SlickDeals – Anatomy of a QDF Ranking

Ok, so I have to admit, this isn’t actually about Slickdeals. It’s just a post to help demonstrate how the Query Deserves Freshness (QDF) algorithm works.
If I was actually writing about Slickdeals, though, I’d tell you how I spend lots of time on the site (I really do). If you’re heading to Staples, for example, you can take a quick look, grab a printable coupon and save $10 on a $50 purchase. Slick. Oh, wait, that’s why they call it that…

SlickDeals: Crowdsourced, crowd QDF’d

The site’s powered on the principle of crowdsourcing. Folks all over the world log on to SlickDeals and post coupons and other bargains. Then an editorial team (I think) goes in and reviews it all.
Today, though, there was a sudden burst of queries on ‘slickdeals’. That shot the site’s brand name into Google Trends:

It so happens I’m going to be talking about this at PubCon South in the SEO 2010 session, so I figured, what the hell? I’ll write a post and get ‘SlickDeals’ into the rankings. Then I can use that as a teaching tool.
In the PubCon session, by the way, I’ll talk about:

• What QDF is
• Why you should care
• How to find trends
• Working with trends you find
• Small vs. big business QDF strategies
• The reputation management implications

All in 15 minutes!
So, throw me a freakin’ bone, here, Google…