Bluntly. Yes, they have been Google Bombed.
I’ve been following the Anonymous war on Scientology with some interest and checked googling "dangerous cult" when I first saw their call to make scientology.org the first result. It was not on the list at all. I think this was only a week ago.
7 Comments
I’ve been following the Anonymous war on Scientology with some interest and checked googling "dangerous cult" when I first saw their call to make scientology.org the first result. It was not on the list at all. I think this was only a week ago.
7 Comments
Comments
Martine, can you show where this is? I’ve seen write-ups of the Anonymous war like this one at Wired, but if I hit what I gather is their wiki of instructions on things to do, there’s nothing on it. But glad to have the confirmation that this is a recent change -- that definitely helps in figuring it out.
The wiki has been down for a while but is now back up.http://www.partyvan.info/index.php/Project_Chanology/Operations#Section_2:_Anti-propaganda has the Google Bomb information.You may also be interested in their PR blog at http://www.funky-bunch.blogspot.com/
Having reread that part of their wiki I also ran a google on brainwashing cult. It’s notable, and probably of specific interest to you, that "brainwashing cult" also returns scientology.org as the top result - however removal of the quotation marks leaves it nowhere on the list.Hope that’s useful for your investigations...
Well, yeah, it’s a Google Bombing for sure... maybe not in the traditional sense where you get a page to rank for a term that is completely unrelated, but a bomb none the less.Again, I think that they’ve possibly put specific keywords or URLs on a list, in order to add another filter onto some of the search results and rankings.Go to Google and perform this search:"miserable failure" site:whitehouse.govThis URL may work for you:http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&as_qdr=all&q=%22miserable+failure%22+site%3Awhitehouse.gov&btnG=SearchYou’ll find that Google is still relating pages to "miserable failure" that do not include the term in the HTML of the page. The first 3 pages that they list today are:www.whitehouse.gov/ask/20031010.html(Has the term.)www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/09/20030909-4.html (Has the term.)www.whitehouse.gov/contact/ (Does not have the term in the HTML.)You’ll notice that if you check the cached copy of some of these pages, like:http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:MroB4JYzMekJ:www.whitehouse.gov/contact/+%22miserable+failure%22+site:whitehouse.gov&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=usThere is a notice: "These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: miserable failure"So... bombing is still alive, and is even trackable as a process at Google. Whether they act on it or not is another matter. For example, tomorrow we may see that www.scientology.org no longer appears under this term or similar searches, this may be a hand edit for all intensive purposes... because Google may not be ready to throw the switch and not let sites show up for words that are not on the page.I.E.:dangerous cult site:www.scientology.orghttp://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:ZR32UevcZ-YJ:www.scientology.org/+dangerous+cult+site:www.scientology.org&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=usThese search terms have been highlighted: dangerous These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: cult
Awesome post, Danny! Threw it up on digg:http://digg.com/tech_news/Search_Dangerous_Cult_on_Google_Scientology_org_1
Plainly put, as long as Google allows for anchor text to weigh as a factor towards how a page ranks for that anchor text, then every single link can be a ’Google Bomb’ regardless of intention or number of links. That is, of course, unless Google can algorithmically say "if the anchor text is not on the page, then the page cannot rank for that anchor text."Otherwise, this would never still be possible with "click here", where Adobe ranks for this phrase that is not on the page.Therefore, Google Bombs have never been fixed (at least, not algorithmically) contrary to your previous article on the "anniversary" of "fixing" Google Bombs.
Martine, thanks again for the references. That really helps pin down that this was a Googlebombing campaign and, I have to say, one that seems to have worked. That’s espcially so for the page to be showing up for "brainwashing cult," neither of which appears on the page.