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?

[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:Ironically

[anagama]

At least "worst buy" still works.

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: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.

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.

[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.

Google broke my intarweb...

[rthille]

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

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.