Chris Bower’s campaign at MyDD to “Google bomb” the mid-term elections has paid off. To recap, Chris kicked off an initiative to get bloggers to link to negative articles regarding a number of Republican candidates. The goal was to boost the Google ranking of the bad press when a user typed in the candidate’s name.
Well, the campaign has worked. According to this update, the negative articles come back within the top five search results on the candidates’ names more often than not, and almost always appear on the first page of search results. Several of the linked articles appear even before the candidates’ own official web sites.
The New York Times’ Tom Zeller, Jr. uses the success of this campaign to delve into the notion that search results aren’t always as unbiased as most users believe.
While it’s clear that ordinary users can band together and massage the outcome of a search, we remain, by and large, incredibly naïve users of search engines. Numerous studies have shown that precious few sleuths go beyond the first page of search results. “If it’s not on the first page, it might as well be invisible,” Mr. Sullivan [Search Engine Watch’s Danny Sullivan] said.
Yeah, yeah, but look at what it took to affect the Google rankings of the negative articles. MyDD is one of the top political blogs and Bowers had to beat the drum loudly for other bloggers to incorporate the links. And everybody was motivated by passion — the desire to oust Republicans from office at a critical juncture in time.
How often do scenarios like this crop up? You need a big organizer, lots of interested people with blogs and the desire to get something done. It’s true that Google results do not always reflect the best or most objective web sites, but my guess is that “Google-bombing” is rarely to blame.
Cynthia Brumfield at 9:32 AM|Comments(0)
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