Google Defuses Googlebombs

John C. Worsley writes "Google announced today a modification to their search algorithm that minimizes well-known googlebombing exploits. Searches on 'miserable failure' and their ilk no longer bring up political targets. The Google blogger writes: 'By improving our analysis of the link structure of the web, Google has begun minimizing the impact of many Googlebombs. Now we will typically return commentary, discussions, and articles about the Googlebombs instead.'"

Big changes?

Surely this changes lots of things.

If google is now discounting the wording other people use to link to a page, then isn't google themselves becoming like old fashioned engine, ie only specifically accounting for information on the actual page and not based on what other people who link to this page thinK?

By improving our analysis of the link structure of the web, Google has begun minimizing the impact of many Googlebombs. Now we will typically return commentary, discussions, and articles about the Googlebombs instead.

reworded becomes:

By ignoring the link structure of the web, Google has begun minimizing the impact of many Googlebombs. Now we will typically return only results which are from the actual page itself rather than looking at how other people link to each other.

A googlebomb is not a bad thing, its making use of the algorithm to expand the keywords which a page is associated with.

Sidenote:

I did a search for google [google.co.uk], and the snippet that comes up under each google entry does not exist on the page itself, where does it actually come from?

for example:

Google
The local version of this pre-eminent search engine, offering UK-specific pages as well as world results.
www.google.co.uk/ - 4k - 24 Jan 2007 - Cached - Similar pages


I thought google weren't meant to display a different page to bots as to users? (didn't they get in trouble for something similar not so long ago?)

Re:Big changes?

I did a search for google, and the snippet that comes up under each google entry does not exist on the page itself, where does it actually come from?

It comes from googles' listings at dmoz.org

Well, I still think there was an legit problem

To some extent, googlebombs *were* abuse, which leads me to think Google needed to upgrade their heuristics. This appears to be much of what they've done, though I think their response was too focused on killing that specific form of abuse and not focused enough on improving analytic depth.

Re:How they did it.

To some extent, googlebombs *were* abuse

Well that's the question, isn't it? Why do you think they were abuse?

If people look up "facist," they should get Hitler or Stalin, even if those guys never called themselves that, and there's no precise definition. It's what people think about them.

Re:Big changes?

If google is now discounting the wording other people use to link to a page, then isn't google themselves becoming like old fashioned engine, ie only specifically accounting for information on the actual page and not based on what other people who link to this page thinK?

Not necessarily. It depends, like most other things, on how it is handled. The practice of googlebombing is the practice of mob rule and google quite sensibly worked to put a stop to it.

A googlebomb is not a bad thing, its making use of the algorithm to expand the keywords which a page is associated with.

A googlebomb IS a bad thing, it's a group of people with an agenda railroading the functionality of a resource upon which the health of the internet depends in a very real way. Again, it's mob rule; a certain segment of the population runs away with the whole idea.

I thought google weren't meant to display a different page to bots as to users? (didn't they get in trouble for something similar not so long ago?)

Are you saying that bots are getting different search results than users? Because absolute shitloads of websites serve different versions of their pages to google for a wide variety of reasons. For example some premium sites allow google to index part of their content in order to rope people into buying a subscription.

Re:Big changes?

Are you saying that bots are getting different search results than users? Because absolute shitloads of websites serve different versions of their pages to google for a wide variety of reasons. For example some premium sites allow google to index part of their content in order to rope people into buying a subscription.

Yes, that's called "cloaking" and can get you delisted. BMW Germany's website got removed from Google [slashdot.org] a while back for doing it, and presumably less prominent ones regularly are as well. Google's official position [google.com] is that you should write a decent web page and they'll be able to figure out how it should rank:

• Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as "cloaking."
• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
• Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
• Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

Re:Big changes?

Please stop referring to a Googlebomb as "mob rule."

No. That's what it is. Why should I stop?

