Google Juice 360
mpawlo writes: "I guess it is time to start using them bookmarks again, since favourite search engine Google seems to be on the verge of Altavista doom and search engine chaos. BBC News reports of Google bombing (often referred to as 'Google juice' by the infamous Crackmonkey subscribers). 'The users have found a way to "bomb" Google to improve the rankings of particular webpages, and ensure a site is near the top of the results for particular search phrases.'
There is also the sport of Google Whacking affecting your search results."
How to Google Whack... (Score:4, Funny)
Step 2: "autistic paraplegic donkey porn"
Step 3: I'm feeling lucky
Step 4: Google Whack
How to spoil the fun for everybody (Score:3, Funny)
1. Obtain dictionary in electronic form.
2. Separate the words from the definitions
3. Publish to web page
4. Publish to another web page
5. If feeling particularly cruel, publish to additional web pages.
6. Wait for hate mail
Re:How to Google Whack... (Score:5, Interesting)
To make the game challenging, you can't quote the words (making them into a phrase). And they both have to be actual English words which Google itself recognizes (I think Google uses dictionary.com's dictionary, so you can doublecheck yourself there).
The more common the words, the cleverer the Googlewhack is considered to be -- few Googlewhacks use words you would consider "common."
Try it yourself, just think up two obscure words and type them into Google. If you get zero hits, you're too obscure, try again. Much more likely that you'll get 5 or 10 or 20 or 150 hits, in which case your goal is simple: get more obscure, until that number gets down to 1!
Re:How to Google Whack... (Score:3, Interesting)
I've seen a few scoring systems that formalize this idea. Most start by multiplying the numbers of hits that each word would have gotten by itself. Personally, I like adding extra twists instead of trying to go for a high score. For example, alliterative whacks are harder to find because there are enough word lists out there that you're likely to get multiple hits on any two words that start with the same letter, so you have to pick words obscure enough not to be in the lists but real enough to be in the dictionary. It's a fun way to spend 5-10 minutes.
Re:How to Google Whack... (Score:2)
underbelly metanoia is a 2, but I can't find any ones.
-Erik
Does this count? (Score:2)
It ends up being someone whose last name is Waltz. Does that count among the elite googlewhackers?
mark
Re:How to Google Whack... (Score:5, Informative)
i've written a how-to on this; it's at http://www.blackant.net/other/random/how-to-google whack.php [blackant.net] and repeated below for your convenience.
HOW-TO GoogleWhack
1) think of complex word, mispell it, and search dictionary.com for the misspelling.
example:
word: insullatory
http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=insullatory
2) look through dictionary.com suggestions for a very odd-sounding word, look at definition of word.
example:3
word: inculcation
http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=inculcation&r=
3) do google search for the word and for derivatives of the word.
example:
words tried: inculcation, inculcator
4) choose word that has the least google returns
example:
inculcation: 14100 returns
inculcator: 238 returns
we choose inculcator.
5) if the returns number more than 1000 for any word or derivative, go back to step 1.
6) in the google returns for the word selected, look for an odd word in the returns, preferably one that is unrelated to the definition of the first word.
example:
words: inculcator, adepts
7) do a google search for both words. if it has more than one return, go to step 5.
8) submit your googlewhack
example:
words: inculcator, tablet.
9) once you find one googlewhack, look at the page returned for more odd/awkward words. use these as potential new googlewhacks.
using this method, i found a googlewhack in less than ten minutes (took me longer to write this up) and have repeatedly done so.
Taking it to the next level (Score:3, Interesting)
word_1, word_2
word_2, word_3
...
word_n-1, word_n
will each return a single match?
Then create whack Cycles which would consist of
word_1, word_2
word_2, word_3
...
word_n, word_1
Finally, whack Sets where choosing any two words from a pool would result in a whack?
The goal of each of these would be to make them as large as possible.
WebWhack or DnsWhack (Score:3, Interesting)
- First, decide what kind of difficulty level you want, eq, pick a number from 2 - 10.
- Open your browser, and do brain.randomize();
- Pick N (where n stands for difficulty level) amount of characters from your brain.
