Google Bombs: Livejournal grows up (for the wrong reasons)

[matgb]

Or, alternately, you're now the proud user of a proper 'blog' with your own unique (sub)domain. LJ are giving some bollux due to a vulnerability in, um, FireFox, but that's not relevent. Why is this really important? Pagerank and Google.

As of now, when you type <lj user="username"> you are linking to http://username.livejournal.com This applies not to all users, regardless of whether they have a paid account. Before now, paid account users could type username.livejournal.com, but it was implemented as an imperfect redirect to livejournal.com/users/username. This meant that Google didn't 'rate' outgoing links from a free livejournal as much as they did other free blog services such as blogger (technical reason to do with how Google reads domain addresses).

Implication? Well, us LJers have a tendency to link to each other a lot, which means that when we do from now on, the person we link to has their pagerank with Google go up. It's a perpetuating circle over time.

So, anyone want to propose our first Google Bomb? For an example, try jelly bellied flag flapper; that one was set up less than a week ago, they can filter through in 2 or 3 days.

Update:

OK, Google is a pretty smart search engine; that's why we use it, right? It has its faults and detractors (daweaver can tell you all about it, or, um, google for google watch), but, having looked at referral strings for the blog, Google does a much better job of filtering, overall, than Yapoo¦ and M$N at filtering stuff. There's hope, eventually, that a decent competitor will break into the market, I definately hope this project gets somewhere. The thing is though, where does your search string come up in the results?

Google counts page rank. Page rank is determined by how many people link to you, and those links also count to what search queries will show up. The higher your rank and relevence to the query, the higher you get in the search. Pages containing the test will get you on the page somewhere. At the bottom. Lots of links to you are good. Lots of links to you containing the relevent text are even better. Googling for it gets you lots of answers, the Wiki article is quite good.

Now, you've read my journal. You may have read the blog I also admin. Notice the link entitled traitor on both.

Search in Google for Traitor. You get Rebekah Wade's Wiki entry near the top, right? google.co.uk for liar. Tony Blair's biography. Google is less interested than in what you say about your content than what others say about your content. Why?

Because the old style search engines were interested in what you say, but it's easy to disguise content and hide text. Hence some porn sites, apparently, used to put 'disney' in their headers and hidden in the text. Seriously, look at a free gallery porn site using a text browser; it's full of crap, right? That's to try and fool search engines. Google can be fooled, but not as easily as older engines, and it requires multiple sites working together to fool it.

Hence Google Bombs

French military victories, failure, weapons of mass destruction. The less likely the search term, the more likely you are to be able to win. The Campaign for an English Parliament is trying to google bomb 'england'. Doomed to failure; and I've told them so. Too many sites link to england stuff. Football fans, for a start.

Hence regular contests based on googlewhack results. Or other silly things. rho has an LJ related one.

Tim at Bloggerheads is quite open about all of this, getting good Google results is how he makes his living. But he's also fun, takes civil liberties seriously, got Boris blogging and has regularly tried to get himself arrested in the name of his latest cause. Haven't met him, but I like him.

He's also the coordinator of several very effective googlebombs. Liar being one of them. here are some amusing worked examples. I especially like the property one.

So, do me a favour, exercise in silliness. Copy this into a post or onto any web pages you may have access to:

<a href="http://matgb.livejournal.com/77989.html" title="Google bomb">Google Bomb</a>

and, if you've got some spare links in your links list, put the link (http://matgb.livejournal.com/77989.html) in there titled 'google bomb'?

Just a thought exercise, there are some pretty weighty sites up the top there...

Comments

[freddiefraggles.livejournal.com]

I still don't get how to googlebomb. How does it work, oh elvin one?

[matgb]

Leaving office now, I'll expand when I get home...

[freddiefraggles.livejournal.com]

*prod-poke-pinch-punch*

And you haven't done my meme yet either! *stomps foot*

[matgb]

Meme is good because it requires thought. Ill mat makes less sense and requires more time to think and error check.

Mat has therefore not done meme as does not wish to do freddie a disservice by rushing it.

Mat also has had an edit window open for half an hour writing up an article on google bombing. You don't want me to rush it do you?

Besides, Mat is also reading all the comments on that news post. If you think I can do that quickly, well...

[freddiefraggles.livejournal.com]

Oh, alright then. It's not like I'll be going to bed anytime soon... :-(

[matgb]

Done, reread the post, follow the links, etc...

[freddiefraggles.livejournal.com]

:-D wootle! consider it done!

[epiac1216.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this information. I had no idea this had been done by LJ's staff. Its faster and easier to remember. I just don't understand that explanation about security.

Cheers,

Omar.-

[matgb]

Um, no problem.

How did you get here, just to save me looking, a random feature or has someone linked somewhere?

Strongly advise putting news on your main friends page, just in case something comes up, same for the nudge thing in my previous post.