The Googlebomb is just an example of the weighted "democracy" that Page Rank is supposed to be all about

So is Mob Rule. That doesn't make it a good thing.

as another poster said, these sorts of guerilla campaigns are wicked fun.

So is using cars on the freeway as practice targets for your minigun. Fun is not the ultimate arbiter of what is right.

Re:Big changes?

The Googlebomb is just an example of the weighted "democracy" that Page Rank is supposed to be all about

No, Page Rank is weighted democracy. A Googlebomb tries to destroy the Page Rank.

Page Rank is supposed to sort the pages according to there relevance, based on the links found on the Internet. A Googlebomb tries to prevent Page Rank from doing that by manipulating the links on the Internet. A Googlebomb does not mean that Internet users get more relevant results it is the other way around.

Re:Big changes?

With all due respect, a couple of sentences from Google are not enough to uniquely identify how they've changed their algorithms. Just because the only idea you could come up with is "ignoring link structure" doesn't mean that's what they went with. I'd expect that they came up with a way of characterizing Google-bombs and figured out how to discount that, which probably fixes some other SEO tricks too. I've got some guesses on how that could look, but none of them are informed enough to share, so I won't.

Re:Big changes?

I'd mod you down, but there's no "-1, Some Jackass Jumping To Conclusions"

Really now, stop it. There's no reason to believe, at all, that Google is ignoring link structure. Google probably sees a certain percentage of inbound links (with the exact same title) in a short period of time (say a week or two) and marks it as a potential Googlebomb.

Whoop-di-friggin-do. Yeah, it hurts shit like blog pranks, but it also fucks up spammers big time. Remember, a Googlebomb isn't just fun and games, it's also plenty of Viagra spam.

Meanwhile, the rest of us who work at getting high search rankings honestly have not been hurt. Amazing.

miserable failure

Searching for "miserable failure" now brings up a million pages talking about the Googlebomb, "miserable failure". Is that much better?

The whole reason PageRank was create was because the exsiting technologies at the time, namely keywords and before that meta tags, were being abused like hell. Now PageRank is being abused left and right. It's time to take a step back and rethink.

Re:miserable failure

Searching for "miserable failure" now brings up a million pages talking about the Googlebomb, "miserable failure". Is that much better?

Yes, it is. Because those seem to be the pages actually dealing with "miserable failure", different from the homepages of George Bush or Michael Moore (which were both victims of miserable failure Google bombs). If no other pages prominently feature "miserable failure", that's not the fault of the search engine. They can only find what's there.

Google bombs weren't a priority at Google precisely because the abuse was mostly done with irrelevant phrases like "miserable failure". You only search for those when you hear about Google bombs for the first time.

The whole reason PageRank was create was because the exsiting technologies at the time, namely keywords and before that meta tags, were being abused like hell. Now PageRank is being abused left and right. It's time to take a step back and rethink.

Google bombs don't have much to do with PageRank. They're about link text being abused.

As for rethinking, they're doing this all the time at Google. They're constantly updating their ranking algorithms.

Re:miserable failure

Google bombs don't have much to do with PageRank. They're about link text being abused.

I'm with you on this one, but it also makes me wonder...

The purpose of link text is to impose additional, personal meaning on a link, like this: "Today in the news we learned about Windows monoculture [slashdot.org]". The "Windows monoculture" link text is my own meaning imposed on the link. Google is, or at least was, putting some trust in that imposition: Google would elevate that slashdot page's ranking under the category of "Windows monoculture", on the assumption that I'm probably not misrepresenting its content.

A google-bombing can therefore occur without any conspiracy: if lots of people imagine themselves witty for jokingly linking the phrase "miserable failure" in their blog to www.whitehouse.gov, the result is an unintiontional google-bombing. And as other posters in this thread have pointed out, there is some truth value to that.

Now we hear that Google is changing this, which means paying less attention to my link text, and instead devoting more computation towards analyzing what the target page is actually saying. I suppose Google is going to read the slashdot page I linked, and decide for itself what it's about rather than taking my word that it's about Windows monoculture. That's got to be computationally expensive.

