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Defused Googlebombs May Backfire
linguista submits for us today an article on the Guardian site, which theorizes Google's bomb defusing may backfire on the company. Article author Nicholas Carr calls out Google for tweaking search results based on the company public image. As he notes, the Google blog entry announcing the end to bombing didn't cite a desire for better queries as the reason behind the change. Instead "... we've seen more people assume that they are Google's opinion, or that Google has hand-coded the results for these Googlebombed queries. That's not true, and it seemed like it was worth trying to correct that misperception." While the general image of Google is still that it 'does no evil', it's worth noting that the search engine is not solely a link popularity contest. The results you get from Google are tweaked by a number of factors, and at the end of the day the company has complete control over what rises to the top.
Is it just me, or does it sound like this was written by someone who was previously making a living off of increasing people's pagerank and is now miffed that his job is harder?
I read the internet for the articles.
They tweaked the algorythm so that it fixed googlebombs in general, not manually removed these particular bombs. In fact, in the text about the tweak, they specifically stated that they changed the algorythm so it would work with multiple languages, etc
Check out my sysadmin blog!
I'm not sure how they can keep saying they do no evil now that Pitr works there.
Sounds to me like Google just made their product/service better is all. Of course Google can control what goes to the top of the search engine - that is what they do. They are "doing no evil" by upgrading and refining their algorithms if anything.
Just because people cannot ghost and bomb their pages to get quick boosts in pagerank does not mean that Google is doing evil, it just means they were never good at their jobs to begin with.
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
Of course they have all the damn'n controll over what comes up!
What the hell do you think would pop up if you would look up "linux penguins" ?
I'll bet you that would be a real life penguin with a dildo up his arse offering you a video for only $5.99!
Now, given that this originally was their strong point as compared to other search engines, and they picked up many more articles that were useful, yes, it might be a problem. However, you could also say that the simple fact that they used an algorithm that hadn't been gamed by all of the 'search engine optimized' as their real advantage, and there may be an advantage to changing it so that it's a moving target.
I mean, how awful would it be if we actually found the stuff we were looking for when we searched, rather than the search engine spam? If it gives worse results, then it's a problem
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
French Military Victories still works. Guess that one really must be objective information.
By contrast, I administer a MediaWiki installation for a non-profit organization. I get link spam constantly, but that fails to appear on Google. I can only assume the search engine knows about the "real" Googlebomb links and ignores them.
The world is my oyster. That's why it's always in a stew.
Google should expose at least part of their ranking formula as a dead-simple GUI to control parameters to Google users. That way we can control our own "Google" rankings according to our own agendas. People could share their params with friends so we don't have to figure out what to do to be trustworthy, just which of our friends' searching techniques we trust. Just like in the real world.
Doing so would go a long way towards making it less necessary to trust Google. Eventually we would be best served by a totally open ranking client that searches multiple competing backend indices. But if Google handed us "trust web" to do it ourselves, they'd probably preempt that inevitable infomediation that would also disconnect them from the users, and thereby from their highest value relationship.
--
make install -not war
You guys will get Slashdot in trouble, what if the Boston police are reading this article?
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Google is a private company. Its mission is to provide a product that people find useful while making money off advertisement. Google bombs run counter to both purposes, but removing them is obviously not a democratic process. Since domain name system doesn't seem to working for this purpose, I guess we do need a government or non-profit entity providing unbiased search results where each web site will be allowed to register keywords that accurately reflects its purpose and obvious violators are held responsible. This will make sure that commercially unpopular speech can be still found.
They are still evil for their encouragement of the Chinese government's censorship and jack-booted press tactics. The Shrubya googlebomb actually gave them a karma point back, and now they've gone and thrown it away.
I choose to search with other sites since they are not only evil, but hypocrites.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Google's explanation for why they hadn't fixed this in the past was that Googlebombs never displaced useful searches. That is, they didn't get in the way of many people actually trying to find information. The canonical, "miserable failure" example illustrates this -- is there any reason to expect that Google would give you useful hits for that search? I can't think of a reason to use that search that unless you were just curious about what Google would return.
It was clear from Google's release that they considered the Googlebombs a perhaps amusing nuisance, but it wasn't something they supported. Rather, it just wasn't worth the effort of fixing since that effort would be at the cost of other development that they felt would do more to improve user searches.
Now, they found that people were assuming these funny responses were somehow endorsed by Google. They could put up a disclaimer, but a) not many people actually read fine print, and b) many would not believe the disclaimer anyway. Since the Googlebombs didn't actually serve any useful purpose and Google didn't want to be mistaken for endorsing whatever might be inferred from the presence of these odd search results, they did away with it. That's perfectly legitimate.
So, Google really DID claim they were making a minor improvement to their search results through this change, but that wasn't the highest priority. It's not like they've got any particular duty to maintain details of the PageRank algorithm. Further, protecting their image IS an important goal, particularly when it can be done through a means that has a positive impact on the searches. Too bad that a cute Google game is gone, but another one will crop up before long, I'm sure...
