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Blogger Launches 'Google Bomb' At McCain

Posted by Soulskill on Sun Jun 22, 2008 11:22 AM
from the everyone-needs-a-hobby dept.
Government Businesses Google Republicans The Internet The Media Politics
hhavensteincw writes "A liberal blogger has launched a 'Google bomb' project aimed at boosting Google search results for nine news articles showing Sen. John McCain in a negative light. The Computerworld article notes: 'Chris Bowers, managing editor of the progressive blog OpenLeft, is launching the Google bombs by encouraging bloggers to embed Web links to the nine news stories about McCain in their blogs, which helps raise their ranking in Google search results. Bowers is reprising a similar Google bombing effort he undertook in 2006 against 52 different congressional candidates. "Obviously, it is manipulating, but search engines are not public forums and unless you act to use them for your own benefit, your opponent's information is going to get out there," Bowers said.'"
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[+] Technology: New Campaign Tactic - Google Bombing 252 comments
jeian writes "My Direct Democracy, a liberal group blog, is trying out a new campaign tactic — Google bombing. From the New York Times article: 'Searching Google for Peter King, the Republican congressman from Long Island, would bring up a link to a Newsday article headlined King Endorses Ethnic Profiling.' Google's policy has typically been to not intervene and let the algorithms work by themselves, but could this change if Google-bombing becomes a common tactic?"
Submission: Blogger launches 'Google bomb' at McCain by hhavensteincw (1127347)
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  • Yeah, that'll help . . . (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PeeAitchPee (712652) on Sunday June 22 2008, @11:26AM (#23894969)
    . . . unify the country.

    • Re:Yeah, that'll help . . . (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Opportunist (166417) on Sunday June 22 2008, @11:30AM (#23895019)

      Since when has that become the goal of politics?

      • Re:Yeah, that'll help . . . (Score:4, Insightful)

        by letxa2000 (215841) on Sunday June 22 2008, @12:58PM (#23895791)

        The goal of politics should be to do what's best for the country. The goal of politicians is to gain power. So apparently the liberal blogger in question is a politician because he's doing what's best for his candidate, not what's best for the country. Making it hard to find the best information (even if it's not information the liberal blogger wants people to see) about a candidate is not in the spirit of a free society and democracy. Basically, this liberal blogger is decreasing the signal to noise ratio rather than providing useful and compelling reasons to vote for his own candidate.

        Seriously... if Obama were as amazing as we were supposed to believe he is, it would be more than enough to promote his virtues rather than trying to smear the opponent. Guess Obama isn't all that great stuff.

          • Arms race? (Score:5, Interesting)

            by WaltBusterkeys (1156557) * on Sunday June 22 2008, @01:37PM (#23896167)

            It's true that this could backfire, but it could also cause a massive arms race [reputation...erblog.com]. If politics weren't messy and dirty enough already, imagine if both campaigns were spending massive amounts of time and energy to control the other side's Google results. McCain supporters would link to dirty articles about Obama, Obama supporters would link to dirty articles about McCain, and the whole Internet would be filled with even more political links than it already is.

            Heck, a really smart campaigner would just outsource the whole thing to India and have thousands of staffers constantly building links to positive and negative results.

            Politics might be the one thing strong enough to overcome all of Google's attempts to stop Googlebombs [searchengineland.com].

    • Re:Yeah, that'll help . . . (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 22 2008, @12:03PM (#23895299)

      Unify the country? Why is that considered a good thing? A significant portion of the American public are in favour of the Bush administration, the Iraq war and torture. You aren't going to change their minds. The only way you will unify the country is to meet them half-way. Is that a good thing?

      I've never heard of this "unification" nonsense until the Republican Party started becoming unpopular. Until then, in pretty much every democratic country, it was understood that there is room for disagreement in politics and that this wasn't necessarily a bad thing. But now they seem to be feeding you the idea that all parties should be striving for the same thing (which is basically no different to a one-party system) and the American public seem to be lapping this bullshit up and asking for seconds. WTF is up with that? Can you really not see that it's just a desperate lie told by people who fear losing power in the near future? It's not transparently obvious to you?

