XKCD Inadvertently Causes Googlebomb

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.

Comments

And this is just adding to it

[ShadowMarth]

Not that I don't love XKCD, but is this really /.-worthy? Oh well. Still, awesome, and each post only serves to compound the results!

Re:And this is just adding to it

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes! What are you, some kind of heathen?

Re:And this is just adding to it

[teslar]

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 ;)

Re:And this is just adding to it

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that the Uncertainty Principle? It certainly would be cool if it was proved this could be applied to the Web or the so-called "Blogosphere".

Re:And this is just adding to it

[Arimus]

"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 ;)"

Sir,
I must formally give you notice that you are to hand over immediately to the appropriate authorities your geek license and your /. account.
Nothing should ever come between a geek and his code.

(well other than pizza and coffee - but that tends to be more between the geek and the keyboard if they're messy eaters)

Re:And this is just adding to it

[El Yanqui]

Also, the concept that observing any property of the internet within the internet can affect that property is interesting.

No fair! You changed the outcome by measuring it!

Re:And this is just adding to it

[UbuntuDupe]

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."

Re:And this is just adding to it

[SNR monkey]

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.

Re:And this is just adding to it

[kylben]

No, you're confusing the Uncertainty Principle with the Observer Effect Nevertheless, "heisenblogging" would still be the obvious and useful term, should anybody suggest coining it...

And by submitting this story

[saibot834]

You probably change Google's result for "Died in a Blogging Accident" more than xkcd did.

Blog writers prosecutions

[arigram]

Considering that many people around the world have been prosecuted for their blogs, imprisoned, tortured and maybe even killed, it is not just humor, its a terrifying fact.

Re:Blog writers prosecutions

[Caiwyn]

Considering that many people around the world have been prosecuted for their blogs, imprisoned, tortured and maybe even killed, it is not just humor, its a terrifying fact.

I've never been a proponent of medical marijuana, but somebody needs to get this guy some weed, STAT.

Re:Blog writers prosecutions

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to look into the meaning of this "accident" word.

Re:Blog writers prosecutions

[The13thSin]

I'm pretty sure those deaths don't count as accidents...

Re:Blog writers prosecutions

[Dr. Cody]

Don't you get it; it's a neologism, like "to disappear [someone]."

e.g. Mr. Hammond was accidented in the shower just days after blogging about President Obama's top-secret plans to invade Canada.

Re:Blog writers prosecutions

[Anonymous Coward]

they have oil.

"Died in a frist psot accident"

[pikine]

So apparently he didn't make it, and I'm making this nth post on behalf of the would-be first poster.

Re:"Died in a frist psot accident"

[Mikkeles]

'Your search - "died in a coding accident" - did not match any documents.'
so I'm safe :)

Re:"Died in a frist psot accident"

[maxwell demon]

I guess you just killed your safety. Surely Google will soon pick up your comment, thus making coding accidents more dangerous.

Practical idea

[mapkinase]

Jews write "G-d" instead of "God". It's their thing.

May be we should try to write in metaquotes about google searches, modifying quoted search phrases...

That's no bomb

[JackHoffman]

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.

Re:That's no bomb

[Rob the Bold]

True. More of a googlewhack, really.

I'm Confused

[smackenzie]

I've read every TFA link in the post, but I'm not sure I understand what is going on.

1. What is the true definition of a Google Bomb? Are we confusing this with Google Washing?

2. Why is this incident a Google Bomb?

3. What makes this particular incident Slashdot newsworthy?

I think this might be a funny scenario -- but I don't get it!? Thanks for the info.

Re:I'm Confused

[Feanturi]

Stuff that matters to whom? It mattered to the submitter, and it matters to anyone who finds it amusing or interesting. You are not Slashdot, and neither am I.

Re:I'm Confused

[skippy_twin]

To paraphrase Colbert:

I am slashdot, and so can you.

Re:teh intarnets

[csnydermvpsoft]

Nope, still around 6500. Try adding quotes to your search query.

I take exception

[Yurka]

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".

Re:I take exception

[x_MeRLiN_x]

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.

The original Google Bomb is a VERY bad thing

[MichaelCrawford]

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.

Re:The original Google Bomb is a VERY bad thing

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:The original Google Bomb is a VERY bad thing

[ben there...]

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. Google does penalize for duplicate content. For example, if you setup your domain to have the same content on http://www.slashdot.org/ and http://slashdot.org/ a mirror rather than a redirect (notice the www. is a redirect here). It also penalizes content such as wiki-type content that gets mirrored in several sites around the web. Some webmasters have studied the effect of someone plagiarizing their content in this way and causing that effect. Though obviously their experiments couldn't have been very controlled.

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. I agree with you there. It's the only usage I've ever heard of the term. Such as "miserable failure". The first hit for that search used to be Bush's biography at whitehouse.gov, until the articles about the phenomenon itself pushed it down. Google likely fine-tuned their algorithm sometime along the way as well.

Re:The original Google Bomb is a VERY bad thing

[martin-boundary]

Why does everyone assume that this behaviour by SEOs is *bad*? It's Google's algorithm that's got problems with corner cases, and they have zero incentive to fix the flaws in it if everyone just blames the internet users.

Does a google bomb affect *every* search engine? No. It affects *one* search engine with a lot of clout.

