Google Defuses Googlebombs

John C. Worsley writes "Google announced today a modification to their search algorithm that minimizes well-known googlebombing exploits. Searches on 'miserable failure' and their ilk no longer bring up political targets. The Google blogger writes: 'By improving our analysis of the link structure of the web, Google has begun minimizing the impact of many Googlebombs. Now we will typically return commentary, discussions, and articles about the Googlebombs instead.'"

Comments

Big changes?

[LiquidCoooled]

Surely this changes lots of things.

If google is now discounting the wording other people use to link to a page, then isn't google themselves becoming like old fashioned engine, ie only specifically accounting for information on the actual page and not based on what other people who link to this page thinK?

By improving our analysis of the link structure of the web, Google has begun minimizing the impact of many Googlebombs. Now we will typically return commentary, discussions, and articles about the Googlebombs instead.

reworded becomes:

By ignoring the link structure of the web, Google has begun minimizing the impact of many Googlebombs. Now we will typically return only results which are from the actual page itself rather than looking at how other people link to each other.

A googlebomb is not a bad thing, its making use of the algorithm to expand the keywords which a page is associated with.

Sidenote:

I did a search for google, and the snippet that comes up under each google entry does not exist on the page itself, where does it actually come from?

for example:

Google
The local version of this pre-eminent search engine, offering UK-specific pages as well as world results.
www.google.co.uk/ - 4k - 24 Jan 2007 - Cached - Similar pages


I thought google weren't meant to display a different page to bots as to users? (didn't they get in trouble for something similar not so long ago?)

Re:Big changes?

[Anonymous Coward]

I did a search for google, and the snippet that comes up under each google entry does not exist on the page itself, where does it actually come from? It comes from googles' listings at dmoz.org

Re:Big changes?

[drinkypoo]

If google is now discounting the wording other people use to link to a page, then isn't google themselves becoming like old fashioned engine, ie only specifically accounting for information on the actual page and not based on what other people who link to this page thinK?

Not necessarily. It depends, like most other things, on how it is handled. The practice of googlebombing is the practice of mob rule and google quite sensibly worked to put a stop to it.

A googlebomb is not a bad thing, its making use of the algorithm to expand the keywords which a page is associated with.

A googlebomb IS a bad thing, it's a group of people with an agenda railroading the functionality of a resource upon which the health of the internet depends in a very real way. Again, it's mob rule; a certain segment of the population runs away with the whole idea.

I thought google weren't meant to display a different page to bots as to users? (didn't they get in trouble for something similar not so long ago?)

Are you saying that bots are getting different search results than users? Because absolute shitloads of websites serve different versions of their pages to google for a wide variety of reasons. For example some premium sites allow google to index part of their content in order to rope people into buying a subscription.

Re:Big changes?

[UbuntuDupe]

If google is now discounting the wording other people use to link to a page, then isn't google themselves becoming like old fashioned engine, ie only specifically accounting for information on the actual page and not based on what other people who link to this page thinK?

I think it's more sophisticated than that, and I don't think Google plans to reveal more about how it works than necessary, so as to maintain their algorithm's "security by obscurity". Someone will figure it out eventually, but at least its robustness will improve until then.

Re:Big changes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does a search for the movie Iraq in Fragments return the real page, with the description text:

Useful information, Phentermine 30mg ; Viagra without prescription ; Order valium online ; Credit cards for bad credit ; ... How did a description get hijacked?

Re:Big changes?

[Simetrical]

Are you saying that bots are getting different search results than users? Because absolute shitloads of websites serve different versions of their pages to google for a wide variety of reasons. For example some premium sites allow google to index part of their content in order to rope people into buying a subscription.

Yes, that's called "cloaking" and can get you delisted. BMW Germany's website got removed from Google a while back for doing it, and presumably less prominent ones regularly are as well. Google's official position is that you should write a decent web page and they'll be able to figure out how it should rank:

• Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as "cloaking."
• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
• Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
• Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

Re:Big changes?

[Jerf]

With all due respect, a couple of sentences from Google are not enough to uniquely identify how they've changed their algorithms. Just because the only idea you could come up with is "ignoring link structure" doesn't mean that's what they went with. I'd expect that they came up with a way of characterizing Google-bombs and figured out how to discount that, which probably fixes some other SEO tricks too. I've got some guesses on how that could look, but none of them are informed enough to share, so I won't.

Re:Big changes?

[LordKaT]

I'd mod you down, but there's no "-1, Some Jackass Jumping To Conclusions"

Really now, stop it. There's no reason to believe, at all, that Google is ignoring link structure. Google probably sees a certain percentage of inbound links (with the exact same title) in a short period of time (say a week or two) and marks it as a potential Googlebomb.

Whoop-di-friggin-do. Yeah, it hurts shit like blog pranks, but it also fucks up spammers big time. Remember, a Googlebomb isn't just fun and games, it's also plenty of Viagra spam.

Meanwhile, the rest of us who work at getting high search rankings honestly have not been hurt. Amazing.

Re:Big changes?

[drinkypoo]

My confusion was over LiquidCooled's sentence "I thought google weren't meant to display a different page to bots as to users?" That is precisely the opposite of what we are talking about here (other pages displaying a different page to googlebots as to other user agents.) I was only seeking clarification, I already know that practice is looked down upon.

Re:Big changes?

[Artaxs]

Please stop referring to a Googlebomb as "mob rule."

PageRank Explained
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important." The Googlebomb is just an example of the weighted "democracy" that Page Rank is supposed to be all about. It is sad to see Google caving in to the whiners who email them without bothering to read their FAQ or their "About Us" pages.

And, as another poster said, these sorts of guerilla campaigns are wicked fun.

Re:Big changes?

[drinkypoo]

Please stop referring to a Googlebomb as "mob rule."

No. That's what it is. Why should I stop?

The Googlebomb is just an example of the weighted "democracy" that Page Rank is supposed to be all about

So is Mob Rule. That doesn't make it a good thing.

as another poster said, these sorts of guerilla campaigns are wicked fun.

So is using cars on the freeway as practice targets for your minigun. Fun is not the ultimate arbiter of what is right.

Re:Big changes?

[Anonymous Coward]

But democracy is just that, mob rule. What ever the majority of the mob wants, the mob gets. Google is maturing into a republic, the mob picks their representative (Google) to make the decisions for them.

Re:Big changes?

