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 ...
Yeah, no one ever really complains about THAT particular Googlebomb--at least not around here.
On a side note, Netscape? You poor, miserable fool: my condolences.
Bump for later reading
I got that pic off google image search!
Oh, that's different then.
Still, in the words of Mr. T, I pity the fool who uses Netscape these days. Especially since it's literally just a cluttered-up Firefox. (AOL used the Firefox source code to re-launch Netscape.)
it's more than a 'prank' it's an effort to sway elections and malign folks- About time Google started cracking down on these pukes.
The following link does not relate to this thread http://sacredscoop.com
these 'pranks' are aimed not at folks who have an iota of common sense of course- but they ARE aimed at people who are fence sitters and easily swayed.
Yeah, Freepers really are paranoid about the Google thing.
The first five pages take you to ads, who cares which ad comes up first?
It's not paranoia when they are really out to get you.
A blogger put real money last year into a plan to take the name of every possible republican presidential candidate, and set up google bombs to link their names to sites which trashed the candidates.
In other words, rather than a harmless prank to be funny (like pathetic loser going to someone's web site) this would be a much more serious offense -- taking real searches for real information, and redirecting them to the places where one side WANTS you to get information.
The plan was to make it so the "feeling lucky", and the 1st page of entries, would ALL take you to left-wing sites. So if you typed in "Tom Tancredo", all you would get back would be links to sites that told you how evil he was. You'd have to go to the 2nd page of google results before you found his own web site.
I don't think they were going to succeed, but it was a long-term plan, and wasn't just a joke. I can't find reference to it, but it might be why Google decided to take action.
Interesting. It appears this is correct. Type in "miserable failure" as a google search and you're no longer taken to the Bush site, but only to discussions about "miserable failure" being a googlebomb.
But who goes to a search engine to look up the word (phrase) "failure?"
They decided to flowchart the whole process first.
Google hates Bush
I was reading a Kerry quote about Saddam and WMDs that dated back to 1997, before Bush was even on the national scene. Wish I had saved it, do you have it?
So I decided to websearch "miserable failure." Guess what came up in the top 10 results? The President's official bio at the White House site.
They claim they've disable googlebombs, but...
The second one down.
What a good visual....
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