Somebody Set Up Us the Googlebomb
An old college chum of mine is a fairly well-known leftie political (and sex, religion and knitting) blogger. She also writes for Crooks and Liars, so yeah — she’s pretty big in that pond. About a week ago, she published a post announcing that she was joining a googlebomb associating the phrase “Liberal Fascism” (the title of Jonah Goldberg’s latest screed) with the word “fuckwad.”
Smarty-pants SEO that I am, I left the following comment on her post:
Sadly, googlebombs don’t work anymore. If they did, I’d be telling everyone to do this: lying sack of shit.
Anybody who follows these matters knows that Google modified their algorithm a year ago to diminish the chances of a googlebomb succeeding. Right?
Well, all I can say is that I’m glad I don’t have a hat, or I’d be eating it. In spite of the fact that, as liberals, their concerted effort wasn’t all that concerted — they didn’t all link to the same URL — it looks like they’ve pulled it off. Check out result #8 in the SERP below.
Go ahead. Take a look at the page and its source code. No sign of either “liberal” or “fascism” in there, much less the exact phrase. Have a look at the page’s backlinks — left-wing political blog after left-wing political blog.
Go figure.
Update, January 13
As of this morning, the Urban Dictionary page is at #1 for the search. However, someone has edited the page to include two instances of the keyword phrase, so sadly, it doesn’t really count as a bomb anymore.
Tags: Google, Googlebomb, Politics, Search
Category: Politics, Search
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Comments (24)
Blue Gal (27 comments) on 05 Jan 2008 at 3:08 pm #
I’m a sex blogger? Holy mackerel!
qwerty (63 comments) on 05 Jan 2008 at 3:11 pm #
Along with politics, religion and knitting, sure. I didn’t even mention the obsession with panties.
Marty (1 comments) on 05 Jan 2008 at 6:59 pm #
One man’s Google Bomb is another’s SEO. :) It’s phun to make a little trouble now and then.
CW (1 comments) on 06 Jan 2008 at 12:36 am #
The question is, does she knit WHILE sex-blogging? Cause that would be hot.
;P
0x29a (1 comments) on 06 Jan 2008 at 2:16 am #
Quick FYI: the bomb is up to number five in the results now. Well done :-)
Gab "SEO ROI" Goldenberg (1 comments) on 06 Jan 2008 at 5:59 am #
I love the title you gave this qwerty, especially as a former gamer. You ever used to play CS?
At CW: That was pretty funny too!
Last thing: I’d be careful about posting politics on your work blog, personally. It gets messy, especially with the longtail traffic (that’s not a threat btw, which I see it could be read as while I’m re-reading this; it’s a friendly tip to keep the wackos away).
Need Nookie Now (1 comments) on 06 Jan 2008 at 7:21 am #
So when is someone going to write “Conservative Nazi-ism” or somesuch so we can hear all the righties whine?
Pathfinder (1 comments) on 06 Jan 2008 at 8:49 am #
Another update - Number 2 on the search this morning. Keep up the good work! :)
ricky the liberal (1 comments) on 06 Jan 2008 at 10:21 am #
Now at #4
Todd Mintz (1 comments) on 06 Jan 2008 at 10:27 am #
#4 now. Good job!
qwerty (63 comments) on 06 Jan 2008 at 12:19 pm #
Gab: I don’t think of this as my work blog. It’s just my blog, and I write about whatever interests me. On occasion, that even includes my work :)
And no, I was never a gamer; I just love the All Your Base video. I even did a Google-related homage of sorts to it recently.
Googlebomb « I Got Nuthin’ on 06 Jan 2008 at 2:05 pm #
[...] More here. [...]
Jon Swift (3 comments) on 06 Jan 2008 at 6:13 pm #
Apparently, this is not the only Googlebomb being unfairly dropped on Liberal Fascism. Isn’t there a law against manipulating Google’s search results, or if there isn’t, shouldn’t there be? What if the terrorists start doing this?
graywolf (1 comments) on 07 Jan 2008 at 7:20 pm #
I’ve been saying this for quite some time the googlebomb part of the algo only deals with “negative” terms, IE miserable and or failure talentless and hack an so on. Which is why Greatest living american worked until it was hand edited. Don’t believe that it was a hand edited curiously mr colbert still ranks for [living greatest american] and [greatest american living].
So neither [liberal] nor [fascism] is purely a negative term. Sure fascism may be not be “a good thing” but the algo isn’t sophisticated enough to make that subtle distinction
Joseph Stein (1 comments) on 07 Jan 2008 at 8:02 pm #
jon: I didn’t know terrorists now have internet in their caves these days :)
myiq2xu (1 comments) on 12 Jan 2008 at 7:30 pm #
I’ve been trying to push the “Goldberg Principle” -
“You can prove any thesis to be true if you make up your own definitions of words.”
Tom (1 comments) on 12 Jan 2008 at 7:41 pm #
#3 now, looks like it will be #1 where it belongs
Jon Swift (3 comments) on 12 Jan 2008 at 9:18 pm #
A very interesting development. While the Googlebomb you refer to has landed that site in fourth place in a Google search of the words “Liberal Fascism,” my piece on the book, which was the subject of another Googlebomb that I did not in any way endorse and which according to Technorati has 94 links over the last six months versus 9 for the site in second place, 1 for the site in third place and 27 for the site you mention in your piece, has been completely removed from Google’s search results.
qwerty (63 comments) on 13 Jan 2008 at 1:35 am #
Did the people linking to your post use “liberal fascism” for the anchor text?
Jon Swift (3 comments) on 13 Jan 2008 at 1:45 am #
A number of people did, I believe, though not exclusively. I have written about Google removing my site from search results for “Liberal Fascism” here
qwerty (63 comments) on 13 Jan 2008 at 12:00 pm #
Your page is still indexed and cached, and it obviously has at least some relevance to the keyword phrase, but I couldn’t find it in the top 200 results.
You may be the victim of what’s become known as a “hand job”.
Stewart Meets Goldberg | qwerty's qoncepts on 25 Jan 2008 at 3:14 pm #
[...] Goldberg, author of that book that was the subject of a recent googlebomb, was the interviewee tonight on The A Daily Show. Before the interview was shown, our intrepid [...]
_Felix (1 comments) on 14 Feb 2008 at 2:34 pm #
Well, I hadn’t heard of Jonah Goldberg or his book before, and now I’m interested in reading it, so I appreciate this cunning plan.
Palm Coast Coupons (1 comments) on 01 May 2008 at 6:14 pm #
google bomb is affected by negative terms.. weve noticed many of our keywords being dropped as they were not a positive manner.. i think they dont want to have anything negative being found