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MIGHTY IRIS

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Thirtysomething Life Expert
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Member Since: 3/2006  Last Seen: 1/21/2012

Google's Definition of Failure

Thu Apr 27, 2006 3:26 PM EDT
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By Mighty Iris
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A joke has been circulating the email lately. Goes something like this: Go to Google and type in the word "failure." Hit the "I'm Feeling Lucky Button."

In .07 seconds, the biographical page of George W. Bush comes up from the whitehouse.gov site. The word failure is not present on the page anywhere in the text or the code. How does this happen?

So I go to Yahoo! and type in "failure." The same biography page of George W. Bush on the whitehouse.gov site comes up at Number 3. Again, the word "failure" is not on the page. So I go to Ask.com and type in "Is George W. Bush a failure?" Lo and behold, the GWB whitehouse.gov page comes up at Number 3. These are all natural search results, not paid placements. I'm baffled. Who started this?

Albeit this is supposed to be a funny joke, and I'm neutral as far as politics are concerned, but other concerns as a Web developer come to mind. Google is mighty powerful when it comes to the search dogs, and as a Web designer I do my best to optimize the proper keywords and terminology in all of my sites. Can I trust Google to pull those keywords and results the way it's supposed to? I play by the rules and don't practice any dirty search engine optimization tricks.

If I touch a little on politics, Google's definition of failure (and Yahoo!'s and Ask.com's) is a pretty bold statement against our current government. Free speech-n-all, right? We're taught to trust Google and the other search engines. And now they are telling us that our government is a failure (as if I didn't already know). Is it their job to tell me that my government is a failure? No, it's their job to give me the search results that I want, and it better be what I'm looking for.

If Google or Yahoo were paid search services, I would bark a little louder, but since they are both free, I'll just groan a little and probably shut up. Plus, I'm a Web designer and I don't want to get blacklisted. I definitely don't want to anger the search Gods, otherwise people will think I'm a failure.

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tw2113

What I like about this is the fact that it's even more funny if you search "failure" regularly and look at the 2nd result

  • 1 vote
Reply#1 - Thu Apr 27, 2006 4:49 PM EDT
Cyron

These instances are examples of what is known as google bombing. Basically, bloggers around the world all decided to link to the whitehouse page using the word "failure" as their link text. Google indexes the blog page, and associates the link text with the page being linked to. If enough people do it, then it significantly alters the pages google rank on searches for that term

  • 28 votes
Reply#2 - Thu Apr 27, 2006 5:55 PM EDT
Adam Kemp

Yes, this is a result of the way Google ranks pages. The more links there are to a site the higher it ranks. If a whole bunch of people link to whitehouse.gov with the text "failure", then a search for "failure" will show whitehouse.gov. It's not Google's fault.

They do try to tweak their algorithms to make these tricks harder, though. For instance, they now recognize the rel="nofollow" attribute on links, which is a way to mark links that should not be considered for pagerank. All links in blog comments should have this attribute to prevent spammers from google bombing.

  • 4 votes
#2.1 - Thu Apr 27, 2006 10:15 PM EDT
Cyron

It's worth pointing out that there are two types of google bombing in your post.

One, in which bloggers go out of their way to google bomb a given word and link it to a certain site or person. In this instance, given that the activity is deliberately done by the participants, the rel="nofollow" attribute isn't relevant, as inserting that attribute would undo the action they are very deliberately trying to achieve

The other type of google bombing you mention is commercial spam bombing. In this instance, spammers make comments on blogs, wikis or wherever else they can, linking to the page they are spamming. The more links, the more the page ranks in google, and this activity is hindered by the use of the nofollow attribute, because it stops the link from counting to pagerank.

  • 2 votes
#2.2 - Thu Apr 27, 2006 10:52 PM EDT
Adam Kemp

Yeah, maybe I wasn't clear about that. I know the difference, but the point I was making is that Google knows this is a problem.

Thanks for the clarificaton.

  • 1 vote
#2.3 - Thu Apr 27, 2006 11:11 PM EDT
Mighty Iris

Thanks Cyron and Adam for the clarifications. There's not enough time in the day to read up on all of the Web design subjects.

