13 replies to this topic

[ajeshnair]

I have gone through many keywords after the "FLORIDA" update. We saw many irrelevant search results for keyphrases.

The most interesting thing i have ever found is George Bush's home page coming in first place for keyword "miserable failure"!

Check out

[Jill]

Just a google bomb. Nothing to do with algorithm changes.

Jill

[ajeshnair]

Check out this and see the top 10 result

[torka]

Kinda funny, depending on your political leanings... but not really new. People have been Google bombing since 2001, if memory serves. Just get lots of people to set up links containing the desired text, pointing to the desired page, et voilà! If you've got enough friends or the ability to incite the masses, you can have a reasonable amount of fun with stuff like that.

I think the first deliberate one, at least the first I heard of, was the Andy "talentless hack" Pressman bomb.

--Torka "but you should only use your powers for good"

[qwerty]

But I do think it's worth noting that I thought the new algo would have made googlebombing harder to accomplish: we're talking about a bunch of unrelated, non-expert pages using identical anchor text on links to a page that's unrelated to them.

Why is that still working if, as a hypothetical example, a site about cheese graters is no longer getting a benefit from links on pages about diesel fuel?

[Jill]

What made you think it would make it harder?

Jill

[qwerty]

Well, based on what I've been reading, relevance of linking sites is more important now, and linking campaigns that don't take that into account and insist on specific anchor text are being given less weight.

I think it's safe to assume that if 100 (just an example -- I don't know how many are involved) blogs are pointing to the White House page with the same anchor text for the purpose of a google bomb, not very many of those blogs are of the same theme as the White House page (or appear in the same ODP category), nor are they deemed "expert" pages. So why should those links and their anchor text carry so much weight?

[AussieWebmaster]

But I do think it's worth noting that I thought the new algo would have made googlebombing harder to accomplish: we're talking about a bunch of unrelated, non-expert pages using identical anchor text on links to a page that's unrelated to them.

Why is that still working if, as a hypothetical example, a site about cheese graters is no longer getting a benefit from links on pages about diesel fuel?

Not when the links are being reciprocated... the big thing that has been lost is the power to get major play from link exchanges... these all point to one place with no recip...

Guess the way around that is to create a separate domain name inside your site to list links and have the incoming obviously go to the main domain...

I will have to play with that and also see if the links page is put in the robots.txt file whether that helps.

[qwerty]

As far as I can tell, the problem with many reciprocal links is not that they're reciprocal, but that they're not necessarily relevant. I don't recall reading anything in the TSPR or the Hilltop papers that dealt directly with reciprocal links. Not that those papers are necessarily the answers, but I haven't seen a drop in recognition of reciprocal links between similarly-themed sites.

What I'm seeing, and what those papers propose, is that links to irrelevant sites shouldn't pass PR.

[Jill]

Well, based on what I've been reading...

Guess ya can't believe everything you read!

Plus, how many sites are actually optimized for that phrase? Probably not a whole heck of a lot...if any.

Jill

[CGJ]

Search Now For miserable failure
Its in the news!
News: Miserable Failure? Google Trick Says It's Bush - Newsday - Dec 5, 2003

[plantboy]

Google Bombing reminds me that, contrary to what I had always assumed, content is not king. I thought a site had to have relevant content to rank high. Yet whitehouse.gov doesn't contain "miserable" or "failure."

[OldWelshGuy]

Oh and there was me assuming that google was doing a really good job of 'stemming' to relate the whitehouse with miserable failures.

[AussieWebmaster]

Ah the power of cheese....
Inbound links with no recips rule!!!