My Life as Liz, and the SEO spammers

This weekend I watched a lot of TV. I have not spent that many consecutive hours in front of a television in years. I'm trying to practice staring at the TV, so I can pay full attention to LOST when it airs tomorrow night.

In this process of mindless engagement, I watched MTV's "My Life as Liz."

It's a scripted reality show about a quirky teenager living in a small-town in Texas. The protagonist is Natalie Portman's character in Garden State, Lindsey Lohan's in Mean Girls, and Ellen Page's in Juno. It's a non-animated version of MTV's Daria.

The New York Times says that My Life as Liz "registers more as a sitcom than a reality show — it’s so stylized and carefully planned and post-produced, it’s the next best thing to scripted, if it isn’t in fact a wholly scripted put-on."



In one episode Liz is planning a talent show performance. This is going to be Liz Lee's first televised performance, but I wouldn't be surprised if she graduates from this show to become a pop sensation. The next Hannah Montana, Katy Perry, Ke$ha... highly marketable.

Most viewers know that this program isn't real, but it's surprising the lengths MTV goes to prevent average internet investigators from finding out information about the show.

When you search for "My Life as Liz" you find that the top hits are from MTV websites.  The top hits include the show's MTV page, Facebook page, an interview on MTV.com, a blog post on MTV Remote Control Blog.

There isn't an IMDB entry. The Wikipedia page looks like it was created by a PR department. It's only sourced by one paragraph in a Washington Post's "TV highlights for January 18, 2009."

I think that MTV is intentionally using SEO spam to control information about their programming...



These hits pull up sites that are only related to the show in the title. Some take me to pages like:



When I click this link a warning reminds me that this a "Reported Attack Site." I had that experience with nearly every link I clicked on.

I'm not sure if those responsible for the SEO spam work with MTV, or if they are spammers looking to exploit  the popularity of this show. Either way, this dead-end makes it seems like the only information about the show is endorsed by MTV, and if I were to keep look further, my computer will crash.