    #2.4 - Fri Apr 28, 2006 1:31 PM EDT
    Reply
    Mike Rupert

    Good one, Mighty :)

    • 2 votes
    Reply#3 - Thu Apr 27, 2006 8:09 PM EDT
    Ravi Khalsa

    Seems that a lot of people think he's a failure.

    • 4 votes
    Reply#4 - Thu Apr 27, 2006 8:39 PM EDT
    TopJedi

    Funny and true! Well, I tried the same little experiment with "success" and while not sensational I did find another President Bush peeking up at me near the bottom of my browser.

    • 4 votes
    Reply#5 - Thu Apr 27, 2006 10:56 PM EDT
    matt.salem

    I found french military victories as quite humerous. Someone else posted that somewhere here but do not remember where.

    • 1 vote
    Reply#6 - Thu Apr 27, 2006 11:52 PM EDT
    Chrono Cr@cker

    This is old, very very old.
    chronotron.wordpress[dot]com/2006/01/21/google-feels-lucky/

    • 2 votes
    Reply#7 - Fri Apr 28, 2006 2:49 AM EDT
    Adam Kemp

    It's far older than that. I saw this a few years ago.

      #7.1 - Fri Apr 28, 2006 2:30 PM EDT
      Mighty Iris

      DANG! So Bush has been a failure since the start. I need to spend more time in the politics tab. I feel somewhat responsible since I voted for him the first time.

        #7.2 - Fri Apr 28, 2006 3:20 PM EDT
        Reply
        I SPY

        Google is truly mightier than the sword

        • 6 votes
        Reply#8 - Fri Apr 28, 2006 4:09 AM EDT
        Benno Hansen

        A joke has been circulating the email lately.

        "Lately"!?

        This must have been around the globe seven times at least.

        • 2 votes
        Reply#9 - Fri Apr 28, 2006 6:37 AM EDT
        Chrono Cr@cker

        Agreed!

          #9.1 - Fri Apr 28, 2006 11:52 PM EDT
          Reply
          Tim Baxter

          Also, when you say "I do my best to optimize the proper keywords and terminology in all of my sites", you are, in all likelihood, wasting your time, and may actually be hindering your search engine results. Without seeing your sites, I couldn't say with any certainty if that's true in your case, but it amazes me how much time people spend on snake oil SEO.

          • 1 vote
          Reply#10 - Fri Apr 28, 2006 8:38 AM EDT
          Mighty Iris

          I agree, and my main purpose is making the code in my sites clean by using style sheets, which I feel the spiders can read better when there's less "clutta."

          I do feel that good content and copy are the cornerstones for Web SEO, which is what I spend most of my time on.

            #10.1 - Fri Apr 28, 2006 1:34 PM EDT
            Tim Baxter

            Ahhh.. then you're on the right path. I thought you were mucking about with keyword matching, meta tags, and other silliness.

              #10.2 - Fri Apr 28, 2006 1:52 PM EDT
              Reply
              Brian Ford

              This has been useful to me in the past.

              Jeff Croft and I had been utilizing a company for internet hosting for the past few years and had never been all that happy with their service. All of this came to a head when our email and web services suddenly failed to work. After several frustrating calls to customer service over a 24 hour period were finally able to utilize these services again.

              Jeff dealt with the situation and claims to have never received such poor customer service. (And as people pay us to host their website -- we can't afford to be "down" for 24 hours.)

              Jeff also happens to write a popular blog about web standards etc. and wrote an article about how horrible the company in question had been over the past few years.

              Within days link number 1 in google was something like: Such and such company is a rip off.

              Link number 2 was the website of the company.

              • 1 vote
              Reply#11 - Fri Apr 28, 2006 9:31 AM EDT
              Mighty Iris

              Very very interesting Brian. I need to be more devious.

                #11.1 - Fri Apr 28, 2006 1:40 PM EDT
                Reply
                $NAME

                Technically this is is Google's definition of failure.

                • 1 vote
                Reply#12 - Fri Apr 28, 2006 3:26 PM EDT
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