      • Re:Yeah, that'll help . . . (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Ian Alexander (997430) on Sunday June 22 2008, @12:52PM (#23895709)

        Unify the country? Why is that considered a good thing?
        I think it's because partisan politics in the States revolves more around mudslinging and villifying people who disagree with you and less around, perhaps, coming to agreements and bipartisan cooperation. It's typical American political "problemsolving": identify a problem and propose a boneheaded solution that won't fix anything. Instead of settling down and being civilized about the other party, why don't we just get rid of bothersome "other" parties?

        • Re:It doesnt work (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 22 2008, @01:15PM (#23895965)

          You aren't describing conservatives, you are describing the Republican Party. The Republican Party are not conservative in any way, shape or form. Conservatives would be against the Iraq war. Conservatives would be against increasing the size of the government. Conservatives would be against wiping their asses with the Constitution. Conservatives would be against spending far more money than the country has.

    • No, but at least it might help Google fix its search engine.

    • Re:Yeah, that'll help . . . (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Entropius (188861) on Sunday June 22 2008, @12:55PM (#23895739)

      I don't want a unified country.

      I want a just, upstanding, ethical, and prosperous country.

      If "unity" means "agreeing with people who advocate theocracy", then I'm against it. If it means "Americans working together to make their country and the world a better place", I'm for it.

      Unity isn't something that you *make* happen. Unity is something that happens as a result of good governance and an educated and civic-minded citizenry.

      • Re:Yeah, that'll help . . . (Score:5, Funny)

        by Niten (201835) on Sunday June 22 2008, @12:03PM (#23895305) Homepage

        They care nothing for the "issues" they espouse and they care even less (than nothing?) for you except for your vote.

        Yeah, much unlike those warm, loving, caring exemplars of humanity and civil service, Hillary Clinton and John McCain.

      • How is this 'typical of the obama campaign'... or insightful for that matter?

        Look at this;
        This is a list of crap email received on Obama. Note the themes and quantity of emails... Really a bit telling to the mentallity of the people sending them out, as well as the people who forward them on and on.
        http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/obama.asp [snopes.com]

        Now; Here's the same for McCain.
        http://www.snopes.com/politics/mccain/mccain.asp [snopes.com]

        That said, I'm more then a little pissed at this idiot for the google bomb. These were funny once, but trying to manipulate politcs with them isn't. I view the 'good guys' as being above this.

        That said however, I'm at the point where I'd sacrifice some of my personal views on that to prevent what happened in 2000, and then 2004. If that's the only way to get the idiot vote, go for it... because at this point the idiot vote has to be 50%
        • Well apparently Snopes didn't get all the anti-McCain emails that I did. They don't list the "Bush's third term" McCain, or the "McCain will prolong the Iraq war for 100 years" one. Then there was the one about McCain opposing equal pay for women because they weren't as educated as men.

          I also have to wonder how many of those Obama-bashing emails were sent out by Hillary supporters.

          I'm a little fed up with the whole thing - here we are are again with no choices - only the lesser of 2 evils - to vote for in the presidential race. I think the idiot vote will be well over 50% this year, because only an idiot would vote for either one of these globalist elite career politicians.

  • Links? (Score:5, Funny)

    by OshMan (1246516) on Sunday June 22 2008, @11:28AM (#23894993)
    Hmmmm I couldn't find the links to the original 9 articles. Could someone post them here? ;)

  • Open left of what? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by conner_bw (120497) on Sunday June 22 2008, @11:29AM (#23895011) Homepage Journal

    One vote for the democratic party of america is one less vote for the republican party of america, but is it really a vote to the left?

    http://www.politicalcompass.org/usprimaries2008 [politicalcompass.org]

    • One vote for the democratic party of america is one less vote for the republican party of america, but is it really a vote to the left?

      True - we've got two major parties in the U.S., one representing the center of the right wing, one representing the right wing of the center.

      It's no wonder that, until this charismatic upstart Obama came along, the "sure winner" of the Democratic primaries was a woman who had been the president of her campus's chapter of the College Republicans, and whose husband was called "the best Republican president we've had in a while" by Alan Greenspan.

  • Raises tough questions (Score:5, Insightful)

    by clang_jangle (975789) * on Sunday June 22 2008, @11:31AM (#23895031)
    I find the practice of SEO to be a bit questionable in any event, but soliciting volunteers to essentially manipulate google search results in order to favor a given political agenda just leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. Sure, it can argued that the right fights dirty, but where is the honor in stooping to this sort of thing?