It's the same general problem as we see in academia with scholarly references. Let's say some guy writes a thesis and uses some other paper as a reference, claiming it lends support to the new theory. We can trust his citation (i.e. Google can trust the link text), or else we can mistrust him and go and dig up the reference text and read it ourself.

Obviously that kind of mistrust is expensive (but isn't all mistrust?)... but after a certain amount of abuse, it's a price we have to pay in order to maintain the same degree of certainty. As for rethinking, they're doing this all the time at Google. They're constantly updating their ranking algorithms.

Easier Solution

Get ride of the I'm Feeling Lucky Button, the only time I've ever used this button is when some sends me an email saying I should search for Weapons of Mass Distruction and hit that button. haha fun, nothing found.

Re:Easier Solution

I don't know, I've been pretty lucky with it.

Needed a digital calender, IFLed, now I've got a Google Calender setup.
Needed a new email service, IFLed, now I've got G-mail!
Needed a homepage that would host my many RSS feeds, IFLed, now I've got a Google Homepage!
Needed a desktop organizer, IFLed, now I've got Google Desktop!

Finally

I'm glad they took care of this horrible issue. You have no idea how hard it was for me to search for waffles [google.com] before this!

hahha

first thing i checked when i was this post was "french military victories"... then i noticed from the French-military-victories-still-works dept. glad i'm not the only one whose life wouldn't be complete without this little joke.

Googlebombs...

I think Google has a bigger problem [userfriendly.org] than puny Googlebombs.

Stop trying to sell me stuff.

Now they just need to fix the part where I'm actually trying to find information on a product and all I get back is links to sites that want to sell me the product. I know where I'm going to buy it from...I am looking for information about whether I want to buy it or not.

Improvement?

``Searches on 'miserable failure' and their ilk no longer bring up political targets.''

And this is an improvement?!

Alternative Page to Link To

I feel a bit sad about this, since there was something wickedly fun about google bombs. But given that they subvert the intention of the search engine, it's completely understandable that they would take action against it. In fact, the surprise is that they took this long to do anything about it.

If you do the search, you'll find this page [about.com] already comes up on the first page. While it's not as clever as the original google bomb, linking 'miserable failure' to it would still express the intention of the link and could be an alternative to simply removing it.... Tough call, but something should be done with all those links, since now they are essentially 'broken' and constitute just a load more cruft in an increasingly crufty web.

as simple as being self-aware

I would guess that much of the fix is simply being a bit more self-aware in terms of ranking. If a page mentions 'google' 'googlebomb' and a short phrase in quotes, especially in close proximity, then there are two reasonable responses. One, weigh the page that claims a googlebomb a bit higher than other neutral mentions of that phrase, and two, reduce the weight of the phrase itself so it has a smaller effect when combined with other search terms. Extra points for a page that mentions multiple googlebombs at once.

Now, if google becomes more and more self-aware, we'll have to start hiding any neural network research and encrypt the torrents of Arnie Schwarzenegger movies.

Partypoopers

Those were fun pranks, and Google themselves admitted that it doesn't really affect the quality of search results. I can't say I feel like thanking them for this improvement.

Well...

Santorum [google.com] still works.

Also "Miserable Failure" still works in MSN.

Possible side-affect?

The question that begs to be answered is, is it possible for this new algorithm to affect legitimate site rankings?

Ok, so I gave it a try...

I did a google search on "miserable failure" and I got back links describing the "anti-googlebomb" algorithm and president Bush.

So...did it work or not?

Moo

Do you need a search warrant for a Google bomb?

Isn't this the entire methodology of Google?

I was under the impression that the link text was the entire means by which Google
created their PageRank algorithm.

Sure, it gets abused with GoogleBombing (although I can't say I really care) but
if this changes, doesn't PageRank as a whole change in pretty radical ways?