[epiac1216.livejournal.com]

I saw your post at Technaroti and clicked the link that took me to your site. It was easy for me to make a comment, since I'm also a LJ user.

I'm using my new sub-domain address in my future correspondence. As I said, it's easier to remember.

Regards,

Omar.-

Epiac's Place
(http://epiac1216.livejournal.com) ()

[matgb]

That makes sense; I only linked the journal in to techno as an experiment, but getting comments from it is cool.

I do like the subdomain, but then, paid accounts have had it for ages anyway...

[ratkrycek.livejournal.com]

You didn't ask me, but I got here via a link on rho's journal, and I'm finding the discussion and explanations pretty interesting and edifying! Thank you for that!

[matgb]

I thank you for saying so, and for linking to rho someone I had not previously encountered. I've updated with a link to her idea and explanation of the technical details.

[misty-moonlight.livejournal.com]

Now, where did you find his link at Technorati?

I'm new this whole Blogger thing, and new to technorati, and I guess I don't really know how to use it.

BTW Matt - we spoke briefly over at the announcement thread, and I have written to Technorati to ask them what to do about my URL change.

Also, I've never seen that thing you have in your link up there title ="". I have a web site that sells EyCatchers (http://www.eyecatchershome.com), and I have a LOT of internal links. For many of them, i use buttons.. If i put that in the links - will it help mt standings in the searches for my keywords?

Ive already linked to this post, but I'll edit the link text in a few - baby just woke up.

[epiac1216.livejournal.com]

I searched for Firefox and his post was shown along with many others. I read a brief summary of his post and decided to click his link. That lead me to his post in LiveJournal.

Technorati is a data base of a great number of blogs. If you are interested in a certain tag, you write the name of the tag in the search box and just like Google, it will display all posts that correspond to that particular tag.

I suggest you visit Technorati and look around to get acquainted with the web site and how it works. It's pretty simple and straight forward. In my opinion, is is one of the best blog directories around.

Regards,

Omar.-

[matgb]

She knows technorati, that's how we got talking; trying to figure out how the changes in technorati will affect our profile.

We'll find out one way or another.

[matgb]

If i put that in the links - will it help mt standings in the searches for my keywords?
Yes!

Very much so, the title text is better for google than the contained text actually, and it definately helps if you're using icons for links. It's also good for compliance, as alt text doesn't pop up display on many non-IE browsers.

Oh, and you can do some nifty tricks if you want; title text can be added between any html tags. I use spans if I don't want to italicise or embolden.

I learnt most of the tricks on metaquotes; I learnt the importance of title text from bloggerheads. LJ is very cool.

My tecnorati profile is matgb, and I use tags and try to post in a way that gets noticed, mostly practice for the real blogs (ie the ones with adverts on) but, well, worth doing as a normal practice. Hope l'il one is ok ;-)

*Mat realises what he's letting himself in for with this attempt at a bomb, even if it doesn't work*

Oops...

[misty-moonlight.livejournal.com]

I don't think that I know technorati as well as you think i do. *laughs* I'm also practicing for a big blog, and havn't really taken the time to use technorati much, and really should.

I did a Technorati search for "Firefox" like Omar said and I found a post by a Doctor vee - he linked to you. I'm afraid that i don't understand how "firefox" got me to him, but I'll figure it out!

Just in case anyone might know - Do we at LJ have to manually ping Technorati? There's no way to imbed that code for us, is there?

Thanks for the google tips! I'm going to change those links on my site ASAP, and join that com and feed.

Yeah - baby is fine, thanks for asking. He was just hungry.

[matgb]

Heh. Doctor Vee is doctorvee and dr_vee_fd and a nutbag in Edinburgh.

Technorati updates all the time, you'd need to scroll back a few pages, I haven't tried. Just fortuitous really. No idea why his post came up for you, but possibly because every one of his pages mentions firefox by default; search engines aren't alwasy clever after all. Techno gives priority to most recent followed by most linked to. Google is less interested in most recent.

Oh, um, the com and feed are just funny, not good advice, but I find you learn more from random places than you do from research. But Tim's stuff actually at bloggerheads on Search Engine Optimisation is worth reading, as is the Google FAQs on their webmaster section.

LJ pings Technorati automatically as long as you haven't switched it off; check your userinfo options, you need to have it set to ping weblogs and any other places it offers.

[misty-moonlight.livejournal.com]

I couldn't find an option to ping so I searched, and it said that it pings weblogs, but only for paid users - I havn't done that yet.

*laughs* after I went to those places, I figured they wouldn't be very helpful. I added them anyhow - they looked interesting.

[doctorvee.livejournal.com]

I actually tagged that post 'firefox', just because your post mentioned Firefox (even though mine didn't!).

[matgb]

Ah, that makes sense. Still, this is infinately abusable until Google sorts the algorithm out. Wonder if they'll ever announce they've done it?