[Anonymous Coward]

This could be a GOOD thing (I'll have to test it at home when I get internet access again). Too many times I've tried to find something on Google, and come to a page with the word(s) or phrase(s) I've searched for to not be on the page! I mean, when I'm looking for information about cataracts I expect the word "cataract" to be somewhere on the page that's returned, or the result is useless at best.

An example is when I'm looking for track listings for an album I've sampled and burned to CD, wanting to cut and paste rather than typing in metadata. Too often I'll type in the artist's name in quotes and album in question in quotes, and come across a lyrics site that doesn't even have the band I'm looking for.

Fortunately I seldom need Google for this, as Wikipedia usually comes across for me.

It annoys me when I'm looking to see if anyone can find a page in one of my own sites, type in the page's friggin' title, which is on the page in <h1> as well as in the <title> and come across some damned page that has no content at all, just advertising!

I'm hoping they actually fixed Google; it seems to have been less and less useful as the years have gone by.

Re:Big changes?

[sago007]

The Googlebomb is just an example of the weighted "democracy" that Page Rank is supposed to be all about

No, Page Rank is weighted democracy. A Googlebomb tries to destroy the Page Rank.

Page Rank is supposed to sort the pages according to there relevance, based on the links found on the Internet. A Googlebomb tries to prevent Page Rank from doing that by manipulating the links on the Internet. A Googlebomb does not mean that Internet users get more relevant results it is the other way around.

Re:Big changes?

[nicklott]

And good luck trying to get it changed...

Re:Big changes?

[Otto]

But democracy is just that, mob rule. What ever the majority of the mob wants, the mob gets. Actually, no. "Mob rule" would be a "mobocracy", or an "ochlocracy" if you prefer the latin/greek roots of your words. It means "rule by the mob" or "rule by the majority". It implies a rule by force, although that is not necessarily literal.

Democracy is "rule by the people", which implies *all* the people, not just the majority of them. There's many forms of democracy, of course, but it is definitely not "mob rule".

Re:Big changes?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't like your dmoz description to appear in Google, you can place a meta tag. See Matt Cutts' blog (Google employee): http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-supports-meta -noodp-tag/

Re:Big changes?

[nicklott]

I didn't know that... Ta

Re:Big changes?

[h2g2bob]

Google doesn't serve different pages to bots - look at Google's cached version, or Yahoo's cached version. The text is a feature added on their search results.

Re:Big changes?

[MrNiceguy_KS]

Man I wish I had mod points. You're exactly right. If I'm doing a Google search, I want relevant links. Googlebombs get in the way of that. So-called "Search Engine Optimization" does the same thing.

Granted, it'll be disappointing not to see SCO.com as the number one hit for Litigious Bastards.

Re:Big changes?

[inode_buddha]

Despite the revisions at google, SCO is still the top rank for "litigious bastards".

google.com/search?hl=en&q=litigious+bastards&btn G=Google+Search

Re:Big changes?

[drinkypoo]

But democracy is just that, mob rule.

To add to what the sibling comment: No, democracy is democracy (and to date, largely mythical.) Mob rule is Ochlocracy, also as stated by the sibling. The important thing you're missing is that mob rule operates through intimidation and it is the reason for not announcing poll results from one coast while the other coast is still voting. It's also the stated reason for the electoral college in the US, although these days we have seen that its true purpose is very different.

Re:Big changes?

[iabervon]

They've most likely just changed how link text is used in calculations, not eliminated it entirely. For example, it would make sense measure pages for a search on multiple metrics: Is the page talking about what the search is asking about? Is it a respected authority on that topic? It makes sense to multiply these measures rather than adding them. So a page that scores 1/4 on each of these would beat a page that's 1% on one and 99% on the other.

Re:Big changes?

[philipgar]

actually, that would appear to be an anti-sco website titled litigious bastards. That really isn't a google bomb. If people are searching for litigious bastards, they're likely looking for that site entitled such, and that happens to be about the SCO case. That's almost like saying a search for slashdot returning "slashdot.org" is a google bomb. Google bombs generally involve a search phrase returning a page that isn't related to the phrase. i.e. "miserable failure" returning bush's biography. Bush's biography does not likely say he's a miserable failure etc. The changes seem to do what they were aiming for, sites related to a topic can still get returned, but not as many of the "random" sites that are linked to words that aren't used on the site.

If a link goes to a page, part of the ranking is likely given based on what percent of the page uses that phrase. I imagine it's a bit more complex then this, as often people link to pages that have no actual text on them (all images and/or flash for the intro), but the page should be indexed accordingly. Additionally they may take into account what percent of links say the same thing. Using clustering algorithms you could likely tell that for george w. bush's biography you have a bunch of link terms related to him, his life, presidents, policies, iraq, etc, and then you have the term miserable failure which is on the complete other side, and unrelated to the other terms. While I'm not expert on text mining algorithms, I know such algorithms exist, and they are likely used to stop some of the google abuse.

Phil

Re:Big changes?

[Lijemo]

But democracy is just that, mob rule. What ever the majority of the mob wants, the mob gets.

Which is why a constitutional democracy is preferable to a pure democracy in most cases, and the reason why most modern democracies are, in fact, constitutional. It prevents innocent people from getting "voted off the island" for arbitrary reasons or the philosophical fad of the moment.

Goolgle never was a "democracy", whether constitutional or pure. They use popular opinion as a factor in their ranking algorithm, but that has never been the only factor that they use. If that were their only tool, then it would be unlikely that the results would be better than those the most popular "cool links" pages a la 1997.

Re:Big changes?

[martin-boundary]

I agree with you that there's no indication of the modification at all, however it's a pretty good guess that "ignoring the link structure" is what this effectively means. Every link can be viewed as being associated with a weight. When the weight is one the link is fully present, and when it's zero it's absent.

Now we already know that google have the technical ability to ignore links, using their stupid nofollow tag idea that was publicized a few years back. The blog entry suggests the new idea had a pretty small implementation cost, so we're unlikely to be talking about a completely revolutionary change to their system. That points to ignoring link structure. My guess is they've build a scanner which looks for candidate google bombs in the graph to submit to a human, and if he decides it, then the site's inlinks are discounted to nothing.

It would be idiotic to let an algorithm loose without human supervision though, since what constitutes a googlebomb is a value judgement.

Re:Big changes?

[Phoenix Rising]

I don't know exactly what this has changed, but it has certainly increased visibility of some of the sites I maintain; I'm guessing that some SEO tricks are now seen for what they are, and "good" behavior is once again rewarded.

