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'Online Poker' Googlebomb

Posted by timothy on from the good-or-evil dept.

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."

8 of 379 comments (clear)

  1. Do the ends justify the means? by tylernt · · Score: 4, Interesting

    On one hand, it seems that "stooping" to the level of spammers seems as evil as the spamming itself.

    On the other hand, maybe this is an appropriate response -- fighting fire with fire.

    Only time will tell if the cure is worse than the disease... but at the moment, I think it's kind of cool to use the spammers' own tactics against them.

    --
    DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
  2. Affiliate schemes by leathered · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The poker sites themselves are not directly to blame, however it's their affiliate programs such as this one which encourage the spamsters.

    As you can see they can be quite lucrative. Spammers also post poker site's software to Usenet and p2p networks together with a bonus code that benefits their account, with some steady play these bonuses can be cleared in no time leaving themselves a tidy profit.

    --
    For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
  3. Re:You submitted this... by ottothecow · · Score: 5, Interesting
    They are fighting against the sites that are linked to by spam and thus fighting the spammers while supporting wikipedia.

    I am sure the bloggers love google and hate seeing spam have large amounts of influence on the results.

    --
    Bottles.
  4. Re:You submitted this... by Trillan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm not clear why fighting spam-fuelled results is detrimental to google. Personally, I think the encyclopedia page is at least as valuable as whatever online poker service spammed the most.

  5. Google [ play online poker ] by tepples · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If someone searches for online poker; they probably want to play online poker

    If somebody wants to play online poker , Google won't return any Wikipedia pages in the top 10.

    which is what the wiki page is displacing.

    Not at all. Online poker - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia links to seven poker sites.

    1. Re:Google [ play online poker ] by TGK · · Score: 5, Interesting

      As a bloger, let me give you an example.

      My blog is probably the least trafficed site on the internet. Google doesn't even index the blog's sub pages as they're php and not directory roots. I basicly do news commentary. That's it.

      I get between three and five entries comments every day from online poker spamers. They do their comments in HTML, and add H1 tags to the entire thing. Each comment consists of about 50 links ranging from online poker to places to buy viagra.

      I write this as a hobby. I pay for it out of pocket, it makes no revenue and, as I don't sell ad space or use ad words, I never expect it to.

      If I'm not going to use the resources I paied for to advertise why should someone else get to? This kind of behavior is inconsiderate, it's invasive, and it's really fucking annoying.

      So yea.... I'm tired of being used as free advertising for something I'll never see a dime from.

      --
      Killfile(TGK)
      No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
  6. Re:I'm feeling lucky by Alan+Hicks · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Google did a study of how many people used [the "I'm Feeling Lucky"] button.

    I no that I rarely ever use it, and when I do, it's typically for something that I already know it will take me to, or for flaming.

    One example is the download page for PuTTY. I know the first link for "download putty" in Google is always the page I want, even though I can never remember the URL for that page. It's a convienent way for me to get what I need quickly.

    The second way is much more fun. When n00bs on IRC, usenet, or mailing lists ask questions that quite easily could have been answered with a google search, I typically do a quick search and see what's in the first few links. If the very first link comes up with the information, I'll flame 'em and tell them to drop "blah blah 123" into google and tell it you're feeling lucky, and not to come back again until they learn to do this always.

    --
    Slackware, what else when it must be secure, stable, and easy?
  7. Re:We'll see who gets the last laugh by DavidTC · · Score: 5, Interesting
    That's probably what they want.

    Bloggers link to each other so they can find each other, not so they have pagerank coming out of their ass.

    Spammers, however, discovered this pagerank, and started abusing it. Google 'solved' this problem by giving bloggers the ability to add a note to a link saying 'Don't give this any pagerank'.

    However, spammers, being about as smart as pond scum's waste products, continue to spam blogs, even the ones that had such attributes added automatically. (These are the same people who attempt to deliver mail to hundreds of addresses on my server that do not and never have existed.) Spammers apparently cannot tell blogs apart.

    And hence, to force the issue, blogs have started abusing the power themselves. Google now must write something to tell blogs apart from normal websites, or its entire database will be under the control of bloggers, mwhahahahaha.

    The hope is that if google fixes this, within two or three years spammers who have been spamming blogs will have drowned by staring up when it's raining or deciding to go outside for a smoke break while on an airplane, and the new crop won't ever have spammed any blogs. (Spammers cannot learn to stop doing things, only to do new things.)

    Of course, bloggers may be overestimating the intelligence of spammers by assuming they know how to operate airplane doors or tilt their head back.

    --
    If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?