ROTFLMAO
Here are a few shining turds from TFA:
Wow! What the hell motivation do you think Google was built on in the first place? The motivation was to achieve popularity, by being a good search engine. Yes, that's the "public image" they aimed for. So, what changed?
OMG. Do you actually mean to tell me... I didn't invent Google?
Seriously, the entire lame article was just one big excuse to use the word "salubrious".
So they ensure that the linking text uses words that are consistent with the linked document, before correlating the linking text with the linked document. It might be sophisticated enough for handling synonyms or extracting characteristic words from the document using machine learning. This is a nice iterative improvement to their algorithms. Why is it that every mention of Google induces strong resentment? Google can do no good among so many here. So Google is having its time in the public and press spotlight, get over it. Imagine how crappy the computer industry would be without Google: most critical internet infrastructure would be tied to specific client applications.
Just remember that there are LOTS of other search engines out there. If Google starts to freak you out, or just simply begins to annoy you, you're always free to search elsewhere, too. Then, as other people start to feel similarly, they'll switch to something else as well, ultimately leading to a decrease in popularity of Google. That's the general theory, anyway.
Remember, Google isn't a monopoly on search (far from it). They're just the most popular because they've worked hard at providing their users with relevant results and keeping the interface simple to use. As far as I'm concerned, tweaking an algorithm (not just censoring certain terms) is a welcome improvement that should mitigate cheating the page rank and forcing less relevant/desireable results to the top.
You might - it depends on the author. ;)
However, you're correct that you won't find it in his autobiography.
Still - good point about the page actually containing the phrase that was being searched for.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
See this Yahoobomb, which faithfully links to the world's number one mostest miserable failure of all time.
Microsoft's search offering (a Billbomb?) only comes up with Jimmy Carter and Michael Moore, at places two and seven respectively, with the rest of the results being links to stories about the Googlebomb as it pertains to that miserable failure .
Yeah, but I'll bet his attempts at writing an autobiography will be a miserable failure.
"My Pet Congress - a children's story by George W. Bush"
I can remember a time when Googling "crappy software" resulted in Micro$oft being the first result.
... news at 11!
Wow, Google is able to control the ranking of pages in their own search engine by tweaking their own algorithms? That's a surprise to me!
It's impossible that the company has total control of what comes up for every query. There are simply too many queries and too many pages. Anybody who wants to control that needs hundreds of billions of control knobs. Google would need a lot of employees to twist and turn them.
BTW, the suggested approach was tried by AskJeeves and failed. They needed too many editors to edit page ranks per keyword and combinations. And they covered not even 1% of the pages Google covers.
The results you get from Google are tweaked by a number of factors, and at the end of the day the company has complete control over what rises to the top.
And tell me exactly how this is different than any news site, non-Google search engine, etc. on the Internet (or tv, or print media)?
-M
My guess is that the "tweaking" they have done actually just consist on demanding that the page contains the term being searched for. Which is bad, since sometimes the best page uses an alternative terminology for the subject you are looking for.
If I'm right, we can resume googlebombing simply by picking the words or phrases from the page we want to "bomb".
"While the general image of Google is still that it 'does no evil'"
Bullshit.
Gone are the days that people used 99% of their time to work on content. Now in some cases it's 50% content, and 50% kissing Google's ass in some SEO-optimizing obsessive compulsive way to get on the main page.
And it's just one search engine. A search engine with a nearly $100 Billion market capitalization. Who know has a "terms of service" that makes people alter their content to please Google. And people find this sane.
People's 'net worth are now being determined by Google, and people are worried about being "caught" by Google or displeasing Google.
What happened?
10 years ago this would have been seen as an aberration, and people would have thumbed their nose at it. I remember when Google was a cluster of free OS servers that was the alternative to the omni-present Yahoo, and everyone was refreshed by the alternative.
Now look at us. Clamoring to climb to the top of some site page by tweaking our websites in any number of unnatural ways ... and in my opinion, content has suffered because of it. The best content does not always get your site listed the highest, the most "optimized" site does.
And over the years, I have found the searches less and less and less relevant. I know sites that are the authority on their subject that appear on the 10th page because they concentrate only on content instead of wringing their hands over what Google's bot thinks of them.
It's a shame that we have gotten to this point.
I am aware that it sounds like blasphemy, but Google is now probably my 3rd or 4th engine, well behind *gasp* Microsoft's Live Search which seems to crawl much more frequently and update databases much more often.
Google only has as much power as we give it.
I think we have given it far too much.
I think it is negatively impacting content.
This is only my opinion, and I will get off my soapbox now.
I am off to Search Engine Optimize a site of questionable content ... time that could be much better spent by making better content.
Such is the state of the web in 2007.