    Well, I am old enough to remember the sixties -- maybe I'm just becoming obsolete.

  • Against the Principles of Democracy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DeionXxX (261398) on Sunday June 22 2008, @11:32AM (#23895047)

    Isn't one of the tenants of democracy that everyone have access to all information and then they decide who's best for themselves? This is poisoning the available information so citizens don't have all of the information about a candidate.

    Pretty surprising come from the left, you know, with their morals and such.

  • What a dick. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by saintlupus (227599) on Sunday June 22 2008, @11:38AM (#23895099) Homepage

    Yeah, it's always a lot better to make sure that you taint the conversation.

    This is an excellent example of the juvenile "us vs. them" mentality that national US politics has devolved into. I'm a bicycle-riding urbanite liberal stereotype, I still find this sort of idiocy appalling. Let people make up their own minds and hunt for their own information.

    --saint

      • Re:What a dick. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by FleaPlus (6935) on Sunday June 22 2008, @12:37PM (#23895603) Homepage Journal

        If the left consistently acted in that way, they'd never elect another person to office, because the Right isn't going to stop doing what they're doing just because the left is.

        Could you elaborate on what dishonorable attacks have been coming from the Right so far in this election? As far as I've seen, the vast majority of the attacks on Obama so far have been from the Clinton camp. McCain on the other hand has (somewhat surprisingly) been trying to take the high ground and has on a number of occasions criticized those who've tried to use spurious claims again Obama.

        • Re:What a dick. (Score:5, Informative)

          by je ne sais quoi (987177) on Sunday June 22 2008, @01:47PM (#23896277)
          Oh jeez, come on! That's like asking when the last time water was wet. Just the other day on Fox they were talking about how when Barack Obama bumped fists with his wife and they called him a terrorist (link [youtube.com]). Or how about that picture of him when he was dressed up in traditional Somali garb (=90% Christian), claiming he was dressing up as an muslim (link [sweetness-light.com], etc. etc. etc. Face it, the modern conservative political view is synonymous with character assassination. You can thank Rove, and the other Republican attack dogs for that.

  • what a douche (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Alibaba10100 (1296289) on Sunday June 22 2008, @11:43AM (#23895135) Journal
    This is a perfect example of how political types can't see anything outside of their petty us vs. them mentality.

    "We're just using McCain's own words -- everything we are targeting are things McCain has done or said himself. There's no bias at all.
    No bias? By what definition is emphasizing the things someone says that suit your purposes not bias? In fact, this is the most insidious kind of bias. If the pieces being ranked up were opinion pieces, at least viewers would be aware that what they are reading is someone's opinion. But this way, the ordering of the news stories itself contains some random guy's personal bias and the majority of searchers will not know to put their guard up.

    Obviously, it is manipulating

    bingo

  • Informed Vote? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thePowerOfGrayskull (905905) on Sunday June 22 2008, @11:52AM (#23895211) Homepage Journal

    "Obviously, it is manipulating, but search engines are not public forums and unless you act to use them for your own benefit, your opponent's information is going to get out there," Bowers said.'"
    Because clearly, the last thing you want to do is let your opponent's perspective out there. This is brought to you by the 'informed populace makes for poor voters' theory.

  • Will this even work? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SuperKendall (25149) on Sunday June 22 2008, @11:58AM (#23895269)

    I thought Google had put in place controls to prevent exactly this kind of thing from tainting search results. Even if he does get a lot of people linking, it seems like Google's own corrective algorithms would prevent it from really making an impact on search results.

    It might be interesting to see what degree other search engines end up being affected as well, as a study in how manipulatable the various engines are.

  • Defeated (Score:5, Informative)

    by shird (566377) on Sunday June 22 2008, @11:59AM (#23895277) Homepage Journal

    Apparently Google already has protection against such "bombs":
    http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/01/quick-word-about-googlebombs.html [blogspot.com]

    I have no idea how the algorithm detects such a bomb, but it appears to be pretty effective.

  • Backfire (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Toonol (1057698) on Sunday June 22 2008, @12:04PM (#23895311)
    This sort of stuff just makes the side doing it seem more juvenile and reactionary... which is an image the democrats need to overcome, not encourage.

