If you search for failure in Google, the first of the result will be the autobiography of Bush. Y so ?. It’s just an example of how far SEO can go. Many of us have experienced this before for many a searches. So called “Googlebombing” is all about playing prank.
When BMW did (did they ?) some page ranking manipulations thru “doorway pages” | “cloaking”, Google blacklisted the site(bmw.de) in Feb, 2006. But what can be done here?. Though we are well aware of the crap at times which are distictly different as this, most times the sites will have just sponsored links to generate atleast a click somewhere. As far as semantic web is concerned google is far away from the concept ??. Try kosmix – http://www.kosmix.com/ by indian duo Venky Hariharan and Anand Rajaraman. The category they support is growing and the neat classification is really a Killer.
7 responses so far ↓
Mr. D. Eisenhart // September 10, 2006 at 5:55 am |
To blame internet “pranksters” for Google’s “failure” to uphold the integrity of its own code, is less than honorable. To say that it is a flaw in the system, and you are reluctant to change the results of these kinds of searches which are tainted by “Googlebombing” goes against the very “core” of your own code which state that “each of us has a personal responsibility to do EVERYTHING WE CAN to incorporate these principles into our work, and our lives.
I don’t believe you are doing “everything you can,” and it is disrespectful to the most prominent public office (regardless of who holds it, to allow such an attempt by internet manipulators to use your professional reputation at Google.com as a political tool of malice.
I am highly disappointed in your companies reputation of you simply pass this off as a harmless prank, and fail to be truthful, honest, and Responsive by “doing something about it” as your company’s code states.
Sincerely. with loss of faith and trust in your company’s reputation.
Mr. D. Eisenhart
dljj@qtm.net
gayle // September 10, 2006 at 9:49 pm |
I don’t care what caused it. I’m still laughing and I will always “google”
nikaroo // September 11, 2006 at 2:48 am |
Mr. D. Eisenhart,
The only disappointment is your lack of grammar and spelling skills. It looks like the only thing you are reflecting, is the level of intelligence the followers of George W. Bush posess. Way to go!
Anyone who is computer literate will fully understand Google’s statement. To those unfortunate souls who are not computer literate.. Well, we all feel sorry for you, but will not have mercy on idiots.
Have a nice day.
Don // September 11, 2006 at 8:38 pm |
Google is irresposible at best. Pathetic at worst. Like him or hate him this is wrong. Nikaroo, to not agree with you is a nice compliment. Anyone who doesn’t agree with you is an idiot, huh? You must be quite lonely. I will have a nice day.
politicsarelame // September 11, 2006 at 11:20 pm |
Our company was considering purchasing Mini-Google for our Intranet but since it uses the same search technology as google.com and according to Google, can be manipulated by pranksters, we refused to buy it.
Oh well, fuck it, theres other search technology out there.
Brandon // September 12, 2006 at 10:32 pm |
You might want to remedy this as I agree, there are alot more search engines as well as email hosts out there. As large as google is, you cannot tell me that this is unadjustable or that you you just won’t. Political is right if you leave this out there.
IT // September 13, 2006 at 4:03 pm |
I have a few questions…
Why are people all idiots? They never read before they make a choice… They all proclaim the common “Why don’t they fix this bug, it is simple, even I could fix it” without the (but I have no experience in programming so by ‘fixing it’ I really mean ‘breaking it’). Guys like Eisenhart, Don, politicsarelame, and Brandon simply do not have the technical experience to understand what they are requesting. Lets put it in another perspective…
You have a plagiarist in your class room… a simple search can typically pick him out, and then you catch him, he gets in trouble, and everyone is happy.
Now the same guy plagiarizes again, but eludes you by making 25% of the paper his own writing… Now searching a few passages might fix that as well… and people are happy once more.
Now the same guy does the stunt again, except now over 75% of the paper is his… you can barley find what is not his and what is plagiarism and thus it seems to be ok.
Google operates similarly. True, they can ‘ban’ sites from their spidering network that are 100% googlebombs, but what of sites that are REAL… say, Microsoft.com. Now if Microsoft has a googlebomb setup for it’s products should google just ignore it? There are… well, not really… valuable pages and links in the Microsoft domain, to ban it all will cause drastic changes.
Similarly, googlebombs are popping up in websites that have REAL content. Learning that those sites are participating in google bombing is harder.
Now you want to just CHANGE the results… well… google is a DYNAMIC engine, which means that the results are constantly changing… simply put, you want to have a condition saying if searchparameter=”failure” and result(x)=”Bush” then result=null, works on a dynamic engine… but then how long will it be? Well, I would guess that over 2500000 websites are googlebombed to the top (like firefox, got people to add links to their site resulting in a googlebomb). Yes, it is rather small byte wise, but it has to be accessed every time google ‘refreshes’ or someone searches for it, both happen rather often.
The end result is the amount of money and time that will have to go into such a field. If google changes one result they will then have to change 2500000 results. And it gets better… because of the amount of money and time google will be putting into this some other services may be extinguished, or additional charges will apply for premium services it offers. You are not asking for a small request, you are asking for a much larger request… one that takes a lot of effort to deal with.
P.S. before you complain about IE look at the amount of updates FF has had… then ask how many were ‘updates’ and how many were bug or security fixes. FF isn’t unhackable, it is just in the lower minority of browsers…
P.S.S. Become a software engineer!