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?

[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

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.