    I think if they could have shut up their most ardent supporters, the Democrats would have won the last election.

    • Re:Backfire (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nEoN nOoDlE (27594) on Sunday June 22 2008, @01:30PM (#23896097) Homepage

      I think if they could have shut up their most ardent supporters, the Democrats would have won the last election.

      That's a load of crap. It wasn't the ardent democrat supporters who lost the election, it was the ardent Republican supports being more underhanded. They turned "swiftboating" into a verb. Stuff like this doesn't backfire because the majority of the population just looks at the message and not the messenger.

  • Tag? (Score:5, Informative)

    by dreamchaser (49529) on Sunday June 22 2008, @12:09PM (#23895353) Homepage Journal

    Why is this tagged 'Republicans' when it's a Democrat doing the deed?

    I expect both sides will engage in this kind of thing though to be honest.

    • Re:I have to say it (Score:5, Funny)

      by mnemocynic (1221372) on Sunday June 22 2008, @11:27AM (#23894979)
      For the lazy among us, here's a direct link: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=bombs+away!&btnG=Google+Search [google.com]

      • Re:I have to say it (Score:5, Funny)

        by Gewalt (1200451) on Sunday June 22 2008, @12:28PM (#23895537)
        What if my hl isn't en you insensitive clod!

      • Not sure how this is a bomb (Score:5, Funny)

        by commodoresloat (172735) * on Sunday June 22 2008, @04:06PM (#23897289) Homepage
        He's trying to manipulate google, sure, but in a more legit way than doing this: warmongering douchebag [johnmccain.com]. The guy in the article is simply promoting 9 specific articles about McCain and suggesting that others link those articles as well to make sure they climb the search results. It's not that different from just passing the links around and telling people to make sure everyone they know reads them. Whereas doing this charming imposter [barackobama.com] doesn't just get more people to go to a link; it makes a clear association between that link and a phrase denigrating the object of the link.

        • Re:Not sure how this is a bomb (Score:5, Insightful)

          by ArcherB (796902) on Sunday June 22 2008, @08:30PM (#23898947) Journal

          He's trying to manipulate google, sure, but in a more legit way than doing this: warmongering douchebag [johnmccain.com]. The guy in the article is simply promoting 9 specific articles about McCain and suggesting that others link those articles as well to make sure they climb the search results. It's not that different from just passing the links around and telling people to make sure everyone they know reads them. Whereas doing this charming imposter [barackobama.com] doesn't just get more people to go to a link; it makes a clear association between that link and a phrase denigrating the object of the link.
          I disagree. I think it's a bit dishonest. If this guy gets his way, when someone searches for John McCain, they are likely to get negative articles. I mean, let's forget about getting balanced results and letting people make up their own minds when presented with ALL the facts. Nope, let's make sure they only see the facts WE want them to see so they can make up their minds the way WE want them to.

          Yeah. It's a pretty shitty thing to do, although, with all the people saying things like "McCain WANTS troops to be in Iraq for 100 years", it's not surprising.

          • Re:Not sure how this is a bomb (Score:5, Insightful)

            by frank_adrian314159 (469671) on Sunday June 22 2008, @10:24PM (#23899649) Homepage

            I mean, let's forget about getting balanced results and letting people make up their own minds when presented with ALL the facts.

            Nobody ever gets ALL the facts. You have a finite amount of time on this mudball and most people do not want to spend it studying the minutia about the two idiots who happen to be running this year (and, yes, I have a clear preference, but after the FISA debacle, he's still an idiot). Google's page rank reflects the reality of the situation vis a vis relative web link importance at a particular current point in time. If McCain's opponents are more web-savvy or more energetic, they will have an advantage in this arena and they will have earned it. If you want more "balance", get McCain's people as motivated as Obama's. If they can't be as motivated, maybe that says something about his importance.

            The bottom line is that bitching about the lack of some mythical "balance" on the web is about as useful as complaining about the lack of a mythical immortality for people. It may make you feel better in some strange, warped way but, in the long run, it makes no difference. People have finite time and have only finite means for managing the information they take in over this finite time. Deal with it.

