Talk:Google bomb/Archive 2

message: No more redirect war. "Googlebomb" wins the Google Test, so it's the true article, and "google bombing" now redirects here. Please leave it that way. Thank you.
Sorry about that.  It was kind of confusing, as I couldn't tell what was supposed to lead where, or if there was a real article at all.  I didn't mean to redirect war--just confusion.  I apologize.  The article on Googlebomb looks nice, BTW--thanks for your contribution, and clarification. Meelar 05:37, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Redirect war

message: Umm, as Google is a dynamic entity, should we include dates with these google bombs?  Now when I google for 'failure' i get Michael Moore.  Bush is third or something. - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 15:49, Mar 26, 2004 (UTC)
: I think that'd be a good idea. "Waffles" don't work any more for example -- you now get a list with waffle recipes. "failure" yields Bush's bio right now. Along with a date, we could even archive the results using screenshots. I'm sure that a few years from now kerrywaffles.com might be gone ...  --CPK 18:09, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Dates on google bombs?

message: Whereever the comment should be please note that Wikipedia "Jew" displacing "Jew Watch" was rather short lived, seems to be reversed and is too topical to go in this sort of encyclopedia in my humble opinion BozMo
:I think it is noteworthy that the campaign succeeded, for however short.  And we can always hope that it succeeds in the future.  The world needs balanced views to be promoted in favor of bigotry anywhere possible. --ssd 15:28, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Note: researched and added. --ssd 20:59, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

text: Hey, feel free to adjust my wording.  I think it was discovered by mistake, not happened by mistake.  Obviously, it happened on purpose, because people liked linking to microsoft that way.  I guess I'm sort of implying that they didn't do it with the intent of affecting google, although perhaps they did.  It's a causality thing--discover bomb then announce it, or announce bomb and make it happen.  that's why I put the "may have" in the wording.  --ssd 05:19, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Transient google bombs?

message: Santorum was not a "slander campaign". You can say it was "not very nice" or even "malicious" to name the stuff after this man, and I'd agree (I hate the homophobic rat, but the man has kids) but it wasn't actual slander. Mike Church 21:55, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Santorum

message: On the Googlebombing related to Ambition (card game) I said "around April" since I could find no evidence of any Googlebombing activity dated March.
:I removed the Ambition reference. It is not a significant Googlebomb (e.g. it is reported nowhere). This is a conflict interest between you as a WP contributor and you as the inventor of ambition. (sorry!) Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 22:40, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Ambition

message: I had re-inserted the mention of Google's "Offensive Search Results" meta-result because, immediately before I made the edit, that item was heading the result list.  I just ran the search again with the same result.  Perhaps .derf overlooked it because the highlighting that I mentioned is a light blue background that makes the notice blend in with the bar above it that gives the number of hits.  At any rate, Ams80 and I both saw it, so it's accurate to see that Google "is...returning" this notice (although maybe not always, for whatever reason). JamesMLane 01:52, 7 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I didn't see it because it got eaten by Proxomitron.  Next time, I'll be more thorough.  Sorry.  --.derf 04:21, May 9, 2004 (UTC)
As of this writing, jew shows the "offensive" banner, has wikipedia in the first slot, and jewatch in slot four!  :)  I'd edit the article to reflect the reality, but it gets tedious changing it back over and over. --ssd 04:20, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

text: Why would anybody even need to search for "Jew" on Google? One-word searches seem to be useless (to me, at least). Seriously, am I just naive? Armslurp 05:11, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Jew

message: I am going to replace the links to the websites which are taking part in these googlebombing competitions with links to sites about the competitions. These external links are being repeatedly changed by different people taking part in contests, none being any more worthy of the precious link from Wikipedia than any other as far as I can see. Also I think linking to pages about the competitions will be more informative which I guess is the overall aim of external links. -- Ams80 19:06, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Competition entrants

message: This item has been added to and then deleted from the list of "Accomplished Googlebombs": 
*  is returned under a search for "douchebag" on Yahoo!.
When I search for "douchebag" on Yahoo!, KPMG does indeed hold the top spot.  On Google, though, it's not in the top 120 (all I cared to skim).  If there was a deliberate attempt to do a Yahoobomb, exploiting some feature that differs from Google's, it would be worth mentioning in this article, at least until Yahoobombing advances to the point of meriting its own article.  Does anyone know anything more about this?  (Absent more information, I agree with deleting this entry from the Googlebomb list.) JamesMLane 15:24, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Yahoo bomb

