New Missoula beer hoax

So I’ve been asked quite a few times about a new brewery or beer produced in Missoula. In fact, last night at Big Sky Brewing Company, a number of patrons of the taproom were chatting happily about some newfangled beer about to make its appearance in our town.

Here’s what I know. Earlier this week I was approached by the members of a certain social networking club here in Missoula. They wanted to run a little contest featuring two kinds of Search Engine Optimization. Basically, one person is using good practices like providing content on a website that is related to beer. This is known as “White hat SEO.” The second person is using techniques that are a bit underhanded to get more page views. Things like meta tags that don’t have anything to do with the site but that are likely to garner page views. This is known as “Black hat SEO.”

The bottom line here is that there is no new Missoula brewery or beer that I’m aware of. The names of the beers in this case are Social Media Stout, Facebook Doppelbock and White Hat Pale Ale. I’m not going to link to the site, because it’s exactly what they want to run their contest. And I’m not against the contest on general principle. I’m simply disappointed they chose to mislead people with a fake web site that is causing a lot of rumors around town. Frankly I think that’s irresponsible.

Someone asked if I’m jealous of their page views or if their project hurts me. The answer is no. My blog has been around for three years and has well over 900 entries with all kinds of information about Montana breweries. It takes years to build up a following, and they’ll likely either let the site mold after they’re done or take it down. Either way, the Grizzly Growler is the place to go for information about Missoula beer.

Prost,

GG