Political bloggers coordinate 'Google Bombs'

[sabra]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15418130/

Political bloggers coordinate 'Google Bombs'
Readers are urged to 'fight fire with fire'

The 2006 campaign is about to be "Google-bombed." Both liberal and conservative bloggers have embarked on plans to manipulate the Google search engine so that negative articles about the candidates they oppose appear near the top, potentially influencing undecided voters.

Liberal bloggers had the idea first. Chris Bowers of MyDD outlined the strategy Sunday. He said the plan involves purchasing "Google AdWords that will place each negative article on the most common searches for each Republican candidate. Simultaneously, I will produce an article on MyDD that embeds that negative article into a hyperlink."

Bowers asked bloggers to help add links, and they spent the next few days compiling negative news articles on Republican candidates in about 50 targeted races.

Conservative blogger John Hawkins of Right Wing News learned of the strategy and urged his allies to "fight fire with fire." Hawkins expressed concern the Google-bombing campaign just might work for Democrats.

[annabanana]

1. It's a waste of energy...

All it will do is annoy the undecideds, not push them one way or another.

[Eric J in MN]

6. Why would they be annoyed?

A bunch of links get listed when they enter a search, and one of them will be to an article on that list. So what?

[Tellurian]

21. We had it FIRST?

Then, It's a GOOD Thing!

[w4rma]

22. I couldn't disagree with you more, annabanana. (nt)

[TheDebbieDee]

2. Thanks for posting this article.........

It clears up a lot of questions I had about Google-bombing.

Now I know that Google-bombing is more effective if I put it the links in my signature when I post on other sites, right?

[mcscajun]

3. All this will do is get Google to find yet another tweak for their

proprietary search algorithms.

On the plus side, it means more work for programmers. :)

[lonestarnot]

4. Teehee! Job security.

[rinsd]

26. They don't have to change the algorithms

All they have to do is block the urls of the most popular bloggers since that is what is really driving the bomb.

[Eric J in MN]

5. I joined in...

on the bottom of this webpage:
http://www.moveleft.com/moveleft_blog.asp

The HTML is at:
http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/10/24/121757/70

[sfwriter]

7. Of course this will work for us...

"Conservative blogger John Hawkins of Right Wing News learned of the strategy and urged his allies to "fight fire with fire." Hawkins expressed concern the Google-bombing campaign just might work for Democrats."

Of course it will work better for Dems. Liberals READ!

lol!

[bananas]

8. Google's Blogspot.com Down, Blogger Content Inaccessible

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/061012-092905

Google's Blogspot.com Down, Blogger Content Inaccessible

It seems like most of the morning, Google's Blogspot service that hosts Blogger blogs has been down. For example, I have been trying to access any of the various official Google blogs such as the main one here, and they all time out or return a 500 server error. The same is true for the Google Press Blog, as well as any site using the blogspot.com domain, it seems. FYI - it seems that www.blogger.com is also down.

Posted by Barry Schwartz on Oct. 12, 2006 | Permalink

[Richard D]

9. Working for me.

[bananas]

11. Really? Can you give a few urls that work for you? nt

[Richard D]

15. Well,

Riverbend is working for me. Atrios was working earlier but isn't now.
Just tried a few others and they aren't working, including my own, dammit!

[Omphaloskepsis]

10. down for me..

A 500 error is usually server software malfunction.

[Suich]

12. Whew! I thought it was me!

I've been trying Americablog and Riverbendblog all day...nada!

...Wonder what's going on.



:hi:

[Cheney Killed Bambi]

13. Ah hah

No wonder I can't read Atrios.

[mcscajun]

14. getting the 500 server error. I haven't been to my blog in weeks

so there's nothing in cache to mislead me. :)

[LTR]

16. No problems for me

I posted three articles today.

Occasionally, I do notice some down time and sluggishness, though on Blogger.

[TacticalPeek]

17. Eschaton just came back.

I'd been getting 500 Internal Server Error for a few hours.

http://atrios.blogspot.com

[lowreed]

19. getting error 500 now :(

[Melynn]

18. I had the same problem yesterday

Today it's fine.

[blogbart]

20. Google moving to blog beta

blogger had occassional blackouts probbalby due to spikes in traffic. Since Google bought them still the same but now Google has made new Blogger in Beta which they probably want to herd people onto. This new Blogger in Beta requires that you register a Google account ... so figures that Google wants bloggers integrated into their system.. wouldn't put it past them to stop serving old Blogger .. hence outages .. get used to it.

[newyawker99]

28. Hi blogbart!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Pawel K]

23. Sounds like a great idea but I dont think it will work this election

when was this campaign started? I wasn't really paying attention to it. However, google takes weeks if not months to update results on keywords and there is only what, 12 days before the election. Its worth a try but we should do this in the 2008 election months in advance.

[InsultComicDog]

24. Pssssssst....It's all silliness

designed to get people into an uproar...

[greeneyedboy]

25. google takes only days, according to the original posts on kos & mydd

but when i search "bob corker", the link Bowers suggests doesn't come up on the first page (though other critical articles do).

keep on cutting/pasting those links...

[humbled_opinion]

27. hahaha they will come up with any excuse... n/t