Thursday, January 25, 2007 at 4:16 PM
Co-written with Ryan Moulton and Kendra CarattiniWe wanted to give a quick update about "Googlebombs." By improving our analysis of the link structure of the web, Google has begun minimizing the impact of many Googlebombs. Now we will typically return commentary, discussions, and articles about the Googlebombs instead. The actual scale of this change is pretty small (there are under a hundred well-known Googlebombs), but if you'd like to get more details about this topic, read on.
First off, let's back up and give some background. Unless you read all about search engines all day, you might wonder "What is a Googlebomb?" Technically, a "Googlebomb" (sometimes called a "linkbomb" since they're not specific to Google) refers to a prank where people attempt to cause someone else's site to rank for an obscure or meaningless query. Googlebombs very rarely happen for common queries, because the lack of any relevant results for that phrase is part of why a Googlebomb can work. One of the earliest Googlebombs was for the phrase "talentless hack," for example.
People have asked about how we feel about Googlebombs, and we have talked about them in the past. Because these pranks are normally for phrases that are well off the beaten path, they haven't been a very high priority for us. But over time, we've seen more people assume that they are Google's opinion, or that Google has hand-coded the results for these Googlebombed queries. That's not true, and it seemed like it was worth trying to correct that misperception. So a few of us who work here got together and came up with an algorithm that minimizes the impact of many Googlebombs.
The next natural question to ask is "Why doesn't Google just edit these search results by hand?" To answer that, you need to know a little bit about how Google works. When we're faced with a bad search result or a relevance problem, our first instinct is to look for an automatic way to solve the problem instead of trying to fix a particular search by hand. Algorithms are great because they scale well: computers can process lots of data very fast, and robust algorithms often work well in many different languages. That's what we did in this case, and the extra effort to find a good algorithm helps detect Googlebombs in many different languages. We wouldn't claim that this change handles every prank that someone has attempted. But if you are aware of other potential Googlebombs, we are happy to hear feedback in our Google Web Search Help Group.
Again, the impact of this new algorithm is very limited in scope and impact, but we hope that the affected queries are more relevant for searchers.
13 comments:
Just a few quick questions ...
1. Won't this change affect legitimate backlinks built upon over the years?
2. Isn't this vulnerable to abuse? Such as having a company commit corporate sabotage by spamlinking to a competing company's website en masse?
Ok, so since you're all a bunch of expert geeks, I have a question for you and I'm looking forward to hearing your reply.
You say you're minimizing the impact of the well known Google bombs, which sounds totally cool. But right now in Italy we have a weird fact going on.
The national web portal Italia.it (developed to promote international tourism towards our country), made with money of tax payers, is ranking first on a Google search for the keyword 'merda', which is like sh*t in english.
So how do you explain that, and how do you think you're going to solve this issue?
Hello,
We have been doing SEO for our sites for 6 months and some for 2 months. So far I have seen a contradiction in almost everything someone says. The first was it takes 6 months, not true in 2 months we got a site page 1. The next the thing I heard religiously from almost every expert was that outbound links going one way and not reciprocal, hurt your ranking. I believe this is completely false. Why? because I have one competitor, he is now page rank 4 and has 12 to 15 sites (tikimaster.com). Check out one of his sites and count the outbound links to walmart wikepedia, etc. He is organically listed everywhere page 1 rank 1 for all of the keywords I want. Please take a look at the site and comment on outbound links and any advice on how I can beat him.
Thanks Scott
e-mail to scott@tropicaltikis.com
tropicaltikis.com is our main site
Hello, I am please to meet you expert geek to prove to me your expertness because your successfulness not good enough. Please prove on how I can beat my competitor please. It not fair that he beat me search number one and take all my keyword. Please if you please reveal all algorithm regarding page ranks so that I may beat him please and also all developer email please design documents internal researches and publish all file servers to the interwebs please so that I can happy for my wife and you can expert geek be.
Is there any way to combat a google bombing by a company?
Consider a search for "Dozier Internet Law," for example. Many of the pages are nearly identical results put up by the company to push criticism of them down.
I am going to link to two specific posts about what Dozier is doing, in case you wanted more information
Spam from Dozier Internet Law worse than previously thought
More unethical behavior from Dozier Internet Law
(This came after Dozier engaged in some unethical legal tactics, which Bill Patry mentioned in October.)
Hi Dan,
The best way to report this information to Google is to file a spam report.
what is the use of fast crawling rate i have ativated 2 months before for
www.wwwportal.blogspot.com
Thanks for the clarification. I think there is a big difference between manipulating search results and actually adding value to a site that search engines like Google can recognize. Search engine marketers should see the difference in the two. When we "optimize" a site, our goal is always to increase its relevancy across the web by creating good content and publishing it. Links are the result of that, and combining the increased relevancy and the incoming links will naturally help you improve your search ranking. I certainly appreciate the webmaster guidelines, and if followed correctly, there is no need to worry about loosing your rankings because they will be achieved the right way. I'm glad to see Google taking steps to undermine unethical SERPs manipulation.
The GOOGLEBOMB most famous here, in Brazil (my native country), is this: if you to make the search for "THE LYING GREATER Of BRAZIL", the first page to be shown will be of the wikipedia, on president of Brazil, called LULA.
This has times was discovered, commented for some vehicles of the press...
Because it continues? That I do not find amused, but I am thinking which the reason of so evidentes things and easy to be corrected they remain for as much time...
Until soon
Fabiano Pereira
http://fabianopereiradesigner.blogspot.com/
Hopefully we can stop intentional publicized googlebombing sites like these guys:
http://www.rightwingnews.com/mt331/2008/02/googlebombing_obama_first_wave.php
Perhaps you should be aware of this then:
Googlebomb John McCain
by: Chris Bowers
Fri Feb 22, 2008 at 15:04
This is a plot to Googlebomb being openly discussed on a "progressive" website. Here is a link to the article should you choose to investigate:
http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4098
Me parece muy bueno que Google Tome Riendas
Hi everyone,
Since over a year has passed since we published this post, we're closing the comments to help us focus on the work ahead. If you still have a question or comment you'd like to discuss, free to visit and/or post your topic in our Webmaster Help Group.
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