- enter those characters with www and com concattenated to the beginning and to the end
- Hit enter
- And be amazed!!
On could also decide number of times to repeat this process and ++ each time a site is found and play the game with office mates so everybody will have a good timeGoogleWhack and linux (Score:3, Informative)
My 'Pocket GoogleWhacker' [blogspot.com] tool is still available though (yes, there is a Linux version, but I haven't tested it as I don't have a Linux box). Also note that the highest scoring googlewhack by this method often use 'linux' as one fo the search terms
Re:How to Google Whack... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How to Google Whack... + what comes next (Score:2)
sPh
Re:How to Google Whack... (Score:5, Interesting)
There is also a somewhat easy to prevent google from picking up the posted whack: post it as an image.
Re:How to Google Whack... (Score:3, Insightful)
sPh
Re:How to Google Whack... (Score:2, Interesting)
You have forgotten that a single page might contain more than one two word combination. There are many web pages out there which contain entire dictionaries and therefore every two word combination which can be generated from the dictionary.
Re:How to Google Whack... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How to Google Whack... (Score:3, Interesting)
All that's needed is one page with a list of those 3M words, and of course for google to index all of them as belonging to that one page.
Well, technically, two copies of that list would need to exist :)
Google Whacking (Score:2, Funny)
SPORT??? Since when was THAT a sport??? That's disgusting!
Re:Google Whacking (Score:3, Funny)
It's a sport (Score:2)
I pointed out one.. (Score:3, Informative)
However I think they are starting to do something since doing this search again yields proper results.
Proves strength of Google (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, as I'm all of the top three Stephen Turners [google.com] already, I don't need to do this. :-)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yep (Score:2)
Manipulation doesn't strengthen Google (Score:3, Interesting)
Given just the example regarding the redirection of "talentless hack" to the guy's friends site clearly demonstrates that this is an abuse and degrades the value of Google as a search engine, versus being some sort of great democratic benefit. When I use Google to find search results, I'm looking based on content and relevance, not "How many online friends got together and Google bombed". Online, with manipulable systems like that, democracy doesn't work, and that was the whole problem with META tags which this is basically recreating. Even worse is that it doesn't even just have to be democracy: Many Blogger sites themselves have high rankings as a whole, and with some machination someone can individually set up thousands of sites and programmatically set-up Google bombs. Clearly Google will have to filter this out.
Google is like scientific measurements : If the process is affected by the measurement then it's tainted.
Re:Proves strength of Google (Score:2)
Re:Proves strength of Google (Score:3, Insightful)
The Blogs are great and their increasing popularity is exactly the thing that Google needs to keep improving it's search results.
Blogging is the constant posting of your thoughts about news items and websites. Usually it's a lot of hot air, and many times as not, they are posting links to OTHER Blog posts about blogging which has this navel-gazing affect of increasing how boring the blog is (I digress...). But in general there's some good stuff out there.
The thousands and thousands of blogs out there are constantly adding fresh links into the net. This is GREAT for Google, because as we all know Google relies on the links between pages as its "intelligence" about the web. Without blogs, Google would be relying more and more on three year old vanity pages on Geocities with links that are the oldest, most stale links possible. Blogs keep the links fresh and the results on Google accurate.
This is a good thing, even if there's some colusion once in a while.
-Russ
This is not very important (Score:2, Insightful)
but very good sites are links in hundreds of
places. This only works with very weird titles.
OverLord
googlewhacking (Score:2, Informative)
Not as bad as all that (Score:5, Informative)
Well, yes, but it's not easy. The article describes several dozen to several hundred bloggers [blogger.com] working together to drive a certain word or phrase toward a certain URL. In other words, it takes a large, concerted effort to deceive Google's engine, and this fact alone provides reassurance that Google is working according to plan.
Somewhere else, on this site, Scientology has been accused of using their large network of sites and members to do the same thing, driving searches for "Scientology" and related words to their own sites rather than those of debunkers. Again, this takes a large and concerted effort, which is a virtue of Google rather than a vice.