            • Re:Not sure how this is a bomb (Score:5, Insightful)

              by ArcherB (796902) on Monday June 23 2008, @07:31AM (#23901913) Journal

              If it's "a bit" dishonest, it's a lot less so than the actual google bombs. I'm not saying this is the right thing to do, I'm just saying it's not a google bomb. And, in fact, it's only slightly different from what goes on anyway -- you have a blog, you don't like mccain, you post links to these articles, other people read those articles and find them worth linking to, they post to their blogs, and so on ... eventually if enough people think it's worthwhile, it climbs the google charts -- really, the only difference is that they're thinking about the google placing in the first place, which was bound to happen anyway.
              If someone creates a blog and links to articles, it's no big deal and there is nothing wrong with that. But to INTENTIONALLY do so with the intent of skewing search engine results in your favor is dishonest. You are attempting to limit the amount of data a searcher receives while only forwarding the data you WANT them to receive. It's dishonest. If the government were doing this, it would be called censorship.

              Oh and by the way, McCain actually did say the troops could be in Iraq for a hundred years. So for people who think that's important, that fact will be repeated.
              Yes, he did. Just like in Germany, Japan, S. Korea and a slew of other places we have troops stationed. But saying that troops COULD be stationed there is very different than saying he WANTS troops there for 100 years. Take THIS [democrats.org] article for instance. It is titled, "Day 3: McCain Wants 100 Years in Iraq". Sorry, but that is a lie. McCain doesn't WANT troops in Iraq for 100 years. No one does. This is the type of article that we are talking about here. It is blatantly dishonest and if this is the only type of article that appears when searching for McCain, a previously uninformed voter will get the wrong idea based complete, 100% politically motivated bullshit.

    • Re:Seems like this is a Match on a Fire (Score:4, Informative)

      by klingens (147173) on Sunday June 22 2008, @11:39AM (#23895103)

      Honestly, the generation that gets their information from the internet (instead of cable or newspapers) is going to have a much more liberal bias in general. All you have to do is look at age group demographics for any polling done and you'll see the heavy liberal skew to the younger ages.
       
      There is a saying here (paraphrased): "A 20 year old liberal will end up a 70 year old conservative and doesn't have to change a single of his views".

      So I don't fear for the conservative parties of the world just yet.

      • Big picture, on a global scale, that's true: politics have been getting steadily more liberal ever since the Middle Ages, and so those who hold to political views acquired in their youth always seem more conservative as they age. The interesting thing is that in American politics over the last couple of generations or so, the opposite is true. Eisenhower would be considered a mainstream Democrat these days, while Nixon, seen at the time as representing the hard right, would today be a "Blue Dog" Democrat or maybe a "RINO" Republican. Conversely, both Clintons, and Obama, support policies largely in accord with the Republican party of Eisenhower's day. Carter is remembered today as an extreme leftist, but by the standards of the day, he was actually seen as a solidly conservative Democrat. Even Saint Reagan, no matter how much today's Republicans venerate him, would be considered suspiciously leftish by modern Republicans if he were a new candidate running for office today.

        It's a blip, of course, kind of like in the stock market. In the very long term, stocks always go up. But they do so on a jagged line, and those downward dips sure can make a lot of people's lives miserable.

    • Re:Seems like this is a Match on a Fire (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Capitalist Piggy (1298699) on Sunday June 22 2008, @12:05PM (#23895319)

      Besides, republicans already have their propaganda machine too *cough* Fox News *cough* Ann Coulter *Cough*


      The unfortunate side of all this, all of these talk machines, including Boortz, Rush, Hannity, etc will be repeating, over and over, about how this is a fine example of leftist propoganda, the liberal conspiracy, etc.

      Don't get me wrong. I think Bill Maher and the rest of the leftist paid-to-talk types are complete twits as well. Nothing like seeing someone from either side ignorantly pressing points only for the sake of them being right, left, or endlessly playing devil's advocate.

      Too bad there isn't a fiscal conservative, socially liberal person to vote for. Too bad there isn't a news network without slant anymore. I recognize slant was always there, but CNN learned a little from Fox's ratings and starts coming across as ridiculously liberal when elections near.

    • Re:Seems like this is a Match on a Fire (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Dachannien (617929) on Sunday June 22 2008, @01:06PM (#23895865)

      Besides, republicans already have their propaganda machine too *cough* Fox News *cough* Ann Coulter *Cough*
      What, as opposed to Obama's fanboys comprising the entire rest of the media?

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