at the top of its listings for specific search terms. We’ve spent Christ knows how many hours trying to do it on this website alone. And yet, last night, I played a walk-on part in the comedian David Baddiel getting to the top of Google rankings within HALF AN HOUR. And he wasn’t even trying…

Now, admittedly, the term David owns isn’t a particularly flattering or lucrative one. His agent hasn’t rung him this morning, telling him they’ve added another couple of noughts to his latest book’s royalty cheque. Instead, I present to you the king of the “turdy underlay”.

Here’s how it happened…

In a startlingly rare moment of generosity, I yesterday tweeted my appreciation for Baddiel’s new Radio 4 show/podcast, David Baddiel Tries to Understand.

Podcast fans: @Baddiel Tries To Understand is a perfect, dog-walk sized nugget of entertainment.

— Barry Collins (@bazzacollins) September 17, 2017

It being Twitter, troublemakers soon get involved:

I tend to agree, but that is a very… graphically evocative,,, description, open to much misinterpretation

— PeteWein (@ArctanPete) September 17, 2017

And soon Baddiel was also remarking on the unintentional backhand slight that I’d paid his podcast:

Whilst I do appreciate this Barry, I’m afraid the words “dog walk” and “nugget” give the compliment something of a turdy underlay. https://t.co/eGyQUhLt5n

— David Baddiel (@Baddiel) September 17, 2017

I’m alerted to this by my phone pinging like a US submarine on a tour of duty around North Korea. People literally like this shit. And it gets me thinking. “Turdy underlay” must be a Googlewhack contender. That’s not a term that’s in common currency. I bet Baddiel, with his half a million followers, has enough clout to own this term with that single mention. So I search Google and bingo:

Bad news @baddiel – you’re now the top Google images result for “turdy underlay”. Seriously. https://t.co/HDdEtGNjzi

— Barry Collins (@bazzacollins) September 17, 2017

The good news for David’s reputation management team is that, according to Google Trends, the volume of searches for “turdy underlay” is roughly equivalent to that of “Bernard Manning sex tape”: