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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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.

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: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!