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.

And this is just adding to it

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

Yes! What are you, some kind of heathen?

Re:And this is just adding to it

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

"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

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

No, you're confusing the Uncertainty Principle with the Observer Effect [wikipedia.org].

"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

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...

Re:And this is just adding to it

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.

And by submitting this story

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

"Died in a frist psot accident"

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

That's no bomb

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.

I'm Confused

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.

The original Google Bomb is a VERY bad thing

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

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.

I take exception

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

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

This comic [xkcd.com] spawned a whole different type of [art|softcore pornography] [wetriffs.com]. 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 [google.co.uk] did mention WetRiffs on their web log.

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

Died in a * accident

Google will actually let you search for Died in a * accident [google.com]. 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 [google.com] or Either you are with us or you are with the * [google.com]. Even more interesting if combined with the - operator to filter [google.com] out the obvious possibilities.

Re:Died in a * accident

I, for one, welcome our new * overlords.

It's due to the death in China and Digg

It's because of this:

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

and also this:

      http://www.digg.com/world_news/Blogger_Beaten_to_Death_in_China_for_Filming_Argument [digg.com] ..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!

Died in a trolling accident

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 [google.com]? OMG I did it! I has teh pawar ovar tah Intarwebs!

WHAT WERE THE TWO RESULTS?

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

Re:Blog writers prosecutions

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

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

Uhm

yes.

Re:You're sitting on a timebomb

No, I am afraid it is two now.