Re:Big changes?

[dlanod]

To expand on this, PageRank is Google's algorithm's weighted democracy. GoogleBombing is the equivalent of someone stuffing the ballot box.

Re:Big changes?

[pimpimpim]

I hope this new algorithm will make that individual delisting unnecessary. I never really got the point, if you'd search for BMW dealers, you'd actually end up at the BMW website, which is what you probably wanted anyway. Also the delisting makes google seem some sort of online police, although they have no basis to do this, and I won't trust them to it.

The power they do have is to create an algorithm that gives me back the kind of pages I was looking for. I will then use google and therefore look at their ads.

Re:Big changes?

[Jerf]

There's a world of difference between "ignoring link structure and becoming like the pre-Google search engines", which is what I was responding to, and "detecting Googlebombs and selectively ignoring the links", which is what both you and I think is going on. Had the OP made it sound more like the latter than the former, I never would have replied.

Re:Big changes?

[PastaLover]

Very weird. A form of 302 hijacking maybe?

miserable failure

[TodMinuit]

Searching for "miserable failure" now brings up a million pages talking about the Googlebomb, "miserable failure". Is that much better?

The whole reason PageRank was create was because the exsiting technologies at the time, namely keywords and before that meta tags, were being abused like hell. Now PageRank is being abused left and right. It's time to take a step back and rethink.

Re:miserable failure

[harmonica]

Searching for "miserable failure" now brings up a million pages talking about the Googlebomb, "miserable failure". Is that much better?

Yes, it is. Because those seem to be the pages actually dealing with "miserable failure", different from the homepages of George Bush or Michael Moore (which were both victims of miserable failure Google bombs). If no other pages prominently feature "miserable failure", that's not the fault of the search engine. They can only find what's there.

Google bombs weren't a priority at Google precisely because the abuse was mostly done with irrelevant phrases like "miserable failure". You only search for those when you hear about Google bombs for the first time.

The whole reason PageRank was create was because the exsiting technologies at the time, namely keywords and before that meta tags, were being abused like hell. Now PageRank is being abused left and right. It's time to take a step back and rethink.

Google bombs don't have much to do with PageRank. They're about link text being abused.

As for rethinking, they're doing this all the time at Google. They're constantly updating their ranking algorithms.

Re:miserable failure

[192939495969798999]

The best solution IMHO would be to have each 2-3 results in the top 10 come from different search pattern algorithms. It would be substantially harder to corrupt multiple separate algorithms to "bomb" all the top placements, versus the same set of algorithms being applied to ALL the results (which effectively becomes 1 big algorthm and is easy to corrupt once you know how it works).

Re:miserable failure

[TodMinuit]

Google bombs weren't a priority at Google precisely because the abuse was mostly done with irrelevant phrases like "miserable failure". You only search for those when you hear about Google bombs for the first time.

Googlebombs show an inherent flaw in the ranking algorithms of Google.

As for rethinking, they're doing this all the time at Google. They're constantly updating their ranking algorithms.

Tweaking and tuning existing algorithms is not rethinking the problem.

Re:miserable failure

[nine-times]

Do you think it's possible to come up with a system that isn't subject to abuse?

Re:miserable failure

[Simetrical]

Tweaking and tuning existing algorithms is not rethinking the problem.

You think Google isn't devoting substantial resources to completely rethinking the problem? They don't want to be behind the curve when the next Google comes along with a rethink of the problem. They want to get there first. They just haven't thought of anything much better than PageRank yet, and neither has anyone else.

Re:miserable failure

[Anonymous Coward]

Searching for "miserable failure -search" (no quotes) still brings him up, though...

Re:miserable failure

[inviolet]

Google bombs don't have much to do with PageRank. They're about link text being abused.

I'm with you on this one, but it also makes me wonder...

The purpose of link text is to impose additional, personal meaning on a link, like this: "Today in the news we learned about Windows monoculture". The "Windows monoculture" link text is my own meaning imposed on the link. Google is, or at least was, putting some trust in that imposition: Google would elevate that slashdot page's ranking under the category of "Windows monoculture", on the assumption that I'm probably not misrepresenting its content.

A google-bombing can therefore occur without any conspiracy: if lots of people imagine themselves witty for jokingly linking the phrase "miserable failure" in their blog to www.whitehouse.gov, the result is an unintiontional google-bombing. And as other posters in this thread have pointed out, there is some truth value to that.

Now we hear that Google is changing this, which means paying less attention to my link text, and instead devoting more computation towards analyzing what the target page is actually saying. I suppose Google is going to read the slashdot page I linked, and decide for itself what it's about rather than taking my word that it's about Windows monoculture. That's got to be computationally expensive.

It's the same general problem as we see in academia with scholarly references. Let's say some guy writes a thesis and uses some other paper as a reference, claiming it lends support to the new theory. We can trust his citation (i.e. Google can trust the link text), or else we can mistrust him and go and dig up the reference text and read it ourself.

Obviously that kind of mistrust is expensive (but isn't all mistrust?)... but after a certain amount of abuse, it's a price we have to pay in order to maintain the same degree of certainty. As for rethinking, they're doing this all the time at Google. They're constantly updating their ranking algorithms.

Re:miserable failure

[jimbojw]

Google Image search still works just fine

Re:miserable failure

[hankwang]

However, a search for "click here" still results in a long list of download pages for various plug-ins (acrobat, shockwave, quicktime, and so on) from all those webmasters that try to googlebomb Adobe and Apple with the "click here" phrase. Coincidentally, I searched for that phrase just a few days ago and it didn't look very different.

Re:miserable failure

[kimvette]

Fixing the google bomb problem should also help to fix search engine spam resulting from doorway pages and linkfarms. Ever search for a howto article and end up going to a page full of nonsense, then getting redirected to a product page, or even worse, a completely irrelevant page? If so, you have experienced a huge drawback to Google's algorithm which made it possible for blackhat SEO scumbags (such as Traffic Power/1P First Place, or whatever the hell those assholes are calling themselves today) to easily manipulate search results. Sure, Google will ban offending sites when they are reported, but there were several problems with that:

  - When searching for "How do $foo my $widget" in Google, you will find the howto you needed on page 20 after all the search engine spam, rather than on page 1 where natural search results would lead it were it not for this flaw
  - Often site owners were unaware that the "SEO" company in question was intentionally violating Google's guidelines
  - Site owners often had to change hosts and domain names, and in some instances their company names due to Traffic Power's business practices
  - Traffic Power owners keep changing their corporate identity (dissolve and reform the company under a new name) to escape litigation
  - The innocent but not-web-savvy small business owners are fucked over in the process (see third point above)
  - It takes a proactive approach from users who give a shit to report these sites. I only bother if it is a howto or a spec sheet I really needed, and alternate search engines (Yahoo, etc.) come up dry as well, because Google does not pay me to report blackhat scum.