Is Google on the verge of breaking because such a thing is possible? Of course not. But there are people powering the search engine on the back end, making improvements constantly in response to issues like this. And their cross-linking approach to ranking pages, while not perfect, remains the most reliable way yet found to judge a match's relevance.
If it works correctly 99% of the time, and Google is constantly working on the last 1%, that still makes it better than anything else out there.
How to spam the web with links (Score:4, Insightful)
As you can see, it's not that hard to spam the web with links to your site. Don't even count automated newsgroup posting, whch all gets indexed because of google groups.
Re:How to spam the web with links (Score:5, Interesting)
Google could use the same method of rating that they do now to raise the importance of pages to also demote weblogs in importance. A way may be found to determine if a page is a Weblog and take it out of the equation.
Slashdot could be considered a weblog. Any page that allows a user to post a message with links embedded in it is a Weblog is it not?
Let Google's Deja worry about the Weblogs and then the user can opt to include the extra results or not.
Re:How to spam the web with links (Score:3, Insightful)
Or better yet, how about a way to piggyback off the weblog's own way of rating the post [slashdot.org]? I.e. pick up and use the "Score" on a post here at Slashdot to decide how to rank it? It seems like a no-brainer.
Re:Not as bad as all that (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Not as bad as all that (Score:2)
Re:Not as bad as all that (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Not as bad as all that (Score:3, Insightful)
It was a glitch, and a funny one, but it wasn't even remotely exploitable.
Re:Not as bad as all that (Score:3, Interesting)
Big thanks to the Beckamn Institute at the University of Illinois for creating the VisIT [uiuc.edu] software for the graphic demonstrations.
I don't think there is a problem (Score:3, Insightful)
What they are reporting as a problem may not be. Google is raising sites in the rankings if large numbers of bloggers link to them--but they only do that if they like the link for some reason. What we have are lots of individuals (who many people respect at least enough to read occasionally) all saying, in effect, I find this interesting, and you might too.
We don't have some advertising hack sitting behind a desk on Madison Ave. saying "Make it so" and pushing a site to the top of Google. The only ways X-10 or mulesex.com or whatever could benifit from this are 1) as a joke, or 2) because they posted something that a wide variety of people liked.
This is how Google is supposed to work. So, where's the problem?
-- MarkusQ
Re:I don't think there is a problem (Score:2)
Re:I don't think there is a problem (Score:2)
And how much would it cost to reach and negotiate with each J. Random Blogger? The transaction cost would be an order of magnitude higher, and so you are looking at more like hundreds of thousands of dollars to move one site up in the rankings.
So, you might suppose, why not do something in bulk? Negotiate with ISPs (say) to link to your site from all of their free web pages or something. But then you are going to have the same pattern as regular webvertizements, and be easy to filter.
I'm not worried about Google keeping up with this sort of stuff; they've faced worse.
-- MarkusQ
Re:I don't think there is a problem (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, actually we do. There are networks of advertisers who run this software that generates pages with links that push up the Google rating for whoever is paying for those words. I've seen people use this to push their e-commerce affiliate sites higher in the Google ranks. One of them got his site to come back as the first return for "etoys" -- higher than the actual etoys.com site!
Google has a long way to fall... (Score:5, Insightful)
Another article (Score:5, Informative)
You can't simply go to www.google.com/bomb and drag a slider to move a URL up the listings. You have to actually have a concentrated effort. They talk about getting a webpage such as Geocities and getting your friends to do the same. It seems to me mass posting to bulletin boards would do the trick, unfortunately. There is even marketing software out there which posts your 'press releases' to hundreds of bulletin boards automatically.
Re:Another article (Score:5, Interesting)
It should be noted that direct links as advertisements could get a rebound under Google. Why pay for a link that bounds through another domain when you could have, say, Slashdot provide a direct link to your site and therefore give you a Google boost? Does anyone know if the link from a site gets you any Google boost if it clicks through, say, a redirect through doubleclick?
Can /. sigs help google bomb? (Score:2)
Satan, lead the way!
