Google bomb

The terms Google bomb and Googlewashing refer to practices, such as creating large numbers of links, that cause a web page to have a high ranking for searches on unrelated or off topic keyword phrases, often for comical or satirical purposes. In contrast, search engine optimization is the practice of improving the search engine listings of web pages for relevant search terms.

It is done for either business, political, or comedic purposes (or a combination of the latter two).[1] Google's search-rank algorithm ranks pages higher for a particular search phrase if enough other pages linked to it using similar anchor text (linking text such as "miserable failure"). However, by January 2007 Google had made changes to search results to counter popular Google bombs, such as "miserable failure", which now lists pages about the Google bomb itself.[2] Google bomb is used both as a verb and a noun. The phrase "Google bombing" was introduced to the New Oxford American Dictionary in May 2005.[3] Google bombing is closely related to spamdexing, the practice of deliberately modifying HTML pages to increase the chance of their website being placed close to the beginning of search engine results, or to influence the category to which the page is assigned in a misleading or dishonest manner.

The term Googlewashing was coined in 2003 to describe the use of media manipulation to change the perception of a term, or push out competition from search engine results pages (SERPs).[4]

Contents

History

Google bombs date back as far as 1999, when a search for "more evil than Satan himself" resulted in the Microsoft homepage as the top result.[5]

In September 2000 the first Google bomb with a verifiable creator was created by Hugedisk Men's Magazine, a now-defunct online humor magazine, when it linked the text "dumb motherfucker" to a site selling George W. Bush-related merchandise.[6] Hugedisk had also unsuccessfully attempted to Google bomb an equally derogatory term to bring up an Al Gore-related site. After a fair amount of publicity the George W. Bush-related merchandise site retained lawyers and sent a cease and desist letter to Hugedisk, thereby ending the Google bomb.[7]

Adam Mathes is credited with coining the term "Google bombing" when he mentioned it in an article that appeared on April 6, 2001 in the online magazine uber.nu. In the article Mathes details his connection of the search term "talentless hack" to the website of his friend Andy Pressman by recruiting fellow webloggers to link to his friend's page with the desired term.[8]

Uses as tactical media

The Google Bomb has been used for tactical media as a way of performing a 'hit-and-run' media attack on popular topics. Such attacks include Anthony Cox's attack in 2003. He created a parody of the "404 – page not found" browser error message in response to the war in Iraq. The page looked like the error page but was titled "These Weapons of Mass Destruction cannot be displayed." This website could be found as one of the top hits on Google after the start of the war in Iraq.[9]

Google bowling

By studying what types of ranking manipulations a search engine is punishing, a company can provoke a search engine into lowering the ranking of a competitor's website. This practice, known as Google bowling, is often done by purchasing Google bombing services (or other SEO techniques) not for one's own website, but rather for the website of the competitor. The attacker provokes the search company into punishing the "offending" competitor by displaying their page further down in the search results.[10][11] For victims of Google bowling, it may be difficult to appeal the ranking decrease because Google avoids explaining penalties, preferring not to "educate" real offenders. However if the situation is clear-cut, Google could lift the penalty after submitting a request for reconsideration.

Beyond Google

Other search engines use similar techniques to rank results, so Yahoo!, AltaVista, and HotBot are also affected by Google bombs. A search for "miserable failure" or "failure" on September 29, 2006 brought up the official George W. Bush biography number one on Google, Yahoo!, and MSN and number two on Ask.com. On June 2, 2005, Yooter reported that George Bush was ranked first for the keyword 'miserable', 'failure', and 'miserable failure' in both Google and Yahoo!; Google has since addressed this and disarmed the George Bush Google bomb and many others.

The BBC, reporting on Google bombs in 2002, used the headline "Google Hit By Link Bombers",[12] acknowledging to some degree the idea of "link bombing." In 2004, the Search Engine Watch site suggested that the term should be "link bombing" because of its application beyond Google, and continues to use that term as it is considered more accurate.[13]

We don't condone the practice of googlebombing, or any other action that seeks to affect the integrity of our search results, but we're also reluctant to alter our results by hand in order to prevent such items from showing up. Pranks like this may be distracting to some, but they don't affect the overall quality of our search service, whose objectivity, as always, remains the core of our mission.

— [14]

By January 2007, Google changed their indexing structure[2] so that Google bombs such as "miserable failure" would "typically return commentary, discussions, and articles"[2] about the tactic itself. Google announced the changes on its official blog. In response to criticism for allowing the Google bombs, Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam team, said that Google bombs had not “been a very high priority for us.”[2][15]

Over time, we’ve seen more people assume that they are Google’s opinion, or that Google has hand-coded the results for these Google-bombed queries. That’s not true, and it seemed like it was worth trying to correct that misperception.