Re:miserable failure

[Breakfast Pants]

No they wouldn't. If you look at the HTML of your post there is a rel="nofollow" attribute on your link, and every link posted in the comments of slashdot.

Re:miserable failure

[jpkunst]

If you look at the HTML of your post there is a rel="nofollow" attribute on your link, and every link posted in the comments of slashdot.

If I look at the HTML I see this:

<a href="http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/ 26/1455224" title="slashdot.org">Windows monoculture</a>

No rel="nofollow".

JP

Re:miserable failure

[Breakfast Pants]

Your problem is you looked at the HTML. Heh, I was mistaken, it only happens on things like the website attached to a submitter's name in a story.

Easier Solution

[doroshjt]

Get ride of the I'm Feeling Lucky Button, the only time I've ever used this button is when some sends me an email saying I should search for Weapons of Mass Distruction and hit that button. haha fun, nothing found.

Re:Easier Solution

[Dr. Eggman]

I don't know, I've been pretty lucky with it.

Needed a digital calender, IFLed, now I've got a Google Calender setup.
Needed a new email service, IFLed, now I've got G-mail!
Needed a homepage that would host my many RSS feeds, IFLed, now I've got a Google Homepage!
Needed a desktop organizer, IFLed, now I've got Google Desktop!

Re:Easier Solution

[shawn(at)fsu]

I use IFL lucky often. If you know enough about what your searching for it works nice. For example do an IFL search for "Astronomy Picture Day" and you'll go right to the Astronomy Picture of The Day website. Good if your on a forign machine and you odn't have your bookmarks.

Re:Easier Solution

[massysett]

Get ride of the I'm Feeling Lucky Button, the only time I've ever used this button is when some sends me an email saying I should search for Weapons of Mass Distruction and hit that button. haha fun, nothing found.

I read an article saying that Google focus grouped this issue. Most people don't even know what the button does, and hardly anybody uses it. But Google keeps it because they think it makes the front page more whimsical.

Re:Easier Solution

[timmyf2371]

I use the I'm Feeling Lucky feature a lot - if you type a string of text into the Firefox location bar and hit the Enter key, it does an IFL search based on that text.

I find it incredibly handy to be able to type in something like "youtube" or "bbc news" or even "wiki insert topic here" and have it automatically go to the correct page. Sometimes it doesn't take you where you might expect, but I'd say my overall success rate would be 95%+.

Re:Easier Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

No need to type something that long: simply IFL on "apod".

Finally

[RyoShin]

I'm glad they took care of this horrible issue. You have no idea how hard it was for me to search for waffles before this!

Re:Finally

[sharkey]

Or French Military Victories.

Please clarify

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you saying that page rank is a miserable failure or not?

Re:Please clarify

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he's saying that it's failing, miserably. (Who else can reword it?)

Re:Please clarify

[Anonymous Coward]

Failing that, it's simply miserable. :)

Re:Please clarify

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm miserable after failure.

hahha

[fuo]

first thing i checked when i was this post was "french military victories"... then i noticed from the French-military-victories-still-works dept. glad i'm not the only one whose life wouldn't be complete without this little joke.

Re:hahha

[Anonymous Coward]

French military victory ... hmm ...

Is that like anything like a US military victory?

(hahha I made a joke too!!!)

Re:hahha

[tfbastard]

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious - Oscar Wilde

I'd rather call it a vice for the shortsighted, but to each his own.

Re:hahha

[orielbean]

Most people talking about being a patriot do so because they are trying to attack someone/thing else; that's what Wilde was talking about. "I love America, why don't you move to Canada / learn to speak Arabic / go burn a flag you hippie / Cheney, Limbaugh, Malkin,, et al.

What you mean is more like wrapping yourself in the flag. Not very different, but nuanced enough to be different. Saying that we need to fight because honor or country demands it.

Both points of view are shortsighted and ignorant, but they are used for differing reasons; one for opposition attacks and the other for thin justifications.

Well, I still think there was an legit problem

[hypermanng]

To some extent, googlebombs *were* abuse, which leads me to think Google needed to upgrade their heuristics. This appears to be much of what they've done, though I think their response was too focused on killing that specific form of abuse and not focused enough on improving analytic depth.

Re:Well, I still think there was an legit problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is my guess from which "googlebombs" still work and which don't. The google search engine has always used some combination of looking at the content of the page, and who links to that content. In the past it was possible to get a page highly ranked for a search term if there were many pages that used that term when linking to the page, regardless of whether the term appeared anywhere on the page or not.

If you look at which blog prank SOEs still work, they are ones where a bunch of blogs linked to pages specifically set up for the purpose of the googlebomb, and all contain the phrase in question. However, the ones that tried to raise the rank of an existing page that has nothing to do with the search terms are now defeated.

Therefore, it seems like they now are requiring the content page to have at least something to do with the search terms, in order for the links to count in it's pagerank. If this is what they did, it could also help with the annoying problem of a bunch of people linking to a dynamic page (today's news) for a certain story only to have that content that you searched for move off the page, while the bloglinks remain. If all websites setup their robots.txt files correctly or if bloggers always used the archive links, then this would not be an issue to begin with, but that is apparently asking too much.

Re:Well, I still think there was an legit problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you are probably correct (I mentioned something similar, since I didn't see your post the first time). I'd ask mods to rate your post insightful, but they never listen to me.

Re:Well, I still think there was an legit problem

[darkain]

I sure hope that Adobe uses the term "click here" on their site then....

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=click+here

Re:Well, I still think there was an legit problem

[George Johnston]

If you really thought that it was a problem then it is still a problem. The right wing "great president" googlebomb still works. New algorithm, hah. It is Google's China Syndrome with a techno facade.

Googlebombs...

[__aaclcg7560]

I think Google has a bigger problem than puny Googlebombs.

Stop trying to sell me stuff.

