Posted on 01/26/2007 12:10:02 PM PST by Terpfen
Google has finally had it with Googlebombing, the act of hundreds of Internet users linking up specific words with certain web sites in order to produce a desired (and usually comical) search result. The company announced today via its corporate blog that they have finally altered their search engine algorithm to minimize the impact of Googlebombs by improving the way they analyze link structures on web sites.
Google's previous stance on this type of Internet pranking was just that—it was a prank and that they didn't want to get involved in manually altering otherwise-harmless antics on the web. Also called "linkbombing," the most famous Googlebomb was of course the search for the phrase "failure" that produced a link to the current US President, George W. Bush. Some other Googlebombs included associating the search term "waffles" with Senator John Kerry and "talentless hack" with Adam Mathes, but not all Googlebombs were created to slander—some users Googlebombed the word "Jew" to stop pointing to a hate site and instead directed the term to point to the Wikipedia entry on Jewish people.
(Excerpt) Read more at arstechnica.com ...
Looks like Google decided to do something about it right after the Dems became the subject of these dirty tricks.
So why'd it take them almost three years?
...hmmmm...waffles kurry
sounds like a east indian snack
See post #2...
Yeah! They hate it when their own dirty tricks are used on them don't they? They forget that most of us are more intelligent than they are and usually, once pissed off, more effective at their own games than they are. ;-)
I was replying to post #2.
I read too fast....;-)
Yup, it's no longer "cute" when it hurts you.
It's a lot of work to update the whole system to ignore such things. And, you usually don't want to be messing with a working platform too much (especially if it's making you bazillions of dollars).
They were probably afraid what would happen if Hillary was elected president.
"So why'd it take them almost three years?"
Well, the elections are over and do you really think they'll do anything about the links to conservative candidates in 2008?
Just a little PR and perhaps advice from their lawyers. Notice how they claim others are linking not Google?
I was always curious exactly how this was done. How did people link the word to the site?
Does anyone have the link to their blog?
It might make interesting reading.
Basically, a bunch of people who ran web pages would create a text link to Bush's profile on the White House website, with the clickable text being the desired phrase. Since Google's search algorithm ranks pages and search terms by their prevalence and frequency of occurrence on the pages they index, well, there you go: one coordinated campaign and you've screwed with Google's results.
A more accurate answer would be their unwillingness to screw with the algorithm that made the company billions of dollars.
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