Liar

Very annoying. It's a bit censorious of Google (once again).

Two days ago typing in 'Liar' to Google and using 'I feel lucky' would bring you to the autobiography of Tony Blair. Not so anymore. A sad day.

Tony Blair

Damn, they're right. Googling "Liar" no longer brings back Tony Blair as the top link.

Google is still world most evil corp

See it the first result: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=world+most+ev il+corporation [google.com]

miserable failure

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=mise rable+failure&btnG=Search [google.com]

still works for me.. the only thing I see consistently scanning down the search result is

george bush!

Still serving it's purpose...

The SCO search still works

The search for SCO [google.com] still works.

French military victories

Still works

good vs bad bombs

How is a googlebomb (defined as linking a 'bad' phrase with a hated object, therefore a negative act) different from a bunch of fanboys linking to their favorite FPS with the phrase "hottest thing ever", which presumbably doesn't appear on the web site for the video game? People are complaining that googlebombing is bad because it's a negative act, but it can be a totally positive linking system as well.

Google broke my intarweb...

Searching for 'worst president ever' doesn't link to the whitehouse's biography of Bush anymore...

Screw them

"Screw them" brings up the original Kos post as the fifth hit; I believe that's as high as it ever went.

Took them long enough

Took them long enough. Their liberal founders must have finally decided that the political advantage of this tactic had finally run out.

the way the fix was rolled out

is spooking me a little. I've become conditioned to expect massive amounts of spin, yammering analysts, bloggers, a 2gb download, and yet more opportunities to get royally screwed in the form of updated EULAs, fancy licencing contracts, signing my life away for software rentals etc etc. No, Google just fix a *real* problem with their then they tell us. There has to be evil somewhere here, it can't be that simple. *dons tinfoil hat* and goes hunting snarks.

Google Images still correct

Oh well at least Google images is still correct.

http://images.google.com/images?lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UT F-8&q=miserable%20failure&sa=N&tab=wi [google.com]

French Military...

Google "French Military Victories" and click I'm Feeling Lucky.

I'm not 100% on if this is in the same vein as "Miserable Failure" but it seems to be. So clearly there are still bugs to work out.

GoogleBomb Still Exists

Oddly enough, 'Worst Band in the World' searched on Google still brings up "See more results for: Creed".

Obligatory Star Wars Joke

No, I am your parent link...

Google Supports President Bush

Thanks for modifying your search algorithm for political reasons. Your previous explanation said you did not interfere with this because it would be... *wrong* to modify your search algorithm for political reasons. (I won't give the link, because you took that explanation down when you flip-flopped).

Now that you've demonstrated you will do this, how about removing references to Iraq and Body Bags. That just upsets people.

Thanks
Karl^H^H^H^H

Google Flip-Flopped

• In 2004 they said this was the opinion of the web.
• In 2005 they explained why George Bush came up when people were thinking about New Orleans and Katrina and typed the word "failure" into Google.
• In 2006 they started a PAC that gave heavily to Republicans.

I suspect they are explaining this as a "change in algorithm" to avoid a repeat of the bad press they got when it was discovered they censored google.cn results at the request of China's government.

Cut the green wire.

*snip* OH SHI--KABOOM!

This googlebomb still works!

Try 'french military victories' and click 'I'm feeling lucky'. At least this one still works :) Try it before its busted by the GOO police.

John Prescott

This news is a real shame. A search for "fuckwit" used to lead to the official page of the (UK) deputy prime minister, John Prescott, who fits the description admirably.

It's outright political pandering. Google should be ashamed of themselves.

Re:Ironically

At least "worst buy [google.com]" still works.

Re:Worst

It deosn't matter. You can guess what "Worst president ever" links to.

No Googlebomb required.

w00t!

Yep. It links to the most prominent and popular essay on the Internet dedicated to discussing who the worst president ever is. Exactly the right result.