— [16]

Motivations

Competitions

In May 2004, the websites Dark Blue and SearchGuild teamed up to create what they termed the "SEO Challenge" to Google bomb the phrase "nigritude ultramarine".[17]

The contest sparked controversy around the Internet, as some groups worried that search engine optimization (SEO) companies would abuse the techniques used in the competition to alter queries more relevant to the average user. This fear was offset by the belief that Google would alter their algorithm based on the methods used by the Google bombers.

In September 2004, another SEO contest was created. This time, the objective was to get the top result for the phrase "seraphim proudleduck". A large sum of money was offered to the winner, but the competition turned out to be a hoax.

In .net magazine, Issue 134, March 2005, a contest was created among five professional web site developers to make their site the number one listed site for the made-up phrase "crystalline incandescence".

Political activism

See also: Political Google bombs in the 2004 U.S. Presidential election

Some of the most famous Google bombs are also expressions of political opinions (e.g. "liar" leading to Tony Blair or "miserable failure" leading to the White House's biography of George W. Bush):

Commercial use

Main article: spamdexing

Some website operators have adapted Google bombing techniques to do spamdexing. This includes, among other techniques, posting of links to a site in an Internet forum along with phrases the promoter hopes to associate with the site (see Spam in blogs). Unlike conventional message board spam, the object is not to attract readers to the site directly, but to increase the site's ranking under those search terms. Promoters using this technique frequently target forums with low reader traffic, in hopes that it will fly under the moderators' radar. Wikis in particular are often the target of this kind of page rank vandalism, as all of the pages are freely editable. This practice was also called "money bombing" by John Hiler circa 2004.[44][45]

Another technique is for the owner of an Internet domain name to set up the domain's DNS entry so that all subdomains are directed to the same server. The operator then sets up the server so that page requests generate a page full of desired Google search terms, each linking to a subdomain of the same site, with the same title as the subdomain in the requested URL. Frequently the subdomain matches the linked phrase, with spaces replaced by underscores or hyphens. Since Google treats subdomains as distinct sites, the effect of many subdomains linking to each other is a boost to the PageRank of those subdomains and of any other site they link to.

On February 2, 2007, many have noticed changes in the Google algorithm that largely affects, among other things, Google bombs: only roughly 10% of the Google bombs worked as of February 15, 2007. This is largely due to Google refactoring its valuation of PageRank.[46]

Quixtar's bomb

Quixtar, a multi-level marketing company, has been accused by its critics of using its large network of websites to move sites critical of Quixtar lower in search engine rankings. A Quixtar independent business owner (IBO) reports that a Quixtar leader advocated the practice in a meeting of Quixtar IBOs. Quixtar denies wrongdoing and states that its practices are in accordance with search engine rules.[47]

GoDaddy bomb

On December 26, 2011, a bomb was started against GoDaddy to remove them from the #1 place on google for the term "Domain Registration." This was in retaliation for supporting SOPA [48]. This was then disseminated through Hacker News [49].

