Comments on: George W. Bush: A Failure Once Again, According To Google

By: algoholic

algoholic — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 07:37:25 +0000

“what kind of a black hat search engine spammer discussion is this, anyway? :-)”

Ralph, the “SERPS are OBJECTIVE and IMPARTIAL” as long as they are parallel to the *Right* Interests.
Q: Are they commercial? Do they make money?
A: I believe so…

;-)

By: WebOptimist

WebOptimist — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 16:02:48 +0000

They apparently caught it quickly cuz the text has been changed and even the cache comes up empty. So, look quickly.

By: fantomaster

fantomaster — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 15:56:57 +0000

I’m surprised not to see the most obvious explanation being discussed here! To wit: Google is all about RELEVANCE. (If in doubt, check out all their corporate statements on the topic including the Matt Cutts blog, etc. etc. Would all these nice people ever lie to us?)

So what are you all essentially saying? That Google is WRONG about George Bush (and his White House site) qualifying for #1 position for the terms “miserable failure” and “failure” (without quotes)? That this is an IRRELEVANT search result?

So what are you – a bunch of Republican hardliners, peeved because you’re assuming that Google should adopt your specific view of G.W. Bush’s performance as president of the U.S. rather than the majority’s (and that of most of the rest of the world, btw)?

Ok, a wee bit of Chinese censorship, the triviality of their treatment of Falung Gong, dissident bloggers etc. etc. apart, Google is politically non partisan – so their search results shouldn’t be misconstrued as a political statement.

Nor is it helpful to introduce another conspiracy theory of the Axis of Evil Googlebombers into the equation.

Because, by Google’s own own standards (see above), their SERPS are OBJECTIVE and IMPARTIAL, like it or not.

And hey, what kind of a black hat search engine spammer discussion is this, anyway? :-)

By: Michael Visser

Michael Visser — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 23:30:45 +0000

Just letting you know “President of the United States – George W. Bush” has upped technorati’s listing on the ranks for #1 in the SERP’s for “failure”. :D

By: Adam Sharp

Adam Sharp — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 17:45:10 +0000

Nice piece, but there seems to be more to linkbomb-detection than this:

“If lots of people link to a particular page at the White House site using the word “failure” in the anchor text — but the White House page itself doesn’t use that word — Google guesses there’s a link bomb happening and defuses it.”

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=click+here

Neither “here” nor “click” is mentioned on the #1 result. Somehow the linkbomb-defuser realizes that Adobe’s “click here” links are natural, and the “miserable failure” links are manipulation.

Maybe if the % of identical backlink anchors are too high, it sets off an alarm. Could be based on timing, neighborhoods, who knows.

It really shows how scarily good their artificial-link-detection is getting. I posted about their paid link detecting here:

http://www.sharpseo.com/blog/index.php/archives/52

By: chris boggs

chris boggs — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 14:31:04 +0000

duh fyi, I guess I should have written “like you said” after the single failure-use idea. :p That’s what I get for commenting before reading Danny’s whole post.

By: chris boggs

chris boggs — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 14:21:37 +0000

Seth I think you may have something there. Another hint as to why this may have overcome the ban is a simple idea: the snippet indicates the word “failure” being used on the page to describe a particular non-action by congress. Should this word be removed from the page, it may lose the ranking next crawl?

Way to go on the Digg factor of this article, btw. 1963 when i just dugged it…

By: f-lops-y

f-lops-y — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 01:31:59 +0000

Hah! And as to the ‘fix-it’ there are a few others out there yet. Case in point {clarifier- Yes, I’m Canadian and no, I have no problem with the French), if you type in ‘French Military Victories’ – the top result in Google is still … well, there… :-) – and if you click through to the page – it’s well worth a look if you haven’t seen it.

Thanks for the heads up Danny – and after all the brouhaha – why would they ever, EVER put the word failure on the GW home page – in ANY context… the mind boggles. Maybe *basic* SEO should rate a little higher on the budget PR spend – as in Public Relations not page rank :-)

Why *basic*? ‘cos of this.. http://searchengineland.com/070405-111149.php

By: RedCardinal

RedCardinal — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 17:22:40 +0000

Well I think we can safely dispel any theories about this being a handjob now.

By: Seth Finkelstein

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 13:46:40 +0000

I have a theory on reigniting the Google Bomb - use additional words. As in: George Bush: "Miserable Failure"