[cpirate]

Now they just need to fix the part where I'm actually trying to find information on a product and all I get back is links to sites that want to sell me the product. I know where I'm going to buy it from...I am looking for information about whether I want to buy it or not.

Re:Stop trying to sell me stuff.

[sonixtwo]

I 100% agree with you on that. I recently was looking for a manual for a motherboard (searched for the model and the word manual), and I got page after page of e-stores and review sites. Sure I could've been more specific using insite: or by putting it in quotes, but it goes to show how unintuitive results can be sometimes.

Re:Stop trying to sell me stuff.

[ekgringo]

It wouldn't be so bad if searching for product reviews came up with more than estores with the text "Be the first to review this product!"

Improvement?

[RAMMS EIN]

``Searches on 'miserable failure' and their ilk no longer bring up political targets.''

And this is an improvement?!

Re:Improvement?

[gwait]

I guess that was the "Collateral Damage" of google's older scheme..

Re:Improvement?

[bky1701]

It's wrong, anyway. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox- a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs= g6p&q=failure&btnG=Search see result 5, only one instance of the word on the page... yet somehow it is #5.

Worst

[Anonymous Coward]

It deosn't matter. You can guess what "Worst president ever" links to.

No Googlebomb required.

w00t!

Re:Worst

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. It's a tie. Bill Clinton for giving North Korea Nuclear technology and missile technology to China, and Jimmy Carter for being a failed president who can't keep his mouth shut.

Re:Worst

[Simetrical]

It deosn't matter. You can guess what "Worst president ever" links to.

No Googlebomb required.

w00t!

Yep. It links to the most prominent and popular essay on the Internet dedicated to discussing who the worst president ever is. Exactly the right result.

Alternative Page to Link To

[fyoder]

I feel a bit sad about this, since there was something wickedly fun about google bombs. But given that they subvert the intention of the search engine, it's completely understandable that they would take action against it. In fact, the surprise is that they took this long to do anything about it.

If you do the search, you'll find this page already comes up on the first page. While it's not as clever as the original google bomb, linking 'miserable failure' to it would still express the intention of the link and could be an alternative to simply removing it.... Tough call, but something should be done with all those links, since now they are essentially 'broken' and constitute just a load more cruft in an increasingly crufty web.

Re:Alternative Page to Link To

[nine-times]

I feel a bit sad about this, since there was something wickedly fun about google bombs.

I agree that it almost doesn't seem worth it to get rid of Google-bombing. Most of the effects were pretty harmless. Like you search of "miserable failure" and you get a political figure, or you search for "worst band ever" and you get Creed. Nobody is hurt by it. Oh, what, you're offended? The internet is often an offensive place. Get over it.

What I find more worrisome is the manipulations of rankings for economic purposes, i.e. "SEO". It's sometimes valid, but often it just seems like rigging the system.

as simple as being self-aware

[Speare]

I would guess that much of the fix is simply being a bit more self-aware in terms of ranking. If a page mentions 'google' 'googlebomb' and a short phrase in quotes, especially in close proximity, then there are two reasonable responses. One, weigh the page that claims a googlebomb a bit higher than other neutral mentions of that phrase, and two, reduce the weight of the phrase itself so it has a smaller effect when combined with other search terms. Extra points for a page that mentions multiple googlebombs at once.

Now, if google becomes more and more self-aware, we'll have to start hiding any neural network research and encrypt the torrents of Arnie Schwarzenegger movies.

Partypoopers

[Fatalis]

Those were fun pranks, and Google themselves admitted that it doesn't really affect the quality of search results. I can't say I feel like thanking them for this improvement.

Well...

[nweaver]

Santorum still works.

Also "Miserable Failure" still works in MSN.

Re:Well...

[VWJedi]

Also "Miserable Failure" still works in MSN.

You expected Google to fix MSN?

Re:Well...

[Shelrem]

The difference is that "Santorum" wasn't a Googlebomb in the first place (though I'm not trying to say that no one ever attempted a Googlebomb of it). It was a meme started by Dan Savage to make Rick Santorum infamous, and its popularity had nothing to do with PageRank.

Re:Well...

[kindbud]

Looks to me like the new results for "santorum" do just what Google says, it links to sites discussing the Googlebomb, or to sites discussing the Senator. I don't see any links to fecal matter and lube.

Re:Well...

[hachete]

somebody has to

Re:Well...

[NightRain]

You mean except for the descriptive text right under the first link?

Re:Well...

[kindbud]

Like I said, that's a site about the Googlebomb, not a site about felching.

Re:Well...

[AchiIIe]

I have tried to imagine how the algorithm would be scalable *and* not be blacklist-based and for the life of it I can't. How would they be able to determine maliciousness from all honest linking? Unlike other google bombs santorum links to a site that is consistent, whereas miserable failure leads to a page unrelated to the search.

I personally believe they really did make a manual blacklist of the googlebombs. I think that google bombs are useful too. a search for "Scientology" -> Still bings up xenu.net, thank god.

Possible side-affect?

[JayTech]

The question that begs to be answered is, is it possible for this new algorithm to affect legitimate site rankings?

Google and racism

[jfengel]

In general I agree with you, though I'm aware of one instance in which it wasn't just a fun prank. For some time the search "Jews" came up with an anti-Semitic web page as its first hit, as a result of googlebombing by anti-Semitic groups.

Since there are more Jews than rabid anti-Semites in the world (I hope) I'd be tempted to just tell 'em to reverse-googlebomb, making sure you've got plenty of links to more valid pages, but a concerted (if distributed) effort to target one page is still going to put it higher up in the rankings than it really deserves to be.

Re:Google and racism

[Moridineas]

Let's see... I'm not looking up these numbers at all, so I could be off.. but..

Jews worldwide:
6 million roughly in Israel
8-10 million ? in the US
maybe 1-2 million across europe
possibly ? a couple million more spread across former soviet union, south america, middle east, etc

so let's be generous and say 20--max 25--million jews worldwide?

number of anti-semites? well, let's take the populations of egypt, iran, and palestinian territories. that's maybe...160 million? and let's say 20% of people in those countries by our standards are anti-semitic. now take some anti-semites from US, Russia, Europe, etc.... throw in others from across Muslim world. (* note, I'm not claiming Arabs, Muslims, etc are natural anti-semites--but for MANY in middle eastern societies, hating Jews and hating Israel is one and the same)

Not looking good...

