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--- Begin Message ----Caveat Lector- http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/01/26/BUG3M4GVDS1.DTL Google targeted by pranksters Web site operators, bloggers skew resultsVerne Kopytoff, Chronicle Staff Writer Monday, January 26, 2004 Who among the many candidates running for president is unelectable? George W. Bush -- if the search results on Google can be believed. His biography is the first result to appear on Google for the Web query "unelectable." It's just one in a long list of similarly bizarre results on the search engine over the years that arethe result of manipulation, not their relevance. Called Google bombs, these are pranks engineered by Web site operators and creators of Web logs. They take advantage of the way Google ranks search results to get certain Web sites listed higher for specific queries than they otherwise would be. That's why President Bush's biography also appears as the top result for the search query "miserable failure." In another example, entering the phrase "French military victories" and hitting the "I'm Feeling Lucky" key returns a satirical Web site that looks like a Google page and asks, "Did you mean French military defeats?" Google's response to the bombs -- which have increased in frequency during the presidential campaign -- is generally laissez-faire, according to Peter Norvig, the company's director of search quality. Though aware of many of the manipulations, he doesn't consider them to be a major problem. "It's not a big issue," Norvig said. "We could spend our time taking care of these one at a time, but we don't think it's worth our while." Google, the search leader based in Mountain View, determines the order of search results using an algorithm that weighs many factors. One is examining the number of links pointed to a particular Web site under the theory that the more links, the more important that site probably is. Words are another important consideration. The algorithm scans text that appears on the Web site in question and on those that link to it. With modest computer skills, Google bombers can manipulate those calculations. They usually follow the pattern set by George Johnson, a computer programmer in Bellevue, Wash., who was behind the "miserable failure" strike against President Bush. In October, Johnson, a Democrat, added the phrase "miserable failure" to his Web site, Old Fashioned Patriot. He then linked the site to the online White House biography of President Bush and asked others to follow his lead. Beginning last fall, anyone who typed "miserable failure" into Google got Bush's White House biography as the top result. The anomaly made the headlines around the globe. "I didn't think it was going to go anywhere," Johnson said. "I was surprised and glad. It was fun to see it take off." Conservatives wanted revenge. They fought back by launching their own bombs against several leading liberals. A query of "miserable failure" now finds them listed just under President Bush. They are former President Jimmy Carter, author and filmmaker Michael Moore and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. The history of Google bombing goes back to at least 1999, when Microsoft became a target because of its dominance of the software industry. Anyone who entered the query "More evil than Satan" got Microsoft's Web site as the top result. A few other bombs have come and gone since then. Most have had a limited shelf life. The fickleness is partly due to the nature of Web logs, or blogs, an important force behind Google bombing. They are frequently updated with new material, causing the bomb terms entered on their pages to scroll off into oblivion. Google isn't the only Internet bombing range. Other search engines routinely fall victim, though some appear to be less vulnerable. For example, the top result for "unelectable" on Lycos, the Web portal, is Howard Dean's presidential campaign Web site. But AskJeeves, based in Emeryville, offers what appears to be a top result untainted by bombing -- a newspaper article about the mayor of Philadelphia that actually contains the word "unelectable." Norvig said Google's only concern about bombs is that people think it is biased. A small number of users have complained about the anomalies. "It is a problem, to the extent that people think that it is a political stand that Google is endorsing," Norvig said. Some of the grumbling was over the bomb "weapons of mass destruction," which exploded on Google last summer. The top link for that phrase looks like an error message and is titled "These weapons of mass destruction cannot be displayed," obviously, a criticism of the war in Iraq. Google bombs seldom work for popular search terms. There's too much competition for items like "United Airlines," "Lord of the Rings" and "DVD players." Danny Sullivan, founder of SearchEngineWatch.com, a Web site that tracks the search engine industry, said he believes that Google users are seldom inconvenienced by bombing, but that the practice might damage Google, the company. "The kind of bombing that gets attention, by and large, doesn't have an impact on a lot of users," Sullivan said. "But it does on Google's reputation." Sullivan is more worried about commercial bombing -- sometimes called "money bombing" -- on Google. Small-time retailers often use bomb-like techniques to skew search results and get listed ahead of their competition. "It's a kind of Google bombing that people don't know is happening," Sullivan said. "But it has more impact than the more notorious Google bomb examples and is creating link pollution." In a notorious case, Google penalized the rankings of an array of commercial Web sites that had linked together under the guidance of Search King, an Internet advertising firm in Oklahoma City. Search King unsuccessfully sued Google in federal court in 2002, alleging financial harm and demanding that the original Web site rankings be restored. Norvig said his firm frequently adjusts its algorithm to engineer more reliable results. But Sullivan believes that Google may ultimately be forced to de-emphasize the importance of links in its calculations to avoid manipulation. "Google is trying to do something about bombing, but I honestly don't think they'll ever be able to do enough," Sullivan said. ---------------------- Google bombing Web site operators and bloggers have engineered a series of pranks over the years that manipulate Google's search results. Here are a few examples of results users got at one point last week when performing searches on these keywords: "Unelectable" -- Biography of President Bush "Miserable failure" -- Biography of President Bush (followed by biographies of former President Jimmy Carter, author and filmmaker Michael Moore and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton) "Weapons of mass destruction" -- Page mimicking an error message that said, "These weapons of mass destruction cannot be displayed" and that advised visitors to "check your weapons inspector settings," among other things. "French military victories" -- Page mimicking Google that returned not one hit and asked, "Did you mean: French military defeats?" Source: Chronicle research E-mail Verne Kopytoff at [EMAIL PROTECTED] -__ ___ _ ___ __ ___ _ _ _ __ /-_|-0-\-V-/-\|-|-__|-|-|-/-_| \_-\--_/\-/|-\\-|-_||-V-V-\_-\ |__/_|--//-|_|\_|___|\_A_/|__/ SPY NEWS is OSINT newsletter and discussion list associated to Mario's Cyberspace Station - The Global Intelligence News Portal http://mprofaca.cro.net ######## CAUTION! ######### Since you are receiving and reading documents, news stories, comments and opinions not only from so called (or self-proclaimed) "reliable sources", but also a lot of possible misinformation collected by Spy News moderator and subscribers and posted to Spy News for OSINT purposes - it should be a serious reason (particularly to journalists and web publishers) to think twice before using it for their story writing, further publishing or forwarding throughout Cyberspace. 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