Zendesk created a fake band “Zendesk Alternative” that ranks first in SEO

[tailspin2019]

Related SEO antics from Zendesk; misleading statements about them being open source (they’re not).

I called this out a year ago [0] and I’ll do it again here since it appears that they still haven’t fully cleaned this up.

For example, on this page [1]:

> What is Open Source FAQ software?

> … Zendesk offers open source FAQ software which means third party developers can build new integrations on our platform once you have signed up to use the platform.

And the Google search results for this page [2] shows this text (though I don’t see that text on the page itself so I assume this is coming from a meta tag):

> Learn how to use Zendesk's open source portal software to customize account management for your customers. Start a free trial today.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29941043

[1] https://www.zendesk.co.uk/service/help-center/faq-software/

[2] https://www.zendesk.co.uk/service/help-center/partner-portal...

[ilrwbwrkhv]

This is the worst. Everybody claims to be open source these days. And they are not, or the "open source" part is barely supported, hard to run and even harder to deploy.

[jheitmann]

Looking forward to the competitive video game Zendesk VS.

[PufPufPuf]

That's pretty anti-consumer behavior. While the execution is funny, the underlying idea of inhibiting the consumers' ability to find info about competition is not.

[yowzadave]

This is a scheme on the level of a Nathan for You episode, although the execution is not quite so deadpan.

In fact, Nathan did create a fake band once. In that case its purpose was to release a song featuring the “blues smoke detector” as an instrument, to lend plausibility to his scheme of rebranding smoke detectors so they could be imported using the lower “musical instrument” tariffs.

[GauntletWizard]

This is great marketing and SEO, I can't even blame them for that. They should name their rec sports teams the Zendesk Competitors.

That said, there could and should be plenty of articles competing with this for mind share, and competition with Zendesk is badly needed.

[0x6c6f6c]

My initial response was ick, but after watching the video and seeing the site I love the commitment to this here. Nice one Zendesk (not you, Zendesk Alternative)

[justizin]

the lyrics definitely read like ChatGPT output for, “write a 90s alternative rock song that explains why people should use zendesk”

[CSSer]

Ha, this looks to be from 2016.

[oerpli]

I think the point of the lyrics is to have "zendesk", "alternative" and "open source" on the same page for SEO reasons.

[dinnison]

I was researching help desk tools and stumbled upon Zendesk Alternative, the fake band from Seattle that helps Zendesk own the top search result. Love the creativity.