Re:Google and racism

[GigsVT]

8-10 million affluent Jews that have the ear of the president of the USA vs a bunch of people in the desert with no running water... Fair fight there.

I don't hate Jews, I only hate interventionist foreign policy driving by a small special interest group. We have no business invading the middle east and fighting these Jew's holy war for them.

Re:Google and racism

[Anonymous Coward]

Palestinians are semites.

Re:Google and racism

[skoaldipper]

There never was any holy war. Jews have always lived in that region, even while dispersed amongst the many nations. Only recently, within the past two centuries it was understood by all civilized democratic nations that this heritage and people needed some protection against historical and persistent persecution. So, under the auspices of Brittish direction that state was established. It was about dignity. Human dignity. The United States nor Brittain nor any other democratic nation is fighting Israel's holy war. Far from it. We as a civilized people are fighting for the protection of other democractic and civilized people worldwide. There is something to be said about loyalty. As separate as even our own cultural differences widen today between the States and the European continent, would you not have us defend the French or Germans or even Turkey? I think too much is implied here when people dabble and fancy with trite expressions like "influence" and "interest groups". Let's not skirt around the issue, shall we? This is the same infant kindling which fed the early Nazi political firestorm of "Jews controlling all the world's Banking and Commerce". So, I ask you. Do we really wish to follow down that path again?

Re:Google and racism

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, well, let's leave them to be slaughtered. That'd be so civilised!

Re:Google and racism

[unborn]

Arabs are anti-Semites? Did you know that Arabs *are* Semites?

Re:Google and racism

[Moridineas]

Yes, yes, of course you're technically correct. Look up the word anti-semite though, you would be hard pressed to find a usage EVER that refers to any non-Jewish semites.

Ok, so I gave it a try...

[StressGuy]

I did a google search on "miserable failure" and I got back links describing the "anti-googlebomb" algorithm and president Bush.

So...did it work or not?

Re:Ok, so I gave it a try...

[shani]

Buried deep down in TFA (okay, in the first paragraph):

By improving our analysis of the link structure of the web, Google has begun minimizing the impact of many Googlebombs. Now we will typically return commentary, discussions, and articles about the Googlebombs instead.

So, yes, it worked.

That info is from Froogle

[Animats]

That's coming from Froogle. Companies that sign up with Froogle or Google Checkout have some additional info about them. Try, say, Super Warehouse, which Google describes as "Online retailer of color laser printers, laptops, hard drives, LCD monitors, and digital cameras". That text isn't from the "www.superwarehouse.com" web page, which starts out "Printers - Scanners - Toner - Monitors - Projectors & More at Super Warehouse".

Click Here...

[Anonymous Coward]

And "Click Here" still points to Adobe PDF Downloads...

Moo

[Chacham]

Do you need a search warrant for a Google bomb?

Isn't this the entire methodology of Google?

[popo]

I was under the impression that the link text was the entire means by which Google
created their PageRank algorithm.

Sure, it gets abused with GoogleBombing (although I can't say I really care) but
if this changes, doesn't PageRank as a whole change in pretty radical ways?

Re:Isn't this the entire methodology of Google?

[geoffspear]

If you think you know exactly how the PageRank algorithm works, you should really be making billions of dollars consulting with SEOs instead of posting on Slashdot.

Re:Isn't this the entire methodology of Google?

[Simetrical]

I was under the impression that the link text was the entire means by which Google
created their PageRank algorithm.

Nope. It depends heavily on how many sites link to you, how highly rated those sites are, what they're about, etc. See the Wikipedia article.

Re:Isn't this the entire methodology of Google?

[popo]

uptight, much?

Ironically

[XnavxeMiyyep]

The first result on Google for miserable failure is this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3298443.stm

'Miserable failure links to Bush'

Re:Ironically

[anagama]

At least "worst buy" still works.

Re:Ironically

[GigsVT]

Hah, that's probably because enough people call it that in casual conversation, not intending to bomb the site really.

Liar

[ElephanTS]

Very annoying. It's a bit censorious of Google (once again).

Two days ago typing in 'Liar' to Google and using 'I feel lucky' would bring you to the autobiography of Tony Blair. Not so anymore. A sad day.

Re:Liar

[Anonymous Coward]

censorious \sen-SOR-ee-uhs\, adjective:
1. Tending to blame, condemn, or criticize; harshly critical.
2. Implying or expressing harsh criticism or disapproval; as, "censorious remarks."

Tony Blair

[MrSteveSD]

Damn, they're right. Googling "Liar" no longer brings back Tony Blair as the top link.

Google is still world most evil corp

[gaika]

See it the first result: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=world+most+ev il+corporation

miserable failure

[way2trivial]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=mise rable+failure&btnG=Search

still works for me.. the only thing I see consistently scanning down the search result is

george bush!

Still serving it's purpose...

The SCO search still works

[weeboo0104]

The search for SCO still works.

Re:The SCO search still works

[GigsVT]

No it doesn't. The links are all to sites about the googlebomb, not to sco.com. That's how he said this fix works, you search for the bomb and you find metadiscussion about the bomb, but the bomb itself no longer links to the target.

French military victories

[gravesb]

Still works

Re:French military victories

[Liberaltarian]

Don't you mean French military defeats? *ducks*

Re:French military victories

[gravesb]

Try the bomb. That is the result.

Re:French military victories

[slcdb]

Wow! This has got to be a first! Even though the parent was the one who ducked, it ended up going over *your* head!

Re:French Military Victories

[Threni]

That works with the US too! Something about Vietnam or Iraq or something...

Re:French military victories

[plj]

But sniff... I'm going to miss this.

not really, they have redefined Santorum

[wwwrench]

Santorum still works.

The funny thing about that search, is that if you google santorum, then the description of the website that google posts is not taken from the website at all, but actually says it is a satirical site:

Santorum
Satirical attempt to name the frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex after Senator Rick Santorum.

Anyone know what that is about? Did Senator Santorum pressure google to make this change, or is there some less evil explaination?

Re:not really, they have redefined Santorum

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the description from dmoz.org (which Google Directory is a front-end of).

The Liberal Propagandist...

[Anonymous Coward]

... will have to think of something else to game google. Sounds like in the final analysis, the "miserable failure" was... the liberal! He who laughs last, laughs best! hahaha!

Mod Parent Down

[physicsnick]

"I'm Feeling Lucky" was never the problem with googlebombs. While googlebombs still worked, if you did a regular search on "miserable failure", you'd still get George Bush at top of the list. Are you sure you know what that button actually does?

