Sobtanian's old blog. Still full of goodies, why don't you stay a while.

Friday, August 12, 2005

Google Bombing

I think I'm risking alot creating an entry with "bomb" in it, being all arab and muslim and all that, AND in the UK :o)
Everyone uses google. Even the word "google" is now in the New Oxford English Dictionary, and that's a statement to the new culture of ipods, blogs, and google. But what exactly is google bombing? Google uses a once-unique way to rank it's search results. Pages that had more external pages linking to them got ranked higher. A great idea, but with a big flaw: some pages will show up as results to keywords that don't even exist on the page! Let me explain: if alot of pages link to good-delicious with (the worst blog in the world link), then eventually searching google for "the worst blog in the world" will bring good-delicious up as first result!
Google bombing capitalises on just this by getting page masters (and now bloggers!) to link to something using specific keywords. The motive? humour, or most likely political. Why do I mention all this, then. Well, try googling "Miserable Failure" and see what you come up with!
Anyone remember ages ago searching for "Weapons of Mass Destruction" in google and ending up on that spoof IE error page? well that was also a google bomb intended as a joke!
Make sure you check out Miserable Failure, and go here for a great Wiki article about the Google Bomb

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