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

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: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?

[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?

[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.