Besides, lots of people (such as myself) use that button all the time, and it's especially useful when the information is widely available and more important than the page that hosts it. For example, need song lyrics? Type in "lyrics [song] [artist]", click IFL. Boom, instant lyrics.

good vs bad bombs

[Anonymous Coward]

How is a googlebomb (defined as linking a 'bad' phrase with a hated object, therefore a negative act) different from a bunch of fanboys linking to their favorite FPS with the phrase "hottest thing ever", which presumbably doesn't appear on the web site for the video game? People are complaining that googlebombing is bad because it's a negative act, but it can be a totally positive linking system as well.

How they did it.

[goombah99]

I'm just guessing here but it seems to me that there was an easy way to implement this. Namely for any short search typed in, append the word "googlebomb". anything that has become a google bomb is likely to have sites discussing how the term has become a google bomb. Then they can give negative page ranks to any site pointed to from a site discussing "googlebombs".

Re:How they did it.

[timeOday]

To some extent, googlebombs *were* abuse

Well that's the question, isn't it? Why do you think they were abuse?

If people look up "facist," they should get Hitler or Stalin, even if those guys never called themselves that, and there's no precise definition. It's what people think about them.

Re:How they did it.

[jlynd]

To some extent, googlebombs *were* abuse

Well that's the question, isn't it? Why do you think they were abuse? If people look up "facist," they should get Hitler or Stalin, even if those guys never called themselves that, and there's no precise definition. It's what people think about them.

This raises an interesting idea about the exact nature of Google (and other search engines) and exactly the type of information they aid in providing. Are they providing the most relevant factual information? Or are they providing the most relevant information according to the ever evolving "hive" mind that is the internet?

Point being, I see the evolution of Google and the internet itself becoming some sort of "Mother Brain" that people can tap into when needed, and as time goes on, at an ever increasing rate at insanely intimate levels. Do we want this collective intelligence being queried for the most factual information, or do we want it used for extracting what the hive thinks is the most factual?

Hmmmm, interesting to say the least.

Re:How they did it.

[VirusEqualsVeryYes]

Or are they providing the most relevant information according to the ever evolving "hive" mind that is the internet?

But who determines what the most relevant information is?

A shocking number of people here believe that Google should attempt to make decisions regarding what is and is not relevant. This is not the nature of the Internet. Until the telecom corporations win their multitiered internet, the Internet is "the people". Therefore, "the people" should decide what is and what is not relevant. If "the people" decide that George Bush is a miserable failure, then that should be the relevant information.

It's mod rule, you say? Well, I don't see much of a governing body (even the specifications are merely "recommendations"!), so I'd say the Internet itself (and not just Googlebombing) is itself anarchic mob rule, also known as "democracy". And hey, it's seemed to work out pretty damn well so far.

I think Googlebombing is a bit like letting Nazis have free speech in the states. It's not exactly a good thing, but to block free speech would be far, far worse. So I don't think Googlebombing is a good thing--I think it's an intentional abuse of the system--but in my opinion, for what it's worth, it's closer to being a good thing than a bad one.

Re:How they did it.

[Anonymous Coward]

If people look up "facist," they should get Hitler or Stalin, even if those guys never called themselves that, and there's no precise definition. It's what people think about them.

Indeed they will get Hitler and Stalin when looking up "fascist" (spelling!). They will get pages talking about Hitler and Stalin if the said pages include the word "fascist". That's precisely how it should work. (Although in reality you'll get a page on Mussolini before the other two guys.)

And I doubt they have removed the "relevance context from link text" feature completely, just modified the algorithms in a way which blocks obvious Googlebombing.

If you want to disseminate your ideas about Hitler and Stalin being connected to fascism, you should make a page about the subject matter and get people to link to it instead of link spamming somebody else's page which doesn't even support the idea.

Re:How they did it.

[evilviper]

If people look up "facist," they should get Hitler or Stalin, even if those guys never called themselves that, and there's no precise definition. It's what people think about them.

Googlebombs weren't about history.org linking to hilter.com with the text: "Fascist"... Googlebombs were about CuteKittenBlog.blogsyou.cx linking to a site, using the text "French Military Victories".

It shouldn't be hard to automatically sort out which of those cases should be given weight, and which should not.

But to speak to your example... Hitler and Stalin don't have a lot of control over the webpages dedicated to them, so they WILL contain the term "fascist", and come up on any search engine.

"Idiot" shouldn't turn up Whitehouse.gov, no matter how much of an idiot Bush is, because the webpage will have NOTHING about the subject, and so will be completely useless. Google isn't about compiling a list like that (Hitler, Stalin, etc.), it's about finding additional references, and you won't find that on a site that doesn't even mention the issue you've searched for.

ie. If I search Google for "Best Cookies", I don't want it to link 500 companies that make cookies. I would want a site that DISCUSSES which cookies are the best. Would anybody search for a generic, non-brand term, and WANT to get a huge search result list of possible brands, as opposed to useful info?

Re:How they did it.

[StikyPad]

Probably because it was an orchestrated effort to manipulate the rankings for a certain search phrase? Ends and means...

Why can't they just look at the "linked to" page?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Miserable Failure" can link to whitehouse.gov, but if "miserable failure" isn't there, it is put underneath pages that actually have the phrase. That would help prevent Googlebombing, since (presumably) George Bush/Jimmy Carter/Michael Moore won't refer to themselves that way.

KISS

[nicklott]

This is Google, I think they've paid a monkey 15k a year to look for bombs and manually fix them in their index...

Re:KISS

[darkain]

Who needs a monkey? Just write a script that searches "googlebomb" for discussion pages on googlebombs, and automatically demote the sites mentioned. Why waste a good 15k?

Google broke my intarweb...

[rthille]

Searching for 'worst president ever' doesn't link to the whitehouse's biography of Bush anymore...

Re:Google broke my intarweb...

[rthille]

Oh Crap, forgot to check "Post Anonymously" Doh!

Screw them

[yesthatmcgurk]

"Screw them" brings up the original Kos post as the fifth hit; I believe that's as high as it ever went.

Re:Screw them

[harks]

What did that used to go to?