____
Corante article (Score:5, Informative)
If this really does start to get out of control, Google will adjust their techniques to work around the problem. I hope.
Missing a bit of history (Re:Corante article) (Score:3, Informative)
But it fails to mention the "dumb motherfucker" -> George Bush search hit perpetrated by the Hugh Disk site. It helped expose [wired.com] the potential flaw in Google's ranking algorithm.
I'm a bit surprised that when people picked up on this six months later it's considered clever and original.
Here is one way to alleviate the bombing. (Score:2, Informative)
if page A itself is highly ranked. So if some
site (IP block) is found (either by human or
clever AI) guilty of blogging, then its rank can be lowered or set to 0 permanently.
Google + Karma = Success? (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyway, could Google add something like Slashdot's moderation system? Not only would sites be ranked as they currently are, but users could rate whether or not those rankings made sense.
Furthermore, users could also rate which users tended to give fair ratings. This would be a way to prevent a business from ubermodding their own web site.
I even seem to faintly remember Google bringing up the idea also. Wasn't this discussed before?
Of course, I shudder to think of the new heights karma-whoring could reach, on the new Google.
Adam
User input could solve problems (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:User input could solve problems (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:User input could solve problems (Score:5, Insightful)
For the sake of the discussion, let us call the users who are giving input "moderators."
As another poster mentioned, this system opens up a NEW can of worms, as spammers, idiots, and conservatives will use the system to call certain sites "crap", not because they are not relevant, but because they want the sites' listing to go down.
So then people would demand that the "moderators" were overseen, perhaps by a system of "meta-moderators", and you see where I am going with this.
Re:User input could solve problems (Score:2)
Re:User input could solve problems (Score:2, Funny)
*giggle*
Couldn't resist.
Re:User input could solve problems (Score:2, Informative)
If you find results that have been bombed, vote against them.
Unfortunately, the Toolbar requires Microsoft Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP and Microsoft Internet Explorer version 5 or later, so I'll probably get flamed for this post.
Re:User input could solve problems (Score:2, Informative)
It is a toolbar plugin for IE, so I guess we might have to scratch a large portion of the users here.
Darcy
Re:On the other hand.... (Score:2)
Technical explanation on how this works .... (Score:4, Interesting)
Bad perhaps (Score:5, Informative)
Google has always seemed to be driven by a happy medium of civic duty and profit. Take their text ads - I love them - unobstrusive, get the point across, and NOT in teh main search results - they are clearly marked. So I expect that the geniuses @ Google will attack this problem and come up with a solution. SO yelling about Google's demise seems VERY premature.
Re:Bad perhaps (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not trying to harass you personally, but this statement assumes that Google is making a profit. Are they really bringing in enough money with the adwords to fund their operation, or are they still operating on VC Baby Fat? If they are profitable, why are they trying to sell this corny $15,000 "Corporate Google" device? As the parent post said, Altavista tried that 5 years ago when they realized they needed more profits--it didn't help them much.
If they are making money, I ask: How is Google able to maintain the entire Deja usenet archives without ads when Deja wasn't able to maintain it profitably WITH ads in the
Google's ultimate downfall will come about because of financial reasons, not because their search results go to pot. Once the money well runs dry (after they sell the ping-pong tables at HQ), they will start trying all sorts of crazy schemes to stay afloat. Like becoming a portal. Like offering a personal google device. Like selling big ugly adds. Like offering premium subscriptions. Hopefully, they can sidestep the pitfalls experienced by their failed predecessors, but I bet that within a year, Google will look very different than it does today.
Google will just suck less (Score:2)
NoOoOoOoOo! (Score:2)
The way I see it, makes perfect sense.... (Score:2)
That said, is it any wonder that bombing websites are out there and screwing up the search engines? They are just like the telemarketers of the real world. An insignificant handful of individuals when quantity concerened, tainting the reputation of a beautiful system of communication.
Spoilsports (Score:2)
Yesterday's news (Score:2, Informative)
vector based filtering (Score:5, Informative)
I think it must be pretty hard to do this well... (Score:3, Informative)
From my own experience, a properly worded search + feeling lucky is about 90% accurate in finding what I'm looking for.
