Someone Set Up Us the (Google) Bomb

Drooling Iguana · Post by **Drooling Iguana** » 2005-08-09 09:12pm

Found this on the Bad Astronomer's blog. Apparently there's an effort by a group of scientifically-minded bloggers to Google-bomb the phrase Intelligent Design so that it points to an article from the National Center for Science Education entitled "Intelligent Design" Not Accepted by Most Scientists.

Just thought it might interest some people around here. Plus, I really wanted to use that title.

Duckie · Post by **Duckie** » 2005-08-09 09:28pm

Now, does Google Bombing work with one point per site or one point per link? If the latter, this is a great ID Resource for Cretinists.

Zornhau · Post by **Zornhau** » 2005-08-10 04:35am

Pity it's only a google bomb. Does google count links from livejournals? If so, I think I'll start a meme.

Ender · Post by **Ender** » 2005-08-11 10:39pm

Explain the google bomb thing to me so I can help

LMSx · Post by **LMSx** » 2005-08-11 11:00pm

A good example of a Googlebomb in action would be Drooling Iguana's first post; he hyperlinked the phrase intelligent design to the NCSE rebuttal page. When Google searches through SD.net, then, it'll note that when the topic of intelligent design is brought up, people will link to a certain page, the NCSE in this case.

It then compares how many people link to the NCSE vs. other sites about intelligent design, and the sites with more links to it are ranked higher. If it was just Drooling Iguana doing it, Google would rank the NCSE site very low when someone does a search for "intelligent design". But if you get a bunch of people actively trying to influence it, the NCSE page will climb the rankings, hopefully becoming the #1 page returned.

That's Googlebombing. Manipulating Google.

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2005-08-11 11:26pm

Ah. Well then.

[Useless repetition deleted, along with copycat posts - DW]

Exonerate · Post by **Exonerate** » 2005-08-12 12:19am

I'm pretty sure it only works once per page. Spamming it does nothing.

I'm going to put that on my blog.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2005-08-12 12:47am

God damn it, this is SLAM, not Testing! Don't confuse me like that!

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2005-08-12 12:48am

I suppose tomorrow I'll set up about 80 blogs and spam the fuck out of them with this link..

Utsanomiko · Post by **Utsanomiko** » 2005-08-12 12:50am

It's as high as 8th last I checked.

Zadius · Post by **Zadius** » 2005-08-12 02:21am

well, I do have a geocities website that I haven't updated for 5 years. I'll go put a link on it.

Netko · Post by **Netko** » 2005-08-12 03:51am

I think the mechanism takes into account their pagerank stuff. That meaning that popular sites which are linked TO a lot have more weight when determening how much a link is worth, so a link here would probably have decent worth while a link from a blog you just opened which nobody saw would have minimal worth if any at all in determening how high your link should be when the link phrase is searched for. Note that the exact algorithm is not known since google keeps it secret so that slimy advertising companies can not googlebomb their stuff easily.

WyrdNyrd · Post by **WyrdNyrd** » 2005-08-12 05:29am

Not only do Google keep their algorithm secret, they change it once a month - mostly fine-tuning.

WyrdNyrd · Post by **WyrdNyrd** » 2005-08-12 10:08am

I just have to ask: Just how fucking stupid do you think that the Google programmers are? If google-bombing was this easy, don't you think every advertiser/scammer on the net would be doing it? And once everyone is doing it, but for different sites, wouldn't it all just even out?

If it was this simple, Mike could trivially generate a single page with a million links in it, and link that page straight off the main page.

USE those analytical faculties that are so highly valued here, and think about the problem. The reaction here reminds me of the way that uncritical people react to chain-letters and other email hoaxes. It also reeks of slacktivism

On the other hand, those people that are going to add links on other sites will probably be doing 10x as much good for the cause as simply repeating the link a hundred times on the same bloody page.

Tiger Ace · Post by **Tiger Ace** » 2005-08-12 10:18am

Actully the sig is a much better idea then just google spamming the link. Just have people with pages pertaining to this have a link to that site, google disregards random links last time I read something 'bout it.

bilateralrope · Post by **bilateralrope** » 2005-08-12 06:37pm

HemlockGrey wrote:I suppose tomorrow I'll set up about 80 blogs and spam the fuck out of them with this link..

I remember that because of how easy it was to spam a blogs comments with url's, google stopped looking at the comments section of blogs, I'm not sure if it stil looks at the blogs articles.

Netko · Post by **Netko** » 2005-08-13 04:40am

WyrdNyrd wrote:I just have to ask: Just how fucking stupid do you think that the Google programmers are? If google-bombing was this easy, don't you think every advertiser/scammer on the net would be doing it? And once everyone is doing it, but for different sites, wouldn't it all just even out?

<snip>

Rereading my post I can see that there may be some confusion since I didn't mention that only one link is counted (basicly - not sure about forums and posts on diffrent topics but I'm pretty certain that only one link on a page of the thread is counted so copy/pasting a link 100 times into a post won't help).

Basicly, as far as I know, the "ladder" of sources goes something like; reputable popular sites, permanent link, then a link in a article, then it goes to the popular blogs (I belive google makes a distinction between sites and blogs) then less popular sites, blogs and so on with just opened sites and blogs being at the bottom along with forums. Popularity being mesured by linking to that site (in other words, by linking to the intelligent design site we are making that site more popular, so whatever sites they link to get more priority in google rankings as the ncseweb site gets linked to more).