New Campaign Tactic - Google Bombing

jeian writes "My Direct Democracy, a liberal group blog, is trying out a new campaign tactic — Google bombing. From the New York Times article: 'Searching Google for Peter King, the Republican congressman from Long Island, would bring up a link to a Newsday article headlined King Endorses Ethnic Profiling.' Google's policy has typically been to not intervene and let the algorithms work by themselves, but could this change if Google-bombing becomes a common tactic?"

Comments

It took this long?

[Kelson]

People have been google-bombing phrases like litigious bastards, miserable failure, french military victories, and so on for years. But these are all going about it backwards. If someone isn't looking for "litigious bastards," they're not going to find out you think it applies to SCO .

I'm amazed it's taken people (outside of black-hat SEO and comment spammers) this long to start with the keywords end-users are likely to start with -- in this case, the names of the candidates -- and aim them at a site expressing the desired POV, rather than the other way around.

Re:It took this long?

[CokeBear]

The only problem with linking miserable failure to that whitehouse page is that when the next president comes along, they may not be as much of a failure (hey, I'm an optimist) and it will still be linked.

Re:It took this long?

[Jeffrey Baker]

This can have an appreciable effect. They are not linking terms like "laughable assclown", they are linking the candidate's OWN NAME to a news article about the candidate. Therefore people who are searching for information about the candidate are more likely to read the targeted article. It's simple and not at all misleading.

Example: Conrad Burns

Thought Google Had Responded

[Thansal]

I thought that when the idea first became popular Google worked on making it harder to google bomb something. Isn't this infact one of their key aspects on developing google itself? Return RELEVANT sites? not things with lots and lots of links and the same 2 words every time.

Re:Thought Google Had Responded

[Nafai7]

Something I found interesting: the word "here" links first to the download for Adobe PDF Reader (for obvious reasons?). 2nd link is mapquest and 3rd is apple quicktime.

Except for obvious linkfarms, which I believe google has been trying to decrease their effectiveness, google bombing is fine and ultimately will self correct for anything important.

'cause the others are conservatives

[Quadraginta]

Why is it that liberals use Google and other online technology to influence elections?

Because they believe more firmly that it will work. The other side is, well, conservative. They remain skeptical that the net has as much influence as its most starry-eyed dreamers say it has. They figure their time, money and effort is better put into old-fashioned politicking, e.g. local get-out-the-vote organizations, having people call their neighbors, or walk over and knock on doors come election day, or having the candidate over to the church after Sunday pancakes to talk, et cetera and so forth.

Soon enough we'll know who was right.

Genius of Google Algorithms

[Anonymous Coward]

The Google algorithm for ranking pages is quite clever. What is considered to be valuable or important information by a person is difficult to quantify in terms of mathematics. So, the Google algorithm avoids making this judgment. However, once the human beings have made a collective judgment about what is most important, the Google algorithm tries to determine what that judgment is. This determination involves tracing Web links across the Internet: the most linked web pages must be considered most important by the human beings.

Google bombing is not really a problem that requires modifying the Google algorithms. The algorithms work fine.

The right way to fix Google bombing is counter-bombing by the victim. Here, counter-bombing can mean many things: (1) lawsuit filed by the victim against the Google bombers, (2) Google bombing to spread accurate information, etc.

The bottom line is that Google management should not modify the Google algorithms. They work fine. The "fix" is outside of management's responsibility.

Re:Avoiding the Appearance of Bias

[cultrhetor]

In our present climate, it's impossible to avoid the appearance of bias. The word has, sadly, lost almost all meaning because of partisan wankers who use it as the default defense against one media outlet or another. "Bias," like any other broadly interpreted term in political contexts, is determined by the ideological lens through which the finger-pointers whine. By doing nothing, Google will be viewed by some (the objects of the Google-bombing) as "biased," because it did nothing to protect what they see as fair discursive practice: even if the algorithm is neutral, the uses to which it is put are not, and to Ma & Pa Kettle (remember: as a demographic, people over 50 vote more than the rest of us), who don't understand the Internet, when looking for information about politics, the appearance of neutrality is more important than actual, underlying neutrality.

On the other hand, if Google were to adjust its algorithm, or begin quashing "Google bombs," the free-speech squad would go nuts, claiming that Google's actions are quashing the freedom of expression of online lynch-mobs. The EFF would go to court. Slashdot's YRO section would be packed with cyberlibertarians bitching about censorship and bringing up the legendary, mythical (and fictional) "neutrality" of the Internet.

What fun.