Taken from: http://www.google.com/technology/index.html
PageRank Explained
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."
Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query.
No Worries... (Score:2)
Two points (Score:2)
The link that should have been in the story (Score:5, Informative)
Here [corante.com] is the Corante article.
Time to start our own bombs (Score:2)
Anyway, it's time to start our own bombs.. repeat after me..
Idiot [gwbush.com] - troll forum [slashdot.org] - Evil empire [microsoft.com] - gay pr0n [cowboyneal.org]
Speak your voice (Score:2, Interesting)
-----
Virtual Personalities, inc. Verbots.com - start the dialog(sm). [verbots.com]
Not quite as bad as it seems (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine you're the patriarch of a clan, and everyone in your clan has a homepage. All of your descendants' home pages have links to your home page, since you're the head dude. Your home page only has one word on it - say it's 'thrombosis'. Since Google bases the relevance of its search results on how many links there are to any page, any search for 'thrombosis' will likely show your home page as the number one search result, because you've got the word on your web page and dozens of links to your home page on other sites.
Once you think about how Google's rankings work, you can easily figure out how to game the system. That's why Dave Winer (token head of all webloggers) is usually the first result of a search on 'Dave'.
As far as googlewhacking is concerned, it's not as easy as it looks. Try 'parrhesia verboten'. I stopped once I found that one, proving to myself that it can be done. :)
Re:Not quite as bad as it seems (Score:3, Funny)
Oh the irony. The second link for "Dave" does indeed go to Dave Whiner's "scripting news" site, but the topmost article on that page says that "google bombing" is just a phantasy...
Some of you sound like Gollum (Score:4, Funny)
The Wheel Turns... (Score:3, Informative)
It should be emphasized that these spamming vulnerabilities of search engines are almost entirely due to their automated nature. Efforts to present search results not just based on author-presented data, such as the frequency, positioning, and proximity of search terms, but with also somehow computing more objective data based on the source domain of the indexed file, how often searchers choose the link, and especially a sophisticated type of citation analysis that charts authoritative pages and hubs by counting the number of links pointing to a page, do hold promise for offering more relevant search results (Brin & Page, 1998; Chakrabarti, et. al., 1999; Notess, 1999). It is reasonable to assume, however, that no matter how sophisticated the spamming countermeasures adopted by automated indexes become, new ways of fooling the machines could be crafted. Some amount of human editorial power therefore seems necessary.
- From a paper [tk421.net] I wrote back when Google seemed impervious to spamming (early 1999).
Search engine oddities (Score:2)
Yes, I think they fudged those results.. Maybe MS thinks you mistyped Google and really meant to type MSN. Search for MSN on Google and http://search.msn.com is the first returned.
I dont't use Lycos and after messing around there today I remember why. Too many moving things, flash crap flying across the screen. Why would someone use this place on a regular basis?
Re:Search engine oddities -- Flashy Shiny Things (Score:2)
If people watch and grow accustomed to that kind of thing, then their attention span probably will drop to something just short of a goldfish. Now, try looking at the layout of any of the more popular sites. You've got different departments competing with each other for your clicks, so they do what they must. If it has to flash / fly / cry out "click me!" so be it. They're drowning. At any rate, take a look at the serene simplicity that is google. It's dead by comparison. Where are all the flashy, attention-keeping buttons / banners / ads? They don't need them. They're focused on one thing: providing a service to the world, and turning a nice profit while they're at it.
Well, that was a nice incoherent rant.
filter the input (Score:2)
Summed up, only add unique pages from unique sites.
How is this bad? (Score:2, Interesting)
It used to be, you needed deep pockets and/or a high-profile publication to effectively publicize your ideas. Now, a couple hundred like-minded people with no budget can do it. That's good! Maybe the BBC is sour about it, but that's the kind of social change some of us have been hoping the Internet would bring.
Big deal. (Score:2, Interesting)
- A.P.
OT: The ad on this page (Score:2)
This is an example of Google working! (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, this effect can be choreographed, but the result is the same. All of the sites choreographed to achieve this result are voting that site A is relevant to subject B. If the sites involved consistently show bad judgment their ranking in Google are likely to decline and therefore their contribution to the Google ranking for subject B will lessen.
The fact that a large number of highly ranked blogs can drive a URL up the Google pop-chart is evidence of both the respect blogs are given and the power of Google's algorithms to find such non-corporate backed content.
how is this new? (Score:2, Insightful)
Obvious case of bombing I ran into (Score:2, Interesting)
"Hot Teen Javascript String Manipulation"
"Live XXX Javascript String Manipulation"
"Upskirt Javascript String Manipulation"
"Sizzling Javascript String Manipulation"
etc. They were all using some sort of cgi to generate the links. It took Google a month or so to remove them.
Thought it might be a prelude to something like this.
Personally, I care very little about the bloggers bombing certain keywords. They likely have something to say on the topic. The thing I fear is the stupid sex sites, online casinos, and mlm scams diluting my search results.
This is a non-problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
Google folks are not stupid. If the integrity of searches that people really make is affected, they will change the code.
In the meantime, is it really necessary to squelch every last bit of fun on the Net?
The inimitability of human intelligence (Score:2)
hyacinthus.
Don't Manually Whack! (Score:2, Informative)
Check out this project on Freshmeat: http://freshmeat.net/projects/googlewhacker/ [freshmeat.net]
MONOLINUX
I'm not convinced this is a problem. (Score:2)
hmmmm (Score:2)
If you type... (Score:4, Funny)
Anti-Semitic Advertisements on Google (Score:4, Interesting)
However, since I like slashdot so much (I assume that is why) it's been serving up advertisements for other projects that link to SourceForge whenever I run google searches; for example, the white supremacist publication the Free Occident [freeoccident.org], which is powered by SourceForge.
Now, I'm not one of those people who thinks Google should try and filter hate speech from search results. Likewise, I don't think that the Free Occident should somehow be prevented from using SourceForge's software - open source means open, Voltaire was right, etc. However, I think google should draw the line at serving advertisements for articles about how "If you hear about a 100-million-dollar swindle, then you know that it has to be a Jew." [freeoccident.org]
I've dumped a copy of the html for the search result in my journal - paste the Extrans into an html file to see it in close-to original format. It appears from the first version in my journal that the ad appears ABOVE the search results - this is not the case.
Free Occident is a web log, but I find it far more worrisome that they've purchased an ad on google than if they were trying to blog some search term, like "White Power," or even "Occident."
Yes, I'm Jewish.
Another method (Score:4, Insightful)
www.office-supplies-st0res.com/ (66.33.85.157)
office-storage.1nf0-office-equip.
pens-pencil.search-office-supplies
buy-furniture.furniture-sh0p-searc
printer-toner.supplies-1nfo-office
office-product.office-supplies-sh0
office-computers.supplies-1nfo-of
calculators.supplies-1nfo-office.
discount-office.supplies-1nfo-off
If you look at the HTML source code (after clicking on one of these results from google.com), you can see it is obviously a deliberate measure to track it's referring URL and search keyword, and logs the results to bizrate.com. Stuff like this makes me furious, especially if you take into account the potential long-term costs. Google's spider has to waste traffic by going through these sites, searchers like me have to skip through a bunch of garbage results, resulting in more traffic. Sure, maybe a few kilobytes of data, but IMO, it contributes to the expenditures of search engines, eventually resulting in more ads, etc... Maybe i'm exaggerating a tad, but it's wasteful to say the least.
Two reasons why this shouldn't matter (Score:3, Informative)
2) Whenever you do a search, unless it is very specific, you automatically know not to trust the first couple results. It's a fact with all search engines. What makes google even better is that it shows you the text that links to it. So you can tell if it is a relevant link or not.
Re:Paradox: Publishing a googlewhack destroys it (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Paradox: Publishing a googlewhack destroys it (Score:3, Funny)
Heisenwhack (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Try using unique words (Score:5, Funny)
That's THE Jon Katz now.... (Score:2)