Google Juice

mpawlo writes: "I guess it is time to start using them bookmarks again, since favourite search engine Google seems to be on the verge of Altavista doom and search engine chaos. BBC News reports of Google bombing (often referred to as 'Google juice' by the infamous Crackmonkey subscribers). 'The users have found a way to "bomb" Google to improve the rankings of particular webpages, and ensure a site is near the top of the results for particular search phrases.' There is also the sport of Google Whacking affecting your search results."

Comments

Not as bad as all that

[mblase]

The users have found a way to "bomb" Google to improve the rankings of particular webpages, and ensure a site is near the top of the results for particular search phrases.

Well, yes, but it's not easy. The article describes several dozen to several hundred bloggers working together to drive a certain word or phrase toward a certain URL. In other words, it takes a large, concerted effort to deceive Google's engine, and this fact alone provides reassurance that Google is working according to plan.

Somewhere else, on this site, Scientology has been accused of using their large network of sites and members to do the same thing, driving searches for "Scientology" and related words to their own sites rather than those of debunkers. Again, this takes a large and concerted effort, which is a virtue of Google rather than a vice.

Is Google on the verge of breaking because such a thing is possible? Of course not. But there are people powering the search engine on the back end, making improvements constantly in response to issues like this. And their cross-linking approach to ranking pages, while not perfect, remains the most reliable way yet found to judge a match's relevance.

If it works correctly 99% of the time, and Google is constantly working on the last 1%, that still makes it better than anything else out there.

Another article

[Sludge]

Here is a link that lets you actually know what the exploit is. Note that you need a lot of people and a lot of time to this.

You can't simply go to www.google.com/bomb and drag a slider to move a URL up the listings. You have to actually have a concentrated effort. They talk about getting a webpage such as Geocities and getting your friends to do the same. It seems to me mass posting to bulletin boards would do the trick, unfortunately. There is even marketing software out there which posts your 'press releases' to hundreds of bulletin boards automatically.

Corante article

[ZigMonty]

The BBC article is very short on details. I read the Corante article a while ago and it has some good info on Google Bombing (first use, effect, etc). Guess what? I used google to find it again. And it was the first link on the page. Seems to be working OK to me.

If this really does start to get out of control, Google will adjust their techniques to work around the problem. I hope.

Bad perhaps

[baptiste]

But the end of Google? I sincerely doubt it. Altavista and the others have been driven by greed since day one (ever look at license prices for Altavista for an Intranet in the late 90's?)

Google has always seemed to be driven by a happy medium of civic duty and profit. Take their text ads - I love them - unobstrusive, get the point across, and NOT in teh main search results - they are clearly marked. So I expect that the geniuses @ Google will attack this problem and come up with a solution. SO yelling about Google's demise seems VERY premature.

vector based filtering

[toothless joe]

In addition to other spam prevention methods, google uses complex matrix/vector filtering to ignore link circles. Basically, if (say) the same 100 different sites link to the same set of 20 other sites, and no one else links to them, Google will map them out and realize that they are all working in a concerted effort. That way if a spammer sets up 100 ostensibly independent sites and then links them all to his e-commerce sites, google will realize what he is doing and penalize his rankings for it. The only way that a spammer can 'bomb' google is if he gets a large array of other sites (for instance weblogs) that have significant traffic and link to other, different sites, as well as the ones that the spammer is trying to promote. The long-and-short of it is that a group of bloggers could bomb google with a large effort, but the average spammer would have to set up an incredibly complex web of interwoven pages that garner significant traffic to fool google. Even if large groups of spammers formed a cabal to promote their varied interests, it would likely be discovered by humans working at google. So, I'd put away that violin.

The link that should have been in the story

[lowy]

Net analysis site Corante has explored the workings of Google bombs in depth.

Here is the Corante article.

Re:How to Google Whack...

[friscolr]

Try it yourself, just think up two obscure words and type them into Google.

i've written a how-to on this; it's at http://www.blackant.net/other/random/how-to-google whack.php and repeated below for your convenience.

HOW-TO GoogleWhack

1) think of complex word, mispell it, and search dictionary.com for the misspelling.

example:
word: insullatory
http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=insullatory

2) look through dictionary.com suggestions for a very odd-sounding word, look at definition of word.

example:
word: inculcation
http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=inculcation&r=3

3) do google search for the word and for derivatives of the word.

example:
words tried: inculcation, inculcator

4) choose word that has the least google returns

example:
inculcation: 14100 returns
inculcator: 238 returns
we choose inculcator.

5) if the returns number more than 1000 for any word or derivative, go back to step 1.

6) in the google returns for the word selected, look for an odd word in the returns, preferably one that is unrelated to the definition of the first word.

example:
words: inculcator, adepts

7) do a google search for both words. if it has more than one return, go to step 5.

8) submit your googlewhack

example:
words: inculcator, tablet.

9) once you find one googlewhack, look at the page returned for more odd/awkward words. use these as potential new googlewhacks.

using this method, i found a googlewhack in less than ten minutes (took me longer to write this up) and have repeatedly done so.