message: I changed the links to add "&BtnI" a while back without asking, this creates the effect of having clicked the "I'm feeling lucky" button - on reflection, I realized it's possible that this could create the appearance that wikipedia is linking directly to whatever site happens to be on top at google any given week. Should these be removed?
:[Comment above posted by Random832. To sign your posts, click the "signature" icon in the toolbar above the textbox (second icon from the right), or type ~~~~ which will insert your user name and the date/time.] Personally, I think it would be a good idea to change them back so that it shows the search results so people can clearly see that it's number one or two or whatever (if it's dropped). The way it is now, there's no indication that it's showing you the result from I'm feeling lucky or that it's even showing something from Google at all for that matter. --Chessphoon 19:59, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The reason i made the change originally is i was a bit annoyed that there wasn't any clear indication what the url of the googlebombed page was supposed to be... maybe it would make more sense to add these --Random|832 21:55, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  BtnI 

message: The Quixtar Corporation is "vandalizing" this Wikipedia artice (Google Bomb) by removing all references to its coordinated Google Bomb campaign. On March 4, at 14:07, 14:09 and 16:42, all references to Quixtar were deleted from the article by IP 167.23.0.90 which resolves to Alticor, Quixtar's parent company. A review of the edits made by that IP address show a history of similar deletions on the Quixtar and Amway articles.
Why is a billion dollar corporation vandalizing Wiki? Perhaps they're hiding something?
:Yes, could an admin please block this IP.  It's still vandalizing the page.  Wynler 13:53, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Quixtar Corporation is removing criticism 

message: Since Googlebombing is an intentional attempt to manipulate the results, isn't it possible that some of the example googlebombs in the main article are technically not googlebombs?  For example, if a enough people coincidentally comment about the latest press release from the "Center for Science in Public Interest" and hyperlink to the same website using the phrase "food nazis", but if there is no intention whatsoever to influence or manipulate search engine results, it's not a googlebomb.  The results are the same, but the intent is the deciding factor.
Is it possible to verify any ranking as a result googlebombing?  Some might be easy to assume, but others could easily be the result of common opinions.  Maybe if Google showed how many web pages linked to Bush's Bio by the sought keywords, it would be easier to conclude.  
Forgot my signature.  Sorry.  I don't recall the exact date.  --JJLatWiki 20:29, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I guess one way of telling is if someone advocates googlebombing. Andjam 12:24, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Very true.  But how does one find that information?  I know Google will show sites that link to a particular site, but wouldn't you first have to visit a large sampling of those sites to confirmed that the linked words are the googlebomb words?  Then you have to find at least some number of sites greater than one of people promoting the googlebomb.  If there are 100 sites linking "food nazis" to the same page, and only 1 of those sites says, "hey, let's googlebomb this", is that enough evidence that the result was intentional and therefore a googlebomb.  I would say it's obvious if the keywords are made up, but wouldn't you agree that others could be purely accidental and therefore not a googlebomb?  --JJLatWiki 15:27, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Personally, I agree and I think this article somewhat fails to properly considers these issues although I don't know how to improve it. For example, I personally believe that originally Bush's miserable failure ranking on Google was not the result of a bomb but the result of a large number of people mentioning Bush as a miserable failure. Of course, nowadays there is no doubt that there is a Google bombing element behind it. Similarly, I'm skeptical whether Microsoft's satan can really be considere linking bombing as I suspect no linking bombing was intended originally. Clearly none of this is verifable. Has no one ever discusses this POV before? If there is someone who has discussed it in an acceptable source, we could link to it Nil Einne 07:25, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Verifiable bombs? 

message: Several bloggers tried to directly or indirectly googlebomb an article criticising Marc Herold's study of Afghanistan civilian casualties. That might be a googlebomb of interest. Andjam 12:31, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Marc Herold study 

message: This is too funny to be a coincidence, but while I was bored, I searched for "1" in Google. With or without quotes, it returns the Mozilla homepage and the main page of the Firefox browser as the first two results. Intrigued, I searched for "0". Internet Explorer was the second result. Maybe because 1 in binary means "on", and 0 means "off"? Anyway, it's not on the list here, but can anyone confirm this as a definite Google bomb, and not just a coincedence? (it would seem pretty unlikely to me to just be a coincedence, but just checking.) -- Daverocks 06:43, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Your results are no longer true but I believe your reason is incorrect. 1 is fairly high up for Mozilla in Google but the primary reason I suspect is because there are several popular pieces of Mozilla software include Firefox which are version 1.x. Similarly, IE is fairly highup for 0, probably because 6.0 is the latest version of IE, and 7.0 is the upcoming version. A search of 6 would also find IE BTW (although 7 doesn't yet) Nil Einne 07:21, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Firefox Googlebomb? 