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Zeller, Tom Jr. (October 26, 2006). "A New Campaign Tactic: Manipulating Google Data". The New York Times (Late Edition (East Coast)): p. A.20. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/26/us/politics/26googlebomb.html.  (Note: payment required, weblink goes to abstract.)
  2. ^ a b c d Cohen, Noam (January 29, 2007). "Google Halts ‘Miserable Failure' Link to President Bush". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/technology/29google.html. Retrieved May 3, 2010. 
  3. ^ Price, Gary (May 16, 2005). "Google and Google Bombing Now Included New Oxford American Dictionary". Search Engine Watch. http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050516-184202. Retrieved January 29, 2007. .
  4. ^ Orlowski, Andrew (April 3, 2003). "Anti-war slogan coined, repurposed and Googlewashed ... in 42 days.". The Register. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/04/03/antiwar_slogan_coined_repurposed/. Retrieved January 6, 2007. 
  5. ^ Sullivan, Danny (March 18, 2002). "Google Bombs Aren't So Scary". Search Engine Watch. http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2164611. Retrieved January 29, 2007. 
  6. ^ Manjoo, Fahrad (January 25, 2001). "Google Link is Bush League". Wired News. http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,41401,00.html. Retrieved January 26, 2007. 
  7. ^ Calore, Michael; Scott Gilbertson (January 26, 2001). "Remembering the First Google Bomb". Wired News. Archived from the original on February 25, 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20070225081940/http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/01/earlier_today_m.html. Retrieved January 27, 2007. 
  8. ^ Mathes, Adam (April 6, 2001). "Filler Friday: Google Bombing". http://uber.nu/2001/04/06/. 
  9. ^ "Interface as a Conflict of Ideologies". April 2007. http://www.mushon.com/2010/03/23/interface-as-a-conflict-of-ideologies/. 
  10. ^ Greenberg, Andy (June 28, 2007). "The Saboteurs Of Search". Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/2007/06/28/negative-search-google-tech-ebiz-cx_ag_0628seo.html. Retrieved September 8, 2010. 
  11. ^ Pedone, Michael (October 27, 2005). "Google Bowling: How Competitors Can Sabotage You; What Google Should Do About It". Webpronews.com. http://www.webpronews.com/expertarticles/2005/10/27/google-bowling-how-competitors-can-sabotage-you-what-google-should-do-about-it. Retrieved December 17, 2011. 
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  15. ^ "Urban Legends Reference Pages: Miserable Failure". Snopes.com. http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/google.asp. Retrieved July 9, 2010. 
  16. ^ "Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: A quick word about Googlebombs". Googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com. January 25, 2007. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/01/quick-word-about-googlebombs.html. Retrieved July 9, 2010. 
  17. ^ Karch, Marziah. "Google Bombs Explained". About.com. http://google.about.com/od/socialtoolsfromgoogle/a/googlebombatcl.htm. Retrieved 2011-03-30. 
  18. ^ Dalton, Richard J., Jr. (March 13, 2003). "Internet Parody Hands French Military a Defeat". Newsday: p. A.27. http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/newsday/access/305039401.html?dids=305039401:305039401&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT. Retrieved February 4, 2007.  (payment required, link goes to abstract)
  19. ^ McMorris-Santoro, Evan (September 20, 2011). "Search Engine Expert: Rick Santorum’s New Crusade Against Google Is Total Nonsense". Talking Points Memo. http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/09/search-engine-expert-rick-santorums-new-crusade-against-google-is-total-nonsense.php. Retrieved December 17, 2011. 
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  22. ^ CNet article discussing the jewwatch.org Google bomb.
  23. ^ Written byHamid Tehrani. "Interview with Pendar Yousefi: Blogger, Designer and Google Bomber". Global Voices Online. http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2007/05/10/interview-with-pendar-yousefi-blogger-designer-and-google-bomber/. Retrieved July 9, 2010. 
  24. ^ "The Google Bomb Story". Mahimoto. http://mahimoto.com/google/. Retrieved December 17, 2011. 
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  32. ^ byRene Beekman (February 25, 2009). "Sofia Echo coverage". Sofiaecho.com. http://www.sofiaecho.com/2009/01/27/666229_google-search-results-link-bulgarian-government-with-failure-ruin-collapse. Retrieved July 9, 2010. 
  33. ^ by SB Sarah (April 12, 2009). "Amazon Rank". Smartbitchestrashybooks.com. http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/weblog/comments/amazon-rank/. Retrieved July 9, 2010. 
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  36. ^ By admin (July 8, 2009). "Google Bomb Corey Feldman is hurting". Topgoogletrends.netcashdaily.net. http://topgoogletrends.netcashdaily.net/google-bomb-corey-feldman-is-hurting. Retrieved July 9, 2010. 
  37. ^ [1] ahmadinejad president of iran
  38. ^ [2] googlbomb
  39. ^ Lance Whitney. "4chan takes down RIAA,MPAA sites", news.cnet.com, September 20, 2010. Retrieved 2010-9-21.
  40. ^ The Atlantic article
  41. ^ Doctorow, Cory (February 25, 2011). "Googlebombers turn "Abortion" into second result for "Murder"". Boing Boing. http://www.boingboing.net/2011/02/25/googlebombers-turn-a.html. Retrieved December 17, 2011. 
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  43. ^ Driscoll, Matt (December 14, 2011). "The truth about Craig James and those hookers". Weekly Volcano. http://www.weeklyvolcano.com/extremeleisure/cupcheck/2011/12/truth-about-Craig-James-and-those-hookers/. Retrieved December 17, 2011. 
  44. ^ Kopytoff, Verne (January 26, 2004). "Google targeted by pranksters: Web site operators, bloggers skew results". San Francisco Chronicle. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/01/26/BUG3M4GVDS1.DTL. Retrieved November 27, 2007. 
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  46. ^ Google Answers explanation of algorithm changes.
  47. ^ Glaser, Mark. "Companies subvert search results to squelch criticism." June 1, 2005. USC Annenberg Online Journalism Review. Retrieved December 1, 2006.
  48. ^ Kohr, Robert "A better way to fight SOPA"
  49. ^ "Attack GoDaddy - better than a boycott "

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