Sunday night Taylor Swift donned that red-lip-classic thing that you like to attend her maybe-boyfriend Travis Kelce’s game at MetLife Stadium as the Kansas City Chiefs took on the New York Jets. Never mind the star-studded celeb box she sat in (featuring newly single dinner pal Sophie Turner and other new single Hugh Jackman), nor the fact that if there’s one person famous enough to get the Chiefs to change their name, it’s her: Rather, the most guilty of private-plane-using celebs now has a whole new crop of links, photos, and stories that come up when you google “Taylor Swift jet.â€
Okay, no one is saying Taylor Swift is maybe-dating football player Travis Kelce with the sole purpose of one day watching a New York Jets game from the comfort of a private suite in order to permanently bury the emissions data about her private-jet usage and catapult pictures of her and the Deadpool universe to the top of Google results instead. But she, like the shrewdest of celebs and most humble of bloggers alike, is almost certainly not ignorant of a too-good-to-be-true coincidence of search-engine optimization. As fans and haters (journalists) continue to monitor her contribution to the ongoing climate crisis, and the chances of someone of her star power cutting down on private flying remain just as likely as Harry Styles featuring on 1989 (Taylor’s Version) — nice in theory but won’t happen — why wouldn’t she play up an outing with more populist appeal and just as much SEO juice? Forget how Taylor Swift went from New York to Kansas City and back to New Jersey so fast (jets) — all that matters is whom she saw play on Sunday (Jets)!
Though we’re still a few weeks out from 1989 (Taylor’s Version), fans are already theorizing that her from-the-vault track “Slut!†(exclamation point hers) will take back “the narrative surrounding her ‘love life’ and all the vicious slut-shaming she got from the media and the public eye.†In other words, it too will have search-result implications. Googling “1989 taylor†will only ever result in, well, Taylor’s version, no whiff of Scooter Braun on the coveted first page of indexed results, just as she wants.
Swift isn’t the only celeb to weaponize SEO in their favor. Consider a few other notable examples:
“selena gomez singleâ€
Selena Gomez’s new single, the aptly titled “Single Soon,†is set to curse anyone trying to determine anything about the singer’s relationship status or when any new songs will ever come out.
“rob lowe sex tapeâ€
Rob Lowe’s appearance in the 2014 comedy Sex Tape distracted from his own in the 1980s, in which the 24-year-old actor was filmed having sex with a teenager.
“natalie portman jonathan safran foerâ€
Rumors of the affair between vegan intellectuals Jonathan Safran Foer and Natalie Portman are squashed beneath their published email correspondence and dissection of “trash day,†which means none of us will ever know if he left his wife for her.
“jennifer lawrence motherâ€
Maybe Jennifer Lawrence having a baby last year will erase the negative reviews for mother! (exclamation point Darren Aronofsky’s own).
“jonathan majors fightâ€
It did seem like a coincidence that Jonathan Majors was filmed splitting up a fight ahead of his domestic-abuse trial.
“gwyneth paltrow vaginalâ€
First of all, why are you Googling that? But also, rather than stumble upon the lawsuit against Goop for its “vaginal egg,†you’ll get the baffling vaginal candle
“lindsay lohan xanaxâ€
Her single “Xanax†— which honestly goes hard — all but guarantees you won’t find anything useful about the actress’s drug usage.
“kylie jenner lipâ€
Forget the gruesome photos of the “lip challenge†meme, in which teens put their lips in a cup or bottle to simulate swelling, and instead check out the new colors dropping this season in the reality star’s makeup line.
“taylor swift 1975â€
Swift’s relationship with 1975 frontman Matty Healy dominated the spring, all but guaranteeing no one who tries to look up her rumored kiss with ex-bestie Karlie Kloss at the band’s concert is going to find anything but Healy’s podcast mishegoss.
“harry styles fallingâ€
Harry Styles, the Gerald Ford of our time, released a sweet, sad song about falling in love on his second album.
“walt disney frozenâ€
Is the entertainment mogul frozen somewhere only to be reanimated in a distant future? Who knows, but here are some Elsa Halloween costumes for your kid.
That the celebrity PR machine has so successfully manipulated tech to serve its whims is proof that machines aren’t smarter than the likes of Tree Paine or any other publicist worth their weight in future producer credits or otherwise. If you see Will Smith starring in a remake of NBC’s remake of Australian The Slap or Drew Barrymore getting a strike while out bowling with friends, you’ll know you have public relations and, most importantly, SEO to thank.
This story has been updated with a few more examples of celebs mastering Google’s SEO.