message: I note that User:Pigsonthewing tried to delete this section, under the guise splitting it into its own article. Of course, he nominated it for AFD thirteen minutes after creating the "split-off article", so I have doubts about his sincerity.
So despite his complete lack of previous history on this article (not one single edit before his unlateral deletion attempt, nor one single edit to this Talk Page, period, full stop), he has raised a couple of questions:
*Should this section be split off to an actual article? Speak up at the AFD if you have an opinion.
*Should this section be deleted/severely trimmed?
--Calton | Talk 00:16, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Accomplished Googlebombs]]

message: Is this edit keep-worthy? I have reservations about its content, especially the assumption that the pelican shit vandal was doing it to "create an illusion of verifiability", which as far as I know he never has, only to Googlebomb the phrase, nor do I see how it creates any illusion of verifiability. 68.39.174.238 20:33, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pelican Shit? 

message: Doesn't the way Wikipedia makes use of linking the same or similar word on many different pages within the site qualify by design as a googlebomb of some scale.  It is not done across multiple sites, but Wikipedia must be large enough to make an impact on it's own search results prior to other sites starting to link to us independantly.  Not acting as flame bait, as the linking of keywords is a big part of what makes wp what it is, but should we consider having rel="nofollow" ourselves?  At the very least, should this not be addressed to some point in this article?
:You may want to check out "Pelican Shit", and see above. However I suggest you be careful in how you phrase it. 68.39.174.238 07:34, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia as a Googlebomb? 

message: Am changing url in example from someurl.com to example.com since someurl.com is a registered domain. Please comment here or on my talk page with reasoning if you revert.
markegli 22:41, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Bombing How-To

message: Today I have found that "failure" no longer places Bush on top (or even on the first page of results). Can someone look into this? --TML1988 01:18, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I see Bush's bio at the top for both "failure" and "miserable failure". --AySz88^-^ 03:15, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

text: What I see is Michael Moore at the top, with no link to Bush on the first page. --TML1988 06:11, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I saw President Bush, President Carter, then Michael Moore.--Jnelson09 21:49, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see Carter but both BUsh and Michael Moor are on the very top of both. 74.137.230.39 22:39, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Failure" 

message: Under background, the article says
"However, the first Google bomb mentioned in the popular press may have occurred accidentally in 1999, when users discovered that the query "more evil than Satan" returned Microsoft's home page. Now, it returns links to several news articles on the discovery."
If accidental googlebombs are worth mentioning in this article, it is probably worth noting that the top result for "I Am Not 18" is go.disney.com, which I *believe* is due to high incidence of the "I Am Not 18" link (vs. "I am 18 or older" link to enter the site)  present on some websites with adult material pointing jokingly to the Disney website, though it might be an intentional bomb.  This bomb has been in place for a rather long time, possibly predating 1999.
:The question is, was it discussed in the press. If not, then it's irrelevant Nil Einne 07:14, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  I am not 18 

message: Google bomb starts off with "A Google bomb or Google washer is a certain attempt to influence [..]". 
I'd like to change that start from "Google washer" to "Google wash" because:
(1) I think "Google washer" sounds a bit clunky 
and (2) Google (search engine)#Google jargon says "Google bomb [..] Also known as Google wash." (By the way, "wash" was changed to "washer" by 210.214.184.84 on 2005 November 28, 15:05) --EarthFurst 02:50, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Go for it. -- Daverocks (talk) 08:41, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  washer or wash? 

