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

Miserable Failure is the classic example

[xmas2003]

The classic example is a Google Search for miserable failure that returns the WhiteHouse.gov biography for George Bush. Not surpisingly, Michael Moore's page also comes up in the first page of results in the tit-for-tat. Read more about how "ugly" Democrats and Republicans are using Political Google Bombs at Wikipedia.

Re:Miserable Failure is the classic example

[jdunlevy]

Once a particular Google bomb gets noticed and talked about on the Web, that discussion of the Google bomb itself serves to help "the algorithms work by themselves": in the "miserable failure" example, the third and fourth results in that Google search are a BBC article about the "miserable failure" Google-bomb and the Wikipedia article about "Political Google bombs" -- the Google bomb still pushes its target to the top of search results, but related, following search results provide explanation and context.

Re:Miserable Failure is the classic example

[Ana10g]

I was with you right up until the point when you got all partisan on me. You totally lost me on that one. Instead of your statement, which read:

And the web really does have a whole ton of legitimate references to illegal and immoral acts by republican politicans.

It should read:
And the web really does have a whole ton of legitimate references to illegal and immoral acts by any politican.

There's absolutely no reason to pick on one side or the other, when the entire lot of politicians are completely corrupt, stupid, and need to be tossed out altogether in favor of honest people (if there are any left).

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.

all's fair in love and war

[circletimessquare]

my gut feeling is let it be, and let the republicans do the same to democrats. welcome to politics. its nasty. always was, always will be

however, google in a very short time has come to inhabit a very important space in the media

it is largely unregulated in the usa now (not so in other countries), but it won't stay that way for long. too many powerful interests will have too many concerns about google and its power,and google will not survive unscathed

so i say: no regulation

but my brain tells me regulation of google is coming regardless

Classic Google-bomb

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned one of my personal favorite google-bombs...
Google for Santorum (as in Rick Santorum) and you will see the funniest ever.

Re:Thought Google Had Responded

[LiquidCoooled]

They haven't changed the algorithm just because pranksters have hijacked a couple of phrases and generally made people more aware of google (by advertising "have you tried going to google and typing ...."), they have done it to stop link farms and spam from getting through.

Linking by keywords is a very important aspect of how google manages to return relevant results.
The text a person uses to actually link to a site gives weight to the use of the destination site, to this end when linking we should always try to give a relevant phrase.
Linking slashdot as this is less useful than something like Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters.

Well, if you insist...

[shrubya]

you MUST talk about the BOMB

In AD 2006,
campaign was beginning.
Peter King: What happen ?
IT guy: Somebody set us up the Googlebomb.
Secretary: We get Newsday.
Peter King: What !

. . . So, have you had enough, or must I continue?