'Online Poker' Googlebomb

Philipp Lenssen writes "The blogger community is fighting back, though in ways not everyone may like: they are Googlebombing the Wikipedia page on online poker for the phrase "online poker" to make it rank higher in search engines. "Online poker", along with "Viagra", "mortgage" and "debt", are keywords heavily represented in comment spam, which itself aims to boost the Google ranking for a particular site and phrase. The Wikipedia page is currently third in Google."

You submitted this...

But you didn't even go to the trouble of linking the term online poker [wikipedia.org] to Wikipedia in your submission? Slashdot has some healthy pagerank, too, ya know.

Re:You submitted this...

I couldn't in all fairness let you get away with that without the opportunity to help out my fellow brothers by slashdotting these guys [gamblersanonymous.org].

Re:You submitted this...

They are fighting against the sites that are linked to by spam and thus fighting the spammers while supporting wikipedia.

I am sure the bloggers love google and hate seeing spam have large amounts of influence on the results.

Re:You submitted this...

I'm not clear why fighting spam-fuelled results is detrimental to google. Personally, I think the encyclopedia page is at least as valuable as whatever online poker service spammed the most.

Google [ play online poker ]

If someone searches for online poker; they probably want to play online poker

If somebody wants to play online poker [google.com], Google won't return any Wikipedia pages in the top 10.

which is what the wiki page is displacing.

Not at all. Online poker - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [wikipedia.org] links to seven poker sites.

Re:Google [ play online poker ]

As a bloger, let me give you an example.

My blog is probably the least trafficed site on the internet. Google doesn't even index the blog's sub pages as they're php and not directory roots. I basicly do news commentary. That's it.

I get between three and five entries comments every day from online poker spamers. They do their comments in HTML, and add H1 tags to the entire thing. Each comment consists of about 50 links ranging from online poker to places to buy viagra.

I write this as a hobby. I pay for it out of pocket, it makes no revenue and, as I don't sell ad space or use ad words, I never expect it to.

If I'm not going to use the resources I paied for to advertise why should someone else get to? This kind of behavior is inconsiderate, it's invasive, and it's really fucking annoying.

So yea.... I'm tired of being used as free advertising for something I'll never see a dime from.

Re:Google [ play online poker ]

Add the nofollow [google.com] tag to your links in the HTML code and spammer won't benefit from their spam campaigns. Many major logs, wikis, guestbook programs have started this practice.

Re:Google [ play online poker ]

Actually, most spam gets sent for SUCCESSFUL online enterprises. TONS of people play poker online, and they give MASSIVE referral bonuses to websites who can generate new players ($65 a pop!) - because competition for new players and site-loyalty is so high. Most casual players pick one site and stick with it.

It's NOT because nobody wants to play.

Bloggers - Be articulate.

Bloggers bug me. The caption should be understandable by blog-free geeks, not just those on the inside. A concise one sentence explanation clearly describing WHY the bloggers are doing this would make the whole thread much more useful. As it is, I had to spend 10 minutes trying to figure out why bloggers were googlebombing the wiki. Please, when a reason exists for some fact, state the damn reason clearly! Example: Bloggers, frustrated by poker sites posting spam in the comments sections which follow blog entries, decided to fight back by displacing comment-spammer's rank in google searches. .... then insert the rest of the caption.

And you who are about to say that it already says that -- it does ONLY if you approach the paragraph with that knowledge. For someone outside the blogging community - it's just confusing. Last, if you still like it as is, fine, that's why I don't read blogs. Too often they are crypitc and snooty.

Grrrrrr. How's that for bitterness! ;-)

blogger revenge

Yeah, messing with bloggers might not have been the best idea...

Re:We'll see who gets the last laugh

That's probably what they want.

Bloggers link to each other so they can find each other, not so they have pagerank coming out of their ass.

Spammers, however, discovered this pagerank, and started abusing it. Google 'solved' this problem by giving bloggers the ability to add a note to a link saying 'Don't give this any pagerank'.

However, spammers, being about as smart as pond scum's waste products, continue to spam blogs, even the ones that had such attributes added automatically. (These are the same people who attempt to deliver mail to hundreds of addresses on my server that do not and never have existed.) Spammers apparently cannot tell blogs apart.

And hence, to force the issue, blogs have started abusing the power themselves. Google now must write something to tell blogs apart from normal websites, or its entire database will be under the control of bloggers, mwhahahahaha.

The hope is that if google fixes this, within two or three years spammers who have been spamming blogs will have drowned by staring up when it's raining or deciding to go outside for a smoke break while on an airplane, and the new crop won't ever have spammed any blogs. (Spammers cannot learn to stop doing things, only to do new things.)

Of course, bloggers may be overestimating the intelligence of spammers by assuming they know how to operate airplane doors or tilt their head back.

