Charles Knight SEO: GTFO

I have become increasingly annoyed at the blatant spamming tactics of Charles Knight, an occasional writer for Richard MacManus's otherwise excellent Read/Write Web blog. Charles Knight, a bank manager from Virginia with an interest in wolf hybrids who decided to get into the search engine optimisation business last year, has his own company called Charles Knight SEO, LLC through which he evidently wants to build a small search engine SEO consultancy empire. Charles Knight has spammed me and over a hundred other proprietors of search engine startups in emails promoting his conference appearances, R/WW blog posts, his shitty 100 Alternative Search Engines list, his LinkedIn group, and whatever else he's doing that day.

Charles Knight's latest missive (which he had to send twice because he only sent half of it the first time, while also making the rookie mistake of CCing instead of BCCing all recipients, a terrible faux pas in Internet etiquette):

Greetings!

By now, 78 alternative search engines or interested parties have accepted my invitation via Linked In to form a new community of search engines. "Alternative" means any search engine that is not Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Ask.com or AOL.

The purpose behind Linking In your search engines together is not to pad my "contact" list!

The purpose is to facilitate cooperation between alternative search engines, the recent partnership of ChaCha and blinkx being an excellent example. Please see my post below:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/chacha_and_blinkx_partnership.php

So, does this idea have "teeth?" It certainly does. We now have documented 700 alternative Search Engines. A project that has taken six people countless hours to assemble. No one has been paid to do this; we wanted to because we believe that in the struggle between the smaller search engines and the "Big Five," you can win.

So, this database has already been sent to one of you. It is not secret, it is not private, it is available for alternative search engines (in whole or in part) who feel that they can use it to benefit their engine and thus raise the bar for everyone. Engine-to-Engine conversations are encouraged most of all.

Now, I have a favor to ask of you. I just got back from Italy, and I brought back "The Top 100 Alternative Italian Search Engines" (Yes, I'm serious). I want the Top 100 search engines in French, German, Spanish, Russian, Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Vietnamese - you get the idea. I have been accused of only collecting English search engines. Please forward to me any foreign search engines that you know about.

Why the hell would anyone want to join a community of their competitors? Most of the companies he has contacted are in different verticals anyway, and thus have nothing to talk about. And why would anyone want to do any of Charles Knight's work in compiling lists of their competitors? It doesn't even make sense. Obviously the only function of this whole thing is for Charles Knight to pad out his contact list, despite his protestations.

Quite apart from all of that, Charles Knight was the author of a recent article on R/WW called Weird Search Engines, which included Tinfinger in a poll of about 10 startup sites. No consultation, and I have no sense of humour about it. Fuck you, Charles Knight! How dare you poke fun at my site and then pretend to be on my side? Do I call you a furry freak for liking wolves?

I can only assume that Richard, whom I have talked to and think highly of, doesn't know what Charles Knight is doing. I ask Richard to either tell Charles Knight to stop using R/WW to promote his private SEO shilling, or if he won't, then ban him from R/WW. He's not doing anyone any good, and he's trading on R/WW's good name to further his own grubby little goals.

(And if you're wondering why I spell out the full name of Charles Knight so much in this blog entry... two can play the SEO game.)