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'Online Poker' Googlebomb
Philipp Lenssen writes "The blogger community is fighting back, though in ways not everyone may like: they are Googlebombing the Wikipedia page on online poker for the phrase "online poker" to make it rank higher in search engines. "Online poker", along with "Viagra", "mortgage" and "debt", are keywords heavily represented in comment spam, which itself aims to boost the Google ranking for a particular site and phrase. The Wikipedia page is currently third in Google."
Do they think that if they make the Wiki ONLINE POKER page #1 that nobody will go to the other 9 online poker page results returned by Google on the same page?
It don' make no sense!
I think that's more of a 'trying to not get involved' act than anything else.
It goes to #1.
Just having the page in the same paragraph where online poker is mentioned will help a little.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
Google Bombing is used to get your one page higher, it doesn't do anything to the other sites' ranking except to the single site you may displace off the top 10 results.
Yes, I read the article. This seems to be a "fight fire with fire" solution and is probably just going to make things worse.
The stupid online poker comment spam *is* annoying, yes, but is Googlebombing Wikipedia really a viable solution?
The Wiki didn't come up 3rd when I looked a few minutes ago (it was 5th) and doesn't Google specifically say "Don't do stuff like this!" in their help documentation?
I hope this doesn't backfire.
I can't see this as a good thing.
1. Blog spammers will fight back at blogs - mostly innocient people who have nothing to do with this war.
2. Blog spam can get wikipedia in trouble by violating Google's guildelines.
3. The recent nofollow tag attribue will dimish the value of blog spam.
but how the hell does this help? The online casino people are still going to spam your blog. Just because one link out of the 31 million pages wont deter a user. There are paid ads anyways. This is a waste of time if you ask me. A better way to combat this would be to come together to maybe come up with a plugin or hack to have a 100% system against spam.
So the online casinos would be forced to stop auto spamming people.
Of course this trouble will never end if these companies have like little gnomes manually spamming blog/blog rings.
Seems like an awful lot of work to boost that particular result...
I gotta agree with the article... buy more text ads...
In this case, the page is highly relevant, and the links are being placed by website owners on their own websites, rather than spammed to comment pages and referrer logs by automated spambots. There's a big difference.
MakePassword.com Mp3 Blog
If the counter-bombers can counter-bomb, then the spammers can counter-counter-bomb, and so on. This sounds like nuclear war, but with keywords.
The only problem is, the automated robots that Google et. al. use are based on rules, and those rules will ALWAYS be able to be reverse-engineered by spammers.
Is there any way out of this?
(And please don't just say, "Google can just hire a bunch of people to look at stuff" because that won't scale to billions of Internet pages).
Ideas anybody?
If I were to search for "online poker" I'd be sure to read the TITLE and the two lines or so that Google gives you from the site to figure out if it was a relevant result or not.
If I already know what online poker is, there's no need for me to go to a wikipedia page, no matter how high it's listed. Conversely, if I'm not interested in playing, I'm not going to go to some site unless I haven't had my daily dose of cookies.
Very few people use the "I'm feeling lucky" button (I remember reading some really low percentage on the Google website, forget what exactly it was) so even getting this site to #1 won't affect discerning users.
All right, you can make the argument that people are stupid and click blindly. Problably. But most people realize after a few seconds if they've gone to an irrelevant result.
Wouldn't it make more sense to put up a link that would have a possible affect on the spammers' business? I would have gone for a site intended to fight gambling addiction...
If someone searches for online poker; they probably want to play online poker, which is what the wiki page is displacing. BUT the fact that its only 1 page that leaves 9 others on top, as the article said; would just cause the one spammer who is knocked off the front page to spam that much more; which will cause the other spammers to spam more to keep on the front page.... It just seems pointless:p Someone is laughing here
...has appearantly linked http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_poker to "autofellatio.jpg". Wikipedia was a bad choice, what with the inherent ability for *anyone* to alter the page.
I detailed this elsewhere. All Google has to do is add a filter to its results so that pages that do not actually contain the search word/phrases do NOT show up in result lists.
This used to be standard search-engine behaviour, and because of this, results used to be a lot more accurate (unless they were merely outdated, but even in this case, the results were accurate at one time!).
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Sounds like your not using it right.
"to be +or not to be" (quotes and all) give you nothing but appropriate answers on the fist page.
Mod point free since 2001
Which brings up the point of Why?
Just clickthrough for wikipedia and its favored poker sites?
Again I say "sad". I vote to delete--except that that's pointless, too. The people who want to sucker other people via online gambling are of course much more strongly motivated than people like I am. I'm just annoyed. They're dreaming of striking it rich, if only they can find enough suckers fast enough.
Anyway, the Wikipedia deletion process was too difficult to figure out.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Who really cares about this? Honestly let them mess with the search results. Dumb people shouldnt be allowed on the internet anyways and im sure after 2 seconds any average joe will figure out the wiki isnt online poker...this is being made into to big an issue.
Unfortunately, no one wants to play it. If they did, then these cretins wouldn't need to pollute the internet to get people to play it. The same with herbal viagra, or any of the rest of the crud they are peddling.
I wouldn't be upset, if google just made those few terms unsearchable.
Where is the -1 Patently False moderation tag when you need it?