Does a google bomb involve illegal hacking of google's servers? No. It involves creating links on people's own damn blogs and websites.

It's sad that people buy the moral victimization that Google's marketing has come up with. This idea that people on the web shouldn't be allowed full free speech, because it's "bad" to write anything they want in case it causes headaches for Google's engineers. At best, it's fanboyism gone wild.

A search engine should reflect what's out there, period. If a lot of blogs link to one site, a search engine should reflect that. If it causes trouble to their algorithm, they should fix their algorithm. But above all, it's not Google's job to tell people that what they're doing on the web is morally "bad".

Re:The original Google Bomb is a VERY bad thing

[arkhan_jg]

SEO IS bad for users of search engines. It means that when I search for something, I don't get relevant links to what I asked for, but instead some spammers latest scam.
This applies to all search engines gamed by SEO users, not just google.

You also forget, commercial speech is not protected speech under free speech laws. SEO Advertising is NOT free speech, it's an attempt to subvert the normal function of the web for commercial advantage of a particular user. I'm not required to read it, and neither is google required to index it.

What's your next suggestion, mail server admins shouldn't perform any spam filtering as its infringing on the "free speech" rights of the spammers? Free speech means the government won't censor you, not that it won't punish you for illegal speech, and it has nothing to do with commercial speech or the interactions between non-government people and companies.

Not just death by blogging

[Fear the Clam]

My wife showed me the "killed in a knitting accident" part, which was causing much mayhem in the ravelry knitting and crochet site.

"Died in a Blogging Accident"

[Midnight Thunder]

Do we really need to repeat "Died in a Blogging Accident" for nth time? I mean how many times do we need to state that someone "Died in a Blogging Accident"?

Anyhow, this was another xkcd comic that had its effect: http://xkcd.com/305/

I was curious too...

[rvtheace]

But I just took xkcd's word for it

Uhm

[Cafe Alpha]

yes.

This is what's wrong with Google.

[a_nonamiss]

What I find most interesting is now, after the "Googlebomb" try looking at some of the links that come up. More than half in the first few pages are the scum-sucking lowlife advertising sites. Clearly what they're doing is monitoring the "hot Google searches" and then googlepimping© their own sites to match those searches. Everybody knows this is going on, but the efficiency at which these people monitored Google searches, noticed that a particular search was popular, then got their own sites listed really surprises and frightens me. Google is fundamentally broken.

Died in a * accident

[kasperd]

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.

Re:Died in a * accident

[Yetihehe]

Heh, actually for "Either you are with us..." fifth result is your post, talk about metasearches :D

Re:Died in a * accident

[Beorytis]

I, for one, welcome our new * overlords.

It's due to the death in China and Digg

[ckedge]

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!

Re:You're sitting on a timebomb

[Strange Quark Star]

No, I am afraid it is two now.

Not quite as many as thought...

[Dash Hash]

Not that this is really Slashdot-worthy, but... Who am I to decide what may or may not be worthy for this site.

Anyway, the actual number of results is far less.
Looking at Google right now, it shows "about 8,300" for the "died in a blogging accident" search.
However, actually going through and looking at the real number (skip to the end of the list, show all results, skip to the end again) and the results are much smaller.

Before enabling all references, there are a mere 243 results. Displaying all results, including those from the same site, yields only 849 hits.

While still interesting to see that it jumped from 2 to 849 in a day's time, it is still nowhere near 7000+ as advertised here.

Original Results

[pgn674]

I think I found the original 2 results of the search, when the number of results was still down at 12. Both results pointed to this blog: http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=59755147&blogID=106406778

Re:Oblig.

[Xinef Jyinaer]

Results 1 - 10 of about 1,050 for "died in a skydiving accident". (0.23 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 220 for "died in a elevator accident". (0.05 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 505 for "died in a surfing accident". (0.11 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 486 for "died in a skateboarding accident". (0.11 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 168 for "died in a camping accident". (0.15 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 160 for "died in a gardening accident". (0.13 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 91 for "died in an ice skating accident". (0.07 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 461 for "died in a knitting accident". (0.14 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 8,360 for "died in a blogging accident". (0.12 seconds)
Curious indeed, seeing as some of them even decreased (elevator and ice skating)all the others managed to increase though most of them slightly, only knitting and blogging increased large amounts.
I'd attribute this to the fact that they were uncommon to begin with and then absolutely hilarious thus drawing more postings around the intertubes and on the blogosphere. Also thanks to the mod who made my original post redundant. You're my hero!!! A real value to society.

Died in a trolling accident

[4D6963]

In a off hand observation xkcd has single handedly changed a small section of the internet.

Oh my God, they changed the face of the Internet! (actually they mean the Web, not the Internet as a whole, sigh). Here, let me change a (smaller) "section of the Internet" :

Died in a trolling accident.

Right now, doesn't return any result. And now? OMG I did it! I has teh pawar ovar tah Intarwebs!

I think I'll let xkcd speak for me

[aztektum]

clicky

Re:I think I'll let xkcd speak for me

[mfnickster]

You can skip step 1 (Randall did).

WHAT WERE THE TWO RESULTS?

[exhilaration]

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

Not a googlebomb

[dotancohen]

Yay incorrect use of terminology. This is not a GoogleBomb