message: I was just trying to explain googlebombing to a non-technical friend of mine, and after I failed the first time, she took it upon herself to read about it here.  She promptly returned to me, unable to decipher the summary, with all of its references to "pagerank".
I think that it might be more in Wikipedia's interest to have the inital summary be understandable to most anyone, and leave to technical "pagerank" information to later in the article.--Markster3000 03:31, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The "PageRank" in the text points to the wiki which explains it, as far as I can see, pretty well to a user who doesn't come in with an understanding of it. There's plenty of information linked to from the article regarding explanations of the technical details, I don't think rehashing them here will do anything but add unnecessary length. --Seraphimblade 08:38, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Summary too technical? 

message: Do we even need this section?  This is the english wikipedia, why do we need a list of non-english google bombs?  How are we supposed to verify these?  I'm going to remove the entire section unless someone comes up with some good reasons to keep this.  --Xyzzyplugh 05:05, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's easily seen that the 1st result is the offical (kremlin.ru) page for Putin with "Enemy of the people". I'm more concerned with that turning into WP:WOW with the list of every bomb (account). I suggest we limit it solely to those that have an external news articel that verifies them (This for the English ones as well). The foreign ones are useful to show that this isn't a solely English language phenomenon, which a huge list of English bombs with no foreign ones will seem to indicate. 68.39.174.238 22:56, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Google bombs in other languages

message: Since a couple of weeks some bot appears to be subscribing daily 2-3 fake user accounts on the bulletin board we use for the organisation ESN I am involved in.  Even though on registration the number on a picture has to be confirmed, the accounts appear to be made by a bot and not a person who is deliberately targeting our website.  How I came to this assumption?  I entered the username of the last SPAM account "Ninel2006az" in Google within 1 hour after creation on our bulletin board.  There already appeared to be 64600 hits for this user in Google, all of them on bulletin boards (all the same popular PHPBB?) and the user accounts appeared to have been made in a timeframe of 5 days.  When I checked 30 minutes later in Google, the number of hits was reduced to 44100, but still this is massive.
I guess someone found a hole in the popular bulletin board PHPBB, made a bot to scan Google for the sites that host the bulletin board and made a bot to create fake accounts with hyperlinks in their signature on all of the bulletin boards.  44100 hyperlinks linking to the same site, what a Google bomb this would be?
--Toon Macharis 21:16, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: A New Type of Google Bombs?

message: I deleted some of the "popular google bombs". Sorry if I sound controversial or whatever, but the list is long, and some of them don't really fit the purpose of a google bomb. A google bomb should be deliberate and most likely the first result. Tell me if I'm doing a crime here.--Aviper2k7 19:54, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of popular google bombs 

message: This article is long as it is, and a lot of these "bombs" look as though they may be incidental (such as "Awful Announcer", if enough people do dislike the guy it's easy to imagine them putting links in with that text.) I suggest going through and cleaning up any which can't be verified as intentional bombs, would anyone have a problem with this?-Seraphimblade 08:55, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Sourcing

message: Please consider minimizing the list of bombs. Per our revised external links guidelines, we should not link to results in search engines. Also, there should be a better way of explaining this, as Google bombs tend to stop working after some time. -- ReyBrujo 11:53, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Please minimize the amount of search results 

message: I reverted the last edit from an anonymous contributor. We are currently seeking consensus on whether the anti-Quixtar information is reliable or not. While I am firmly on the side that it is, let's leave it alone until we get some other opinions. Seraphimblade 01:48, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Revert

message: I think that the list should be entierely deleted, or be put in a side article. Because if we count every google bombing contests organized every week, this article would extend to infinite.--81.249.220.188 14:44, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd go for that. The genuinely notable and verifiable ones can go in the article proper, the massive lists seem to me to add a lot of length and very little substance. Seraphimblade 22:24, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Delete the list of google bombs

message: Microsoft's homepage is no longer #1 in a search for "more evil than satan himself".  That honor now belongs to a CNN article page, title "CNN - Search engines gang up on Microsoft - November 15, 1999".  Just pointing out an error that crept into this page.  Should that paragraph be removed or edited? -- Tuvok^Talk|Desk|Contribs  00:54, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My own thought on it would be to edit the paragraph to reflect that Microsoft was the #1 search result at the time for that query. Actually I think that would be a good plan for any section that mentions a specific ranking as they will certainly fluctuate over time, what's important is where the result was when it was reported on. Seraphimblade 21:09, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I would, but I do not know when the information was retrieved from Google.  Does anyone know who the original contributor was, the one who added the information? -- Tuvok^Talk|Desk|Contribs  23:40, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Microsoft no longer #1