Comments on: Obama Is “Failure” At Google & “Miserable Failure” At Yahoo

By: Ciarán Norris

Ciarán Norris — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 11:41:42 +0000

Just been looking at this and whilst they seem to have a 301 from http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html
to
http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/georgewbush/
they also seem to have a 302 going on from
http://www.whitehouse.gov/president
to
http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/president_obama/

I presume that this is the reason that he’s still ranking #2 on Yahoo for miserable failure

By: asnider

asnider — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 22:58:02 +0000

I don’t see the page in question anywhere in the first 5 pages of Google SERPs for [failure], even when signed out, but I’m looking at Google Canada so that may be why. I do, however, see the Yahoo! issue.

Obviously, this is not the biggest issue facing the Obama administration, I’m surprised the White House web team hasn’t managed to resolve this yet.

By: matterhornpat

matterhornpat — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 04:30:31 +0000

While bigger issues certainly exist for the Obama administration, this is an excellent example of how to, or how not to, handle 301’s.

By: cvos

cvos — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 20:34:45 +0000

It will be interesting to see how Google deals with the O-bomb. There is clearly a deep Google connection to the current administration.

On an unrelated note, it makes me sad to see the whitehouse appears to be using a Windows web server, while Bush used Apache.
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=http://www.whitehouse.gov&probe=1

By: Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 19:46:22 +0000

Dan, yes, thanks for catching that! I’ve updated it in the story.

By: Jonahstein

Jonahstein — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 17:24:58 +0000

Sadly, Google seems to have diffused the cheerful achievement bomb, since the whitehouse isn’t on the first 5 pages. Alas, like Google Bombs of the past, what is left over is all of the chatter about the bombing campaign, but the target itself is a crater at the top of the SERP

By: Dan Giancaterino

Dan Giancaterino — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:54:12 +0000

Danny:

You said:

“Should be 301 redirected here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/georgehwbush/”

Shouldn’t it be:

“Should be 301 redirected here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/georgewbush/”

Instead? You want to link to #43, not #41.

By: bidangle

bidangle — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:05:00 +0000

I am rather shocked that the Obama administration didn’t respond to your communications. Don’t they realize the investment of time you’ve spent on this? Probably more so than SMX West. OK… guilty, as I just wasted too much time reading and responding!

By: VBP

VBP — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 14:55:05 +0000

Wow, what will they say by his second week? VBP

By: why-did-you-delete-my-account

why-did-you-delete-my-account — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 10:08:10 +0000

Oh, I get it: I overracted — This isn’t your sphinn.com site, so I guess I need to log in again.

Sorry for the misunderstanding — shifting back and forthe betwee 2 sites (with each site requiring a different login) is pretty confusing, though… :S

Matt Cutts, BTW: has good advice concerning domain names — see http://twitter.com/nmw/status/1141344050 + http://twitter.com/nmw/status/1141322595 (his advice regarding domains comes near the end, if I recall correctly)