The Best City In The World

I moved here in 1985, right after Rand McNally declared Pittsburgh the best city in the world. Although the steel industry was suffering, life was good here -- housing was cheap, and I would get a raise for transferring here --- so it was a no-brainer for me.

We moved here on the five-year plan, thinking we'd stay for five years and then move somewhere else, with the intention of ending up in Charlotte NC. It's funny that I stayed here, and all our airplanes went to CLT.

The Best City in the World : Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh is truly a great place to live if you can find suitable work here. The tendency for homesteaders to stay in place, and the tendency of homeowners to accept lower paying jobs and staying rather than moving (because it's hard to sell a house here) keeps salaries low. But if you can find a suitable job, Pittsburgh is the best city in the world to live in.

The Economist Intelligency Unit (EIU)'s report ranks 140 cities worldwide on 30 factors in five broad categories: stability, health care, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure. I think Pittsburgh kills on those categories.

Champion Football Team. Champion Hockey Team. Excellent schools and hospitals. Rivers, hills, bike trails. World class airport. What city doesn't want to be Pittsburgh? (Imagine if we had a baseball team!)

There are other places who might claim to be the best city in the world. I like San Francisco, Perth, and London, for instance. I'd like to see Vancouver, I hear great things about it. For now, for me, Pittsburgh is the best city in the world.

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Never one to waste a marketing opportunity,

Eyeflow

has announced their intent to make Pittsburgh #1 in the SERP's for "The Best City In the World". At Pittsblog this headline grab is described as "foolish". I'd add counterproductive. This is akin to repeatedly IM'ing, "Here we go Pittsburgh Here we Go" and calling it PepRally 2.0.

Silly Eyeflow. The clever path is to achieve the SEO position and then announce your success. The skeevy path is to announce a campaign and demonstrate that you're a blackhat shop, or a grayhat shop at best. There's the risk you might position your own brand as a spamdexer and then not deliver.

Why would they do such a puerile thing? Where's the profit, benefit, motivation? If you were to play "follow the money", where does it go? I have a theory... Bloggers and newspapers will cover this and include links to

Eyeflow.com

. They'd probably consist of underlined words such as

Pittsburgh web consultant

, or maybe

social media experts

, etc.

These links, in multiple blogs, persisting long after the G20, would be invaluable in boosting Eyeflow's position in the results. If this cynical theory is valid, Eyeflow isn't asking the public to Googlewash for Pittsburgh's sake, they're hoping bloggers cover the story in order to boost Eyeflow.

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The best city in the world ?

Please click here to see what comes up when you search on the phrase, the best city in the world.