Google-bombed searches: users can conspire to manipulate online searches.If students in your district try an online search for the phrase "miserable failure," which early presidential hopeful Dick Gephardt used as a campaign slogan to apply to the incumbent Republican administration, they may be in for a surprise. Though the phrase appears nowhere on its pages, one of the top-ranked results reported by search engines--including Google and Yahoo--is the official White House biography of President George W. Bush. Furthermore, the apparently bipartisan results list others who supposedly fulfill the miserable failure criterion, including Jimmy Carter, Hillary Rodham Rodham is an English surname which may refer to a number of persons or places. People Family of Hillary Rodham Clinton
These strange events are the result of new Internet See Web 2.0 and Internet2. pranks called Googlebombs, coined by Stanford University Stanford University, at Stanford, Calif.; coeducational; chartered 1885, opened 1891 as Leland Stanford Junior Univ. (still the legal name). The original campus was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. David Starr Jordan was its first president. student Adam Mathes, since they were first directed toward the Google search Google is owned by Google, Inc. whose mission statement is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". The largest search engine on the web, Google receives several hundred million queries each day through its various services. engine. The growing online sport exploits the fact that some search engines use more than Web page contents to determine site rankings, and also count how often certain phrases on Web pages link to the same target site. Mathes enlisted others to link the words "talentless hack" to a friend's site, which carried it to the top of searches for that phrase in a matter of weeks. Although site owners often use techniques to help sites rank higher in searches for specific topics--including inserting hidden words "read" by robot and spider programs that index the Web, positioning keywords in page titles, and increasing the number of times the words appear in the text--Mathes discovered users can conspire con·spire v. con·spired, con·spir·ing, con·spires v.intr. 1. To plan together secretly to commit an illegal or wrongful act or accomplish a legal purpose through illegal action. 2. to manipulate rankings. Relatively few accomplices are needed to skew (1) The misalignment of a document or punch card in the feed tray or hopper that prohibits it from being scanned or read properly. (2) In facsimile, the difference in rectangularity between the received and transmitted page. search results for unique phrases, and successful Googlebombs have been detonated with only 20 or 30 links. Examples include "more evil than Satan himself" tied to a major software company site, "weapons of mass destruction Weapons that are capable of a high order of destruction and/or of being used in such a manner as to destroy large numbers of people. Weapons of mass destruction can be high explosives or nuclear, biological, chemical, and radiological weapons, but exclude the means of transporting or " linked to a satirical site with the message "These weapons of mass destruction cannot be displayed" and "French military victories French military victories may refer to:
Beyond Pranks Googlebombs open the gates to online pranks and political statements by college students, and are spreading to school districts. They are also evolving for different types of applications, including the following: * Humor/Satire Bombs. Humor bombs typically use search words that don't get much traffic, such as "talentless hack," and remain as inside jokes among friends. However, phrases used in searches, such as miserable failure, have greater consequences. * Ego Bombs. Some individuals hope to make their names or personal causes famous, such as users named Jason and Kofi who campaigned to raise their site ranks significantly. These sites might now pop up in school searches for Jason in Greek mythology or the UN's Kofi Annan. * Organization Bombs. A real estate company and a religious group recently used Googlebombs to boost their sites. While them are no known cases of people paid to set Googlebombs for commercial purposes, the time may come. * Justice Bombs. Angry online users may use Googlebombs to mete out vigilante vigilante n. someone who takes the law into his/her own hands by trying and/or punishing another person without any legal authority. In the 1800s groups of vigilantes dispensed "frontier justice" by holding trials of accused horse-thieves, rustlers and shooters, and justice for real or imagined offenses. An online community recently lobbed bombs at a corporation accused of stealing phone numbers from its database for telemarketing. School Implications Googlebombs are here to stay, and will affect every school district directly or indirectly. While group pranks may be targeted to school, teacher and student Web sites, compromised searches are of major concern. Users should therefore use multiple search tools and search engines such as Teoma that escape bombing by relying on different forms of link analysis. Use the resources below to keep your staff up-to-date and check the links to your Web pages. Web Resources * comScore Media Metrix www.comscore.Gom * LinkPopularity.com www.linkpopularity.com * SearchEngines.com www.searchengines.com * SearchEngineWatch.com searchenginewatch.com * Traffick www.traffick.com Odvard Egil Dyrli is senior editor and emeritus professor of education at the University of Connecticut The University of Connecticut is the State of Connecticut's land-grant university. It was founded in 1881 and serves more than 27,000 students on its six campuses, including more than 9,000 graduate students in multiple programs. UConn's main campus is in Storrs, Connecticut. . Web Resources * comScore Media Metrix www.comscore.Gom * LinkPopularity.com www.linkpopularity.com * SearchEngines.com www.searchengines.com * SearchEngineWatch.com searchenginewatch.com * Traffick www.traffick.com |
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