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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.

5 of 221 comments (clear)

  1. Re:And this is just adding to it by teslar · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Heresy. Anything related to one of the sites which are lucky enough to earn their own link on the main page of /. is always /.-worthy.

    Also, the concept that observing any property of the internet within the internet can affect that property is interesting. If the choice is between reflecting on that or finishing that bloody piece of code I'm writing, I'll take the former, even if it may ultimately be pointless ;)

  2. Died in a * accident by kasperd · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Google will actually let you search for Died in a * accident. If you do so you can see what words people put in there. Right now the fourth result is actually "Died in a blogging accident" (right after three car accidents). I have used that to find out what might be the missing word in other sentences like Grab your * and double click or Either you are with us or you are with the *. Even more interesting if combined with the - operator to filter out the obvious possibilities.

    --

    Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
  3. It's due to the death in China and Digg by ckedge · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's because of this:

          http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/01/11/china.blogger/index.html

    and also this:

          http://www.digg.com/world_news/Blogger_Beaten_to_Death_in_China_for_Filming_Argument ..where someone point out that "xkcd's coming wasn't quite so funny any more" but did not provide a direct link.

    I can't believe I'm the first one to point this out!

  4. Re:I take exception by x_MeRLiN_x · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't follow XKDC, but it didn't take me long to find out this has happened before.

    This comic spawned a whole different type of [art|softcore pornography]. If you accept the warning and scroll to the bottom you'll see proof of how wrong you are. If you're thinking that these events aren't the same because WetRiffs and XKCD are apparently operated by the same person, you should see that thousands did mention WetRiffs on their web log.

    By the way, 33% of your post was misspelt.

  5. WHAT WERE THE TWO RESULTS? by exhilaration · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Damn it, why hasn't anyone asked what the original two results were? Is it even possible to get that information anymore?