French Military Victories

[notshannon]

The tricolore still flies... Vive la france!

google: french military victories

Took them long enough

[Nom du Keyboard]

Took them long enough. Their liberal founders must have finally decided that the political advantage of this tactic had finally run out.

the way the fix was rolled out

[hachete]

is spooking me a little. I've become conditioned to expect massive amounts of spin, yammering analysts, bloggers, a 2gb download, and yet more opportunities to get royally screwed in the form of updated EULAs, fancy licencing contracts, signing my life away for software rentals etc etc. No, Google just fix a *real* problem with their then they tell us. There has to be evil somewhere here, it can't be that simple. *dons tinfoil hat* and goes hunting snarks.

Re:the way the fix was rolled out

[Killjoy_NL]

"I've become conditioned to expect massive amounts of spin, yammering analysts, bloggers, a 2gb download, and yet more opportunities to get royally screwed in the form of updated EULAs, fancy licencing contracts, signing my life away for software rentals etc etc"

We're not playing World of Warcraft here ;)

Google Images still correct

[MrCopilot]

Oh well at least Google images is still correct.

http://images.google.com/images?lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UT F-8&q=miserable%20failure&sa=N&tab=wi

Re:Google Images still correct

[rbarreira]

And since google often displays the first image results even when doing web search, I can see Bush when doing web search too!

Tom Smykowski

[anaesthetica]

I'd mod you down, but there's no "-1, Some Jackass Jumping To Conclusions"

You know, I had an idea like that once. A long time ago. It was a "Jump to Conclusions" mod. You see, it would be this mod input that you would put on the bottom of each comment, and it would have different conclusions available in it that you could jump to.

Re:Tom Smykowski

[Anonymous Coward]

The Chinese word for code, "luan ma," literally means "messy symbols" or "messy digits."

That's not true, if you're talking about code in the programming sense. "Luan ma" would be interpreted as a coded (as in encrypted) message!

French Military...

[Shaltenn]

Google "French Military Victories" and click I'm Feeling Lucky.

I'm not 100% on if this is in the same vein as "Miserable Failure" but it seems to be. So clearly there are still bugs to work out.

Well they finally did something about it

[Anonymous Coward]

I checked "waffles" a few weeks back and it still brought up John Kerry's offical website. Today, Kerry does't show up anywhere in the top 100 (as far as I checked).

GoogleBomb Still Exists

[jwitthuhn]

Oddly enough, 'Worst Band in the World' searched on Google still brings up "See more results for: Creed".

Some google bombs still work

[Anonymous Coward]

A search 1 year ago for a former employer's business did not bring up his website. Knowing about google bombs, I created a few blogs, linked his site to a few different likely quieries for folks who might want to find his site. I posted the links repeatedly in posts and in the main page of those faux blogs, and viola: top result on likely quieries.

Now, if all of the google bombs had been shut down, his page should probably revert to its former page rank, right?

But it didn't. Still #1, for no other discernable reason than the links from the blogs created to increase the site's page rank.

So why do SOME google bombs still work? If I hadn't google bombed the business's website, it wouldn't be in the top 100. It is still #1 today. Why?

Re:Why can't they just look at the "linked to" pag

[Anonymous Coward]

Thinking about this a bit further, it would be easy enough to test if this was part of the algorithm. Find out what the most uncomplimentary phrase that can be found (or made) on the target page is, and use that as the basis for a Googlebomb. If it raises the results for the search dramatically, you're set.

Politically Motivated

[Anonymous Coward]

While we're on the subject, in 2002 typing "go to hell" into Google would bring Microsoft as the first result. A few days after The Register reported it was apparently "fixed".

http://www.topsight.net/article.php/20020920180446 757`

I wonder why they choose to fix the one about Microsoft and not Bush.

Obligatory Star Wars Joke

[TheRealAnonymousCowa]

No, I am your parent link...

piping

[pipingguy]

still works.

Page Rank is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

There are wide inconsistencies in the SERP this essentially means googles
algorithms has failed. Looks like google is doing manual editing of SERP by
Googlebomb squad headed by Matt Cutts to find and diffuse googlebombs.
Cutts himself says so http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/undetectable-spam/ his
job is to find undetectable spam ;-)

Google Supports President Bush

[BillGatesLoveChild]

Thanks for modifying your search algorithm for political reasons. Your previous explanation said you did not interfere with this because it would be... *wrong* to modify your search algorithm for political reasons. (I won't give the link, because you took that explanation down when you flip-flopped).

Now that you've demonstrated you will do this, how about removing references to Iraq and Body Bags. That just upsets people.

Thanks
Karl^H^H^H^H

Google Flip-Flopped

[George Johnston]

• In 2004 they said this was the opinion of the web.
• In 2005 they explained why George Bush came up when people were thinking about New Orleans and Katrina and typed the word "failure" into Google.
• In 2006 they started a PAC that gave heavily to Republicans.

I suspect they are explaining this as a "change in algorithm" to avoid a repeat of the bad press they got when it was discovered they censored google.cn results at the request of China's government.

Boobies - Fark

[Anonymous Coward]

A query for "Boobies" no longer returns fark.com as the first hit.

HA! Take that, Drew!

I have no problem with Drew, just his biased moderators. He keeps unbanning my account and one of his moderators keeps banning me. When one has a problem moderator, should one not fire the moderator in question, rather than put extra work into unbanning users for which that problem moderator possesses a personal dislike?

slashdot is much better with its metamoderation. bad moderators will eventually permanently lose moderation privileges.

Cut the green wire.

[Bushido Hacks]

*snip* OH SHI--KABOOM!

This googlebomb still works!

[twebb72]

Try 'french military victories' and click 'I'm feeling lucky'. At least this one still works :) Try it before its busted by the GOO police.

Google's new "failure" search

[BillGatesLoveChild]

I tried searching for "failure" in Google today. The #1 entry is now a skimpy page that lists "1. Mark Herpel and Congestive Heart Failure Part... 2. Judge Fudge: No one has claimed this blog 3. Dongs.dll: Dear Log, But [Wikipedia] has established a berth in the courtroom, despite concerns among some legal scholars about the dangers of relying on..."

Unless you wanted to know about "congestive heart failure" (in which case you wouldn't have just typed "failure"), that page is completely useless.

When Google promoted this to #1 over the mess in Iraq, a bit of Google died.

John Prescott

[gantry]

This news is a real shame. A search for "fuckwit" used to lead to the official page of the (UK) deputy prime minister, John Prescott, who fits the description admirably.

It's outright political pandering. Google should be ashamed of themselves.