The reason http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=to+be+or+not
So all that google sees is "not"
Actually, most spam gets sent for SUCCESSFUL online enterprises. TONS of people play poker online, and they give MASSIVE referral bonuses to websites who can generate new players ($65 a pop!) - because competition for new players and site-loyalty is so high. Most casual players pick one site and stick with it.
It's NOT because nobody wants to play.
I wouldn't be upset, if google just made those few terms unsearchable.
You know, this might actually be the best solution, do it by hand. It's a social problem, not a technological one. Imagine if, when searching for online poker, viagra, penis enlargement, etc. you get a page like:
"The term $TERM is very commonly used by spammers. This makes our standard search results less useful. Here are some relevant links to the terms.
These links are sponsored by different companies:
-onlinefoo.com
-...
-...
-...
These links have been hand-picked by our employees:
-Wikipedia's page
-Page on online fraud
-Page on going to actual tournaments by playing online
-Page on health risks of viagra
-etc
If you really want to see the automated results, click here."
This would remove the motivation for blogspamming and actually help people who actually want to search for these things, since they'll get relevant results. Google also gets a bit of money in the deal, for them to use to fight whatever lawsuits come up from asshole spammers.
But, maybe that's too easy. Never mind.
Thank you for explaining this. I had no idea why bloggers were fighting at all until I read your comment.
The journalism quality has gotten so bad on Slashdot that I have started to wonder if Slashdot editors have all become sadists.
If you really want to thwawt the link spammers, what you need to do is make sure 9 other wikipedia pages also get well linked for the phrase 'online poker', thereby meaning there are no [profitable] spammed linked on the front page of google results.. The pages 'online' and 'poker' would be a good start..
Problem:- the bloggers leave pages open to the public, that anybody can modify, and they get spammed by the poker places.
Solution:- Spam google, so that the highest ranked page on the net for 'online poker' is, you guessed it, a user modifiable page, hosted somewhere else. They have made the wikipedia page the most valuable real-estate on the net regarding the given search term, so, now it's wikipdeia's problem, that page is going to be target of constant spam/attack/redirect attempts.
I would have thought the blog types would understand, and target a static page, where this is not a problem. No, they gotta take the problem from thier insignificant little nothing sites, and turn it into a major problem for one of the most significant sites on the internet. Way to go assholes, what a wonderful way to cause a huge amount of problems for a very valuable net resource, that's done nothing to cause problems for your precious 'blog community'.
There is a reason that most folks find the rantings in blogspace a total waste of otherwise useful bandwidth, this is yet another good example. Only the selfish shortsighted stupidity of the blog community would come up with the idea of solving thier problem, by making a wikipedia problem instead.
That's about as smart as an anvil folks, and it's this kind of stupidity that causes most of the world to view blogspace as wasted space. Whoever came up with the idea of google-bombing the term 'online poker' with a wikipedia page, should be taken out back and strung up. Didn't a single one of the bloggers in question have enough intelligence to figure out how big of a problem this is going to create? Now that wikipedia is in the top page, every poker spammer in the world is going to be trying to hijack that page. Are bloggers in general really this dumb ?
[rant off]
Online poker is a big waste of time. Anyone who partakes in online poker should have their head examined for online poker-itis. Unfortunately there are way to many online poker fanatics out there to keep them away from online poker websites. With some luck however, this onslaught of online poker business will eventually die out just like those online poker charities have.
It's too bad really. Think about online poker for a minute. Does anyone take the time to play online poker seriously? The answer of course is online poker! If you consider that online poker accounts for 99% of online poker spam then you'd instantly come to the conclusion that online poker is not something you want your children doing. If anything, online poker needs to be outlawed throughout the world. If online poker was outlawed, then perhaps we wouldn't get so much online poker spam.
I don't mean to rant about online poker nonstop, but while we are on the subject of online poker, it makes sense to consider one more tidbit of fact. Do you have any idea how many online poker websites there are? I would personally wager that there are more than 10. 10 online poker websites! This in and of itself seems to suggest that online poker has detrimental health effects. If online poker were healthy, I think you would find online poker pamphlets at the doctor's office. Have you ever seen an online poker pamphlet? I didn't think so. Pregnancy, drugs, smoking, and sex, but online poker? Never.
Online poker should be listed as an illegal substance along with online poker spam. Anyone found to be "playing" online poker needs to have their entrails removed and sent to an online poker website owner's home.
Online poker. Bigger than Big Tobacco and deadlier than processed cheese. Online poker is like online communism, except that online poker is a game and not a form of government. Hitler and Stalin both swore by online poker and look where they ended up. They are both DEAD! That's all it takes folks, a little online poker and you're screwed.
A long time ago there was no online poker. It was lightsabers
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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Well I did essentialy knock mine together on my coffee break. And I've also knocked some filters together on another coffee break to solve the problem.
That said, it's still obnoxious. I'd like to encourage comments and see more of them. I'd also like to spend more time writing for my blog and less time writing filters for my comments page.
I feel like having to slap those security measures in place makes people less likely to comment and takes away from time that I could be using to add more content to the site.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
"So, let me get this straight: you allow random, unknown people to post things on a website you control, and now you're complaining because spam is showing up?"
Why has our society fallen to the point that it is always the victims fault?