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XKCD Inadvertently Causes Googlebomb

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the first-rule-of-googlebombs-is-don't-talk-about-googlebombs dept.

MrCopilot writes "As I noted yesterday (and was joined by many others)... in an offhand observation xkcd has singlehandedly changed a small section of the Internet. Changing the results from a Google search for "Died in a Blogging Accident" from 2 to (at this writing) over 7,170 in a little more than 24 hours." If you aren't reading xkcd, you're missing out.

6 of 221 comments (clear)

  1. That's no bomb by JackHoffman · · Score: 5, Informative

    A Googlebomb is when a page becomes associated with an unfitting search term which doesn't appear on the page itself. This effect is caused when many website authors place misnamed links to that page, usually in an intentional and coordinated manner.

  2. I take exception by Yurka · · Score: 4, Informative

    to "inadvertently". You have no reason to assume that the author is not smart enough to have foreseen (and even counted on) this effect.

    Actually, I take a separate exception to "inadvertantly".

    --
    I can assure you, the best way to get rid of dragons is to have one of your own.
  3. The original Google Bomb is a VERY bad thing by MichaelCrawford · · Score: 4, Informative
    It's a form of Black Hat search engine optimization, in which you destroy a competitor's website. The way it's done is to set up a link farm of your own, but with every page pointing at your competitor's site. Eventually Google and the other search engine operators discover the link farm, but assume that your competitor put it there, and remove it from the index.

    Thus they tell me at webmasterworld.

    --
    Request your free CD of my piano music.
    1. Re:The original Google Bomb is a VERY bad thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      That's not how it works. When Google recognizes a link farm, it discounts the effect of these links. The result is that the link farm no longer contributes positively to the page rank of the target page, but it does not penalize the target page beyond that. Google has punished sites for shady search engine optimization, but in those cases the sites had always used on-site techniques which could not have been performed by an outsider. Anyway, if that spamming technique could kick other sites out of the Google index, it would be called a "Joe job" (in analogy to the false flag email attack.)

      A Google bomb is when many people link to a page and use the same unfitting link text, and then the target page moves UP in the rankings for that particular search term.

  4. Re:And this is just adding to it by UbuntuDupe · · Score: 5, Informative

    No, you're confusing the Uncertainty Principle with the Observer Effect.

    "The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is also frequently confused with the "observer effect". The uncertainty principle actually describes how precisely we may measure the position and momentum of a particle at the same time -- if we increase the precision in measuring one quantity, we are forced to lose precision in measuring the other. Thus, the uncertainty principle deals with measurement, and not observation. The idea that the Uncertainty Principle is caused by disturbance (and hence by observation) is not considered to be valid by some, although it was extant in the early years of quantum mechanics, and is often repeated in popular treatments."

    --
    Apology to Ubuntu forum.
  5. Re:And this is just adding to it by SNR+monkey · · Score: 4, Informative

    There seem to be a lot of xkcd readers here which makes it all the more surprising that someone has not pointed out that if you replace "blog" with "blag" (as xkcd is often inclined to do - "News/Blag") in the search "Died in a blogging accident", you get exactly two results. Just like the comic depicts.

    Of course, now that I've posted this, people will probably go crazy running up its ranking too.