'Online Poker' Googlebomb 379
Philipp Lenssen writes "The blogger community is fighting back, though in ways not everyone may like: they are Googlebombing the Wikipedia page on online poker for the phrase "online poker" to make it rank higher in search engines. "Online poker", along with "Viagra", "mortgage" and "debt", are keywords heavily represented in comment spam, which itself aims to boost the Google ranking for a particular site and phrase. The Wikipedia page is currently third in Google."
I don't understand (Score:5, Insightful)
It don' make no sense!
Re:You submitted this... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm feeling lucky (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You submitted this... (Score:2, Insightful)
Pointless (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, why? (Score:5, Insightful)
The stupid online poker comment spam *is* annoying, yes, but is Googlebombing Wikipedia really a viable solution?
The Wiki didn't come up 3rd when I looked a few minutes ago (it was 5th) and doesn't Google specifically say "Don't do stuff like this!" in their help documentation?
I hope this doesn't backfire.
two wrongs makes a right? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Blog spammers will fight back at blogs - mostly innocient people who have nothing to do with this war.
2. Blog spam can get wikipedia in trouble by violating Google's guildelines [google.com].
3. The recent nofollow [google.com] tag attribue will dimish the value of blog spam.
I am all of these online casino bastards to die... (Score:5, Insightful)
So the online casinos would be forced to stop auto spamming people.
Of course this trouble will never end if these companies have like little gnomes manually spamming blog/blog rings.
That's it?! (Score:3, Insightful)
I gotta agree with the article... buy more text ads...
Re:Do the ends justify the means? (Score:3, Insightful)
Are Google et. al. screwed? (Score:2, Insightful)
The only problem is, the automated robots that Google et. al. use are based on rules, and those rules will ALWAYS be able to be reverse-engineered by spammers.
Is there any way out of this?
(And please don't just say, "Google can just hire a bunch of people to look at stuff" because that won't scale to billions of Internet pages).
Ideas anybody?
So? (Score:2, Insightful)
If I were to search for "online poker" I'd be sure to read the TITLE and the two lines or so that Google gives you from the site to figure out if it was a relevant result or not.
If I already know what online poker is, there's no need for me to go to a wikipedia page, no matter how high it's listed. Conversely, if I'm not interested in playing, I'm not going to go to some site unless I haven't had my daily dