Question
I recently got an email from a friend that told me to go to google and search for "failure". The number one page that comes up is:
Biography of President George W. Bush
Biography of the president from the official White House web site.
www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html - 25k - Sep 27, 2005
At first I thought it was funny but then I went to the link and found that the word "failure" does not appear on the page even once. Pretty good SERPs for a non existent keyword.
The second result from the search is:
Welcome to MichaelMoore.com!
Official site of the gadfly of corporations, creator of the film Roger and Me and the television show The Awful Truth. Includes mailing list, message board, ...
www.michaelmoore.com/ - 37k - Sep 27, 2005
Odd coincidence, no?
So am I just naive or did everyone know that google can manually set search results? I can't think of any other explaination for these results. I'd heard that the moderators at DMOZ have played games with their listings but I thought google was concerned about public faith in their system.
Because of this apparent joke, the legitimate sites that have worked hard to get their pages optimized have been pushed down in the listing.
-yale
Answer
I haven't had time to actually look into this, but I believe that many sites link to those you indicated with the word 'failure' in their link. Thus, even though the website/page itself does not have the word 'failure' in it, the site will pull up under that term as so many have linked to it that way.
If I have time today, I'll test and post my results of that theory for you.
Couple of things to check. View the 'source' of the page, then check the backlinks that Google shows and see what word/phrase/etc. the backlinked sites use to link to that page.
Answer
Good Point Katleen. I didn't think about other people's sites linking to the Bush site with the word failure.
Still it seems odd that there are more sites on the web specificaly mentioning Bush as a failure then there are sites talking about heart failure.
It'll be interesting to see what you find.
Thanks,
-yale
Answer
ybme: It's called 'Google Bombing' A great sport, apparently, although it's been around for a couple of years already.
Here's the scoop:
Google Bomb
Definition: (noun or verb) A technique through which a group of bloggers working together can make a webpage come up when someone searches Google for certain keywords.
Bush Miserable Failure: Google Bombing Or Popular Opinion?
Categories
Bush
Google
GoogleBombing
Information Access
Go to Google and do a search for "miserable failure" and see what do you get as an answer.
Here is what the Google results say:
Web Results 1 - 10 of about 2,860,000 for miserable failure. (0.17 seconds) Biography of President George W. Bush Biography of the president from the official White House web site. www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html - 33k
This is what Google states about this issue:
"Google's search results are generated by computer programs that rank web pages in large part by examining the number and relative popularity of the sites that link to them. By using a practice called googlebombing, however, determined pranksters can occasionally produce odd results. In this case, a number of webmasters use the phrases [failure] and [miserable failure] to describe and link to President Bush's website, thus pushing it to the top of searches for those phrases. We don't condone the practice of googlebombing, or any other action that seeks to affect the integrity of our search results, but we're also reluctant to alter our results by hand in order to prevent such items from showing up. Pranks like this may be distracting to some, but they don't affect the overall quality of our search service, whose objectivity, as always, remains the core of our mission." (Source: Google Blog)
Another Report from Google:
If you do a Google search on the word [failure] or the phrase [miserable failure], the top result is currently the White House’s official biographical page for President Bush. We've received some complaints recently from users who assume that this reflects a political bias on our part. I'd like to explain how these results come up in order to allay these concerns.
Google's search results are generated by computer programs that rank web pages in large part by examining the number and relative popularity of the sites that link to them. By using a practice called googlebombing, however, determined pranksters can occasionally produce odd results. In this case, a number of webmasters use the phrases [failure] and [miserable failure] to describe and link to President Bush's website, thus pushing it to the top of searches for those phrases.
We don't condone the practice of googlebombing, or any other action that seeks to affect the integrity of our search results, but we're also reluctant to alter our results by hand in order to prevent such items from showing up. Pranks like this may be distracting to some, but they don't affect the overall quality of our search service, whose objectivity, as always, remains the core of our mission.
Answer
This is a excellent example of the strength and power of proper keyword text links.
Answer
Cobaltlady: I wonder how many blogs have to unite to achieve the desired google bomb? I wasn't able to find the numbers, but apparently a lot of people have to be in on this scheme in order for it to work the way it does for the 'failure' search term.
It's not quite google bombing, but I do have to put in a shameless plug here for Blujay and their submissions to froogle (and google). I am learning how to use the title in the blujay listings to get my ads to come up in the first three pages of froogle searches, and it seems to be working so far.
One ad that comes up on page one (at least it was yesterday) is one of my blujay listings for Canadian Real Estate. If you search for the term Canadian Real Estate in froogle, one of my ads comes up on the first page of search results half way down. It takes you to my canadianrealestate store on blujay. (Incidentally, I realize that my ad is way to long for that listing, so I'm working on a picture gallery link etc.) Lots to learn, but I am impressed with blujay's search engine submissions overall, so it makes the effort very worthwhile.
I'm also working on my blog for my selling4you.com site. I have some lots of ideas that I want to try out and just want to say that I really appreciate your posting the blog info in a different post. It got me started and I'm really enjoying the experience.
I contacted Jim earlier in the week about inviting here members to put links to their blogs, auctions, websites and online stores earlier in the week but I haven't heard back from him yet. So I'll sneak the invite into this post indirectly.
Now I have a perplexing question. If I type the url:
http://www.blogspot.selling4you.com/ it brings up my main website page. Why is this happening?
My blog is actually at: http://selling4you.blogspot.com/
Not sure why it links to my main page when typed with blogspot before the s4u url rather than after????? Veddy interestink!
I don't have domain forwarding on this site, but blogger must do this automatically? Strange!
Answer
Hey Shane, Thanks for the info. I'd never heard of "google bombing" before. Makes sense though. Get a a big enough group of people together and you can work google's system.
No doubt google's busy trying to figure out how to defeat it with some future update.
It would be interesting to know the details of the blogs involved. What's the minimum number of sites needed to make a number one spot happen? Do the refering sites need to be highly ranked in google or are shear numbers enough?
It sounds like this is kind of exploit is why google supposedly makes new sites wait something like 7 months to get listed.
-y
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shanne I can honestly say I have never visited Blujay's site but it sure sounds like they are doing a good job on their site SEO which is more than I can say for Ebay. Ebay tries to make it appear they are interested in helping store owners get optimized but they can't help themselves from making changes. So by making changes every 3-6 months just removes any gains you make because you know how long it takes Google to give you decent position.
Those Blog url's are a strange bird. I'm not really sure why that happens.
Oh I use my blogs to shamelessly promote my websites.
Mike
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Mike: I'm finding more and more strange but wonderful things about Blujay the more I use the site. I'm surprised you've never visited the site.
Let me preface this post by saying that I really have no idea what the Blujay contingent is up to. How they can run a completely free site is beyond me. But they are doing some neat things over there, for sure. I wonder if they hope to sell the site to eBay someday? Their site makes the turgid Gorilla that eBay has become look like a pot of crock, comparatively speaking. Or are they in some way affiliated (or hoping to be) with google? Who knows. At this point I am learning many valuable lessons in how to create effective listings over there, and the results are showing up on froogle, and google as well, so it's well worth the time and effort involved.
What I do know for sure is that they are doing a good job of getting stuff indexed on froogle. (And why froogle is still in beta after all this time is beyond me, as well!)
One thing I have learned about listing stuff on Blujay is that the listing's titles and user ID's on Blujay work very differently than on eBay. Your Blujay title, especially if it ties in with your user name (plus the first sentence or so of your listing) is one of the main keys to getting a good ranking on froogle (and sometimes the listings even shows up on google if you word it just exactly so - go figure!)
I see Blujay as being a tremendous marketing tool if things continue on as they are doing at the moment. I'm amazed at what I've accomplished there with just a few listings over a short period of time.
Not to mention that eBay has gone completely down the tubes for me lately. I just watched one of my auctions end this evening - $35 for an item that normally and consistently has sold for between $65 - $85 on eBay. There were 24 watchers on the listing. And only 4 Bidders!
To me, that is just a sign of the times as to what is going on, or should I say, going down, on eBay. I only list one or two collectible items on eBay now, and only do so that I have a venue to point my customers to my Blujay store where my whole inventory is listed at fair market value. Blujay sales are slow, but consistent, so I don't mind waiting for things to sell. My $35 sale tonight would have brought at least $45- $50 on Blujay. I'm learning the meaning of the term "Loss Leader." If even one half of the watchers bothered to check my Blujay store, then I've been very well compensated for the low selling price of my item on feebay.
On the long haul, I now do a lot better on BJ than on the big E, especially with my small ticket items. And it doesn't cost me a penny other than my time.
And because Blujay is a dream to use, it's way faster and more efficient to list stuff there than on eBay. I'm still on dial-up and believe, me, trying to do anything on eBay is painful these days! The private real estate listings are another story. They are tied in with my website, and they do get a lot more hits than the collectibles stuff. I think that is because they are coming up so high on the froogle and google searches.
At any rate, it's been an interesting learning experience all around!
Answer
Ok you convinced me to take a look at Blujay. As soon as I get 5 Blogs and 3 websites updated. I love something new and interesting. It may take a couple of days to get there. I still have a ton of stuff left in my building that I can list that I have been donating to Goodwill for tax write-off. It's just finding the time to take a look.
Mike