Google bombing for skepticism

[Crundy]

Hi all,
I had an idea today that I thought I'd run past you all to see what you think.

Imagine this scenario: A person is watching daytime TV when they come across Sylvia Browne on Montel. They like what they see, and so enter Sylvia Browne into Google. The first hit (and actually the second as well) is to Sylvia's official website, and so the person clicks the link and finds all the information they need to lighten their savings account, without ever coming across a skeptic site, or a site explaining cold reading etc.

Now image that when they hit the search button, the first site in the list on a search for Sylvia Brown is a very prominent "Stop Sylvia Browne". That's interesting, lets see what this is about first...

The point is, if we can push the skeptical sites up the search ranking for key terms then perhaps more people will be diverted away from the scammers. So one way to do this is to Google Bomb particular search phrases to point to the sites we want people to see. This would consist of everyone adding a page on their website (with an invisible link to it on the homepage) which contains a 'tag cloud' of the search phrases linking to the relevant sites.

To avoid Google blocking static versions of the page that everyone has a copy of, I suggest I create an XML web service which will dynamically produce such content in random order with random text surrounding it, and people could then call this service from their page. People who only have static content on their site could take a copy of a random page from the site and use that.

So what say you all? If you think it might be a good idea then what phrases and links should I use?

 

[krelnik]

Some of us already engage in this practice right here in the forum. Check out my signature.

I'd caution you not to get too fancy with this, such as using invisible links or huge pages full of links. Google is not stupid, and they are constantly adjusting their methods to compensate for folks trying to game the system. If they catch you engaging in shady googlebombing practices, the might decrease your page rank or ban your site entirely.

 

[Crundy]

Some of us already engage in this practice right here in the forum. Check out my signature.

True, but that's just links from one site, which doesn't contribute much

I'd caution you not to get too fancy with this, such as using invisible links or huge pages full of links. Google is not stupid, and they are constantly adjusting their methods to compensate for folks trying to game the system. If they catch you engaging in shady googlebombing practices, the might decrease your page rank or ban your site entirely.

Using invisible links is a very legitamate practice, for example, with links for screenreaders for blind people. In fact the ASP.NET engine automatically adds a hidden skipover link for navigation menus. Huge pages full of links are also legitamate, such as sites having a 'Links' page, or directory websites.

Google do not manually 'ban' sites for Googlebombing. They have changed their algorithms to look for search terms that are meaningless to the target page, for example, the "miserable failure" googlebomb which pointed to George W Bush's profile on the Whitehouse site. In this case, the engine noted that there were thousands upon thousands of links just saying "miserable failure" pointing to a single deep page which contains neither word. In the case stated above, a link would be provided saying "Sylvia Browne" which links to the stopsylviabrowne.com homepage, which (1) contains the link words, and (2) is not a deep rooted page. It would be a very legitamate link.

Think about it this way, if I was running a skeptics website, I would have a links page which listed all the sites such as stopsylviabrowne.com. This is the same scenario, but is a community based, organised link production project.

 

[vexed]

This article explains how Google ranks sites (which come up first for search results):
Site Ranking in Google

 

[krelnik]

Anchor text is important!

Recently Eugenie Scott mentioned her new site "Expelled Exposed" on the SGU podcast, and asked that people link to it so it raises in the rankings.

I've noticed a bunch of skeptics doing this, but they are all making a very critical error! They are using "Expelled Exposed" as the link text, like this:

WRONG: Expelled Exposed

Why is this wrong? Because it doesn't help!

This site is already the number one link for the search "expelled exposed" on Google. Additional links built this way might help keep it there, but they aren't making the site more visible to people searching for the movie.

What you want is for the site to appear in searches where the corresponding woo site appears. In this case, this is the search "expelled" by itself, for which the idiotic Ben Stein movie is the top result. We want Eugenie's site to be right next to it in those searches. To do that, we have to make the anchor text match the search we are targeting:

RIGHT: Expelled

For more tips on Googlebombing, see this "howto" from the folks at Wired: 'Google Bomb' an Enemy.

Right now, Eugenie's site is on page 7 of the Google results for "expelled".

Get to work, people!

 

[shadron]

Recently Eugenie Scott mentioned her new site "Expelled Exposed" on the SGU podcast, and asked that people link to it so it raises in the rankings.

I've noticed a bunch of skeptics doing this, but they are all making a very critical error! They are using "Expelled Exposed" as the link text, like this:

WRONG: Expelled Exposed

Why is this wrong? Because it doesn't help!

This site is already the number one link for the search "expelled exposed" on Google. Additional links built this way might help keep it there, but they aren't making the site more visible to people searching for the movie.

What you want is for the site to appear in searches where the corresponding woo site appears. In this case, this is the search "expelled" by itself, for which the idiotic Ben Stein movie is the top result. We want Eugenie's site to be right next to it in those searches. To do that, we have to make the anchor text match the search we are targeting:

RIGHT: Expelled

For more tips on Googlebombing, see this "howto" from the folks at Wired: 'Google Bomb' an Enemy.

Right now, Eugenie's site is on page 7 of the Google results for "expelled".

Get to work, people!

More power to you, but Google ranks sites for a purpose, and if you attempt to subvert that purpose by trying to game the system, it's you against a bunch of world-class programmers with stock options. Anything published about Google's algorithms becomes obsolete in direct proportion to it's popularity.

 

[krelnik]

More power to you, but Google ranks sites for a purpose, and if you attempt to subvert that purpose by trying to game the system, it's you against a bunch of world-class programmers with stock options.

I have to differ with you a bit. As you see from my earlier post in this thread, I do caution people not to do things like create invisible links or play other "games" with the system.

But simply linking to Eugenie's site (like this: Exposed) in a visible and relevant place is not "subverting" anything. That's a legitimate link that is totally relevant to this site, and no doubt people are actually clicking on it.

That is precisely what Google's algorithms are designed to discover.

Anything published about Google's algorithms becomes obsolete in direct proportion to it's popularity.

Yes and no. There is a limit to how much they can change the algorithm without breaking the fundamental nature of Google. For instance, favoring the anchor text is a key feature of making their searches relevant, they can't drop this completely.

However, one thing they DID change recently is the words in the anchor text must also appear on the target page to be considered relevant. So the old style bombing where "miserable failure" led you to George Bush is no longer possible. (This of course is fine here, because "Expelled" does appear on Eugenie's page).