Re:We'll see who gets the last laugh

That's a fairly complex process, which is already an excellent deterrent. It doesn't seem very hard to counteract, either. Actually, I can't really fathom how it would work.

(1) You send the blog server a request for the web site containing the form. (2) The server generates a captcha with an associated hash and sends it to you along with the form. (3) You send a request with the decoded captcha, the hash and the form data attached.

Now the process you described would take captcha + hash you receive in 2, and get the decoded image from wherever. Later on, he goes on with 3, using the decoded text. Now my first idea would limit the time that could pass between 2 and 3, and I think that's a viable suggestion - at worst, an innocent poster will surpass the limit because he takes too long to create a post, but that's not a problem, we'll just send him a new captcha which he can decode within seconds.

But in any event, when you try to do 3 (ie post your spam) a normal human will have to do 2 (ie get the form) before that, so the server would know which captcha he sent you last, and sending the hash and decoded text for any other captcha wouldn't work. A script doesn't have to do 2 before doing 3, because a script doesn't manually fill out a form, but that alone is an odd behavious a server could be programmed to pick up. Sending any other decoded captcha than the one received in 2 is ineffective, if step 2 is skipped, then there is no legal captcha and no post. This would prevent "farming" blogs for captchas to be decoded and used at a later stage.

Sorry if I'm not overly clear (to say the least), I hope at least the time limit argument is simple enough to be understood.

I don't understand

Do they think that if they make the Wiki ONLINE POKER page #1 that nobody will go to the other 9 online poker page results returned by Google on the same page?

It don' make no sense!

I'm feeling lucky

It goes to #1.

Re:I'm feeling lucky

Google did a study of how many people used [the "I'm Feeling Lucky"] button.

I no that I rarely ever use it, and when I do, it's typically for something that I already know it will take me to, or for flaming.

One example is the download page for PuTTY. I know the first link for "download putty" in Google is always the page I want, even though I can never remember the URL for that page. It's a convienent way for me to get what I need quickly.

The second way is much more fun. When n00bs on IRC, usenet, or mailing lists ask questions that quite easily could have been answered with a google search, I typically do a quick search and see what's in the first few links. If the very first link comes up with the information, I'll flame 'em and tell them to drop "blah blah 123" into google and tell it you're feeling lucky, and not to come back again until they learn to do this always.

Re:That's it?!

Well, I suppose the button "I'm feeling lucky!" makes a lot more sense in the context of online poker.

In all seriousness, some people I know have started using google IFL links on blogs rather tahn direct links. The idea is that in five years if the Captain Crunch brand changes, an I'm Feeling Lucky search for Captain Crunch will probably take you to the new page.

Re:I'm feeling lucky

I guess if they hit the "I'm feeling lucky" and end up on the Wikipedia page, they probably aren't lucky enough to play online poker anyway.

Re:I don't understand

I think the first link said it about right:

This stunt actually will increase blog spam volume for online poker in order for the spammers to compete with the wiki, also it has expanded the number of people trying to spam wiki pages and it will reinvigorate general blog spam for publicizing the fact that blog spamming still works.

Do the ends justify the means?

On one hand, it seems that "stooping" to the level of spammers seems as evil as the spamming itself.

On the other hand, maybe this is an appropriate response -- fighting fire with fire.

Only time will tell if the cure is worse than the disease... but at the moment, I think it's kind of cool to use the spammers' own tactics against them.

Pointless

Google Bombing is used to get your one page higher, it doesn't do anything to the other sites' ranking except to the single site you may displace off the top 10 results.

Uh, why?

Yes, I read the article. This seems to be a "fight fire with fire" solution and is probably just going to make things worse.

The stupid online poker comment spam *is* annoying, yes, but is Googlebombing Wikipedia really a viable solution?

The Wiki didn't come up 3rd when I looked a few minutes ago (it was 5th) and doesn't Google specifically say "Don't do stuff like this!" in their help documentation?
I hope this doesn't backfire.

two wrongs makes a right?

I can't see this as a good thing.
1. Blog spammers will fight back at blogs - mostly innocient people who have nothing to do with this war.
2. Blog spam can get wikipedia in trouble by violating Google's guildelines [google.com].
3. The recent nofollow [google.com] tag attribue will dimish the value of blog spam.

I am all of these online casino bastards to die...

but how the hell does this help? The online casino people are still going to spam your blog. Just because one link out of the 31 million pages wont deter a user. There are paid ads anyways. This is a waste of time if you ask me. A better way to combat this would be to come together to maybe come up with a plugin or hack to have a 100% system against spam.
So the online casinos would be forced to stop auto spamming people.

Of course this trouble will never end if these companies have like little gnomes manually spamming blog/blog rings.

Re:Googlebombing is part of Google's design flaw.

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Where is the -1 Patently False moderation tag when you need it?

The reason http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=to+be+or+not+ to+be [google.com] doesn't work is that because...

The following words are very common and were not included in your search: to be to be. [details]
Lowercase "or" was ignored. Try "OR" to search for either of two terms. [details]

So all that google sees is "not"

Affiliate schemes

The poker sites themselves are not directly to blame, however it's their affiliate programs such as this one [paradiseaffiliates.com] which encourage the spamsters.

As you can see they can be quite lucrative. Spammers also post poker site's software to Usenet and p2p networks together with a bonus code that benefits their account, with some steady play these bonuses can be cleared in no time leaving themselves a tidy profit.

Simple solution to Googlebombing.

"Is Google doing anything to stop Google bombing?"

I detailed this elsewhere. All Google has to do is add a filter to its results so that pages that do not actually contain the search word/phrases do NOT show up in result lists.

This used to be standard search-engine behaviour, and because of this, results used to be a lot more accurate (unless they were merely outdated, but even in this case, the results were accurate at one time!).

Unprotected

The Wikipedia page is currently third in Google.

And the Wikipedia page is not protected [wikipedia.org] right now which means that the spammers or trollers can add their links directly to that page by clicking edit this page [wikipedia.org] link and their changes will be visible immediately. Wikipedia administrators can protect that page by clicking this link [wikipedia.org] and adding {{vprotected}} at the top of the article to protect it from vandalism [wikipedia.org].

French bullDOG?

"The strangest spam I got was for a french buldog site"

That does seem strange. If it was a French Bullfrog site instead, it would be quite understandable.

"I have developed some methods for controling it, but I do not want to divulge them publiclly since the bad guys would then know my counter measures"

Yeah, I know. Those French bulldog guys play hardball. They monitor all the Slashdot posts, too, so you are wise not to reveal your tricks. I know myself, that every time someone mods me down, it has to be one of those bulldog spammers.

"Click on http://www.parismastiff.com for your best Gallic bulldog deals!"

dealing with comment spam

I do not want to divulge them publiclly

Well, for everyone else, here are some strategies to combat comment spam. There should be plugins or upgrades available for whatever software you're using that add these features:

1) Add ref="nofollow" [slashdot.org] to all links posted. Google will then ignore this link when assigning pagerank. This is invisible to the user.
2) Force the browser to calculate a javascript hash [weblogsinc.com] everytime a comment is posted. This prevents automated spambots from posting comments. This is invisible to the user.
3) Filter for common words (viagra, poker) then manually approve those comments. This is a lot of work for you, but no work for your users.
4) Use captchas [wikipedia.org] - your users must type in the text in pictures when posting a comment. This is extremely intrusive for your users.
5) Approve every comment. Lots of work for you.
6) Disable comments. It's better than giving up your blog as, sadly, many people are choosing to do.

Some clever bastard....

...has appearantly linked http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_poker to "autofellatio.jpg". Wikipedia was a bad choice, what with the inherent ability for *anyone* to alter the page.

Bloggers are hilariously stupid.

What on earth are they thinking? That by boosting the page rank of one particular page nobody will notice the other nine pages that link to online poker sites in a Google search? They are so locked in the mentality of link whoring and otherwise abusing Google's search results that they see everything in the world as how it is related to Google. Imagine a mechanical engineer trying to design an auto transmission by putting up a page with a bunch of links to the Wikipedia entry for "Automobile transmission" and hoping Google spiders it.

Well, no surprises here: it turns out that the vapid tools who maintain "blogs" really are as stupid as they seem.

WARNING

The link is now a pciture of someonee fellating themselves.

Better way to fight it

Wouldn't it be better to implement the rel="nofollow" [google.com] for these links? After all, they should be trying to punish the spammers, not reward Wikipedia (which is good but doesn't help with the spam problem).

Wikipedia link not safe for work?

The current link to Online Poker in Wikipedia is redirecting me to something I'd rather never have seen.

Here's the Google Cache [64.233.167.104] of the actual Wikipedia article (until somebody over there figures out why I was sent to an auto-fellatio site)

Greedy abuse of Wikipedia

Well, I can't help but make the obvious observation that it's another example of sad greedy bastards trying to exploit other people's good will. Dare I say "intuititively obvious to the most casual observer". The online poker page itself is nothing but a obvious scam in search of more free advertising, and it should be permanently deleted from Wikipedia. The only point of gambling is that it's a tax for being bad at math, and all the repackaging is just various disguises for the essential exploitation of very simple behaviorism. Random reinforcement is the best, and most resistant to extinction.

Again I say "sad". I vote to delete--except that that's pointless, too. The people who want to sucker other people via online gambling are of course much more strongly motivated than people like I am. I'm just annoyed. They're dreaming of striking it rich, if only they can find enough suckers fast enough.

Anyway, the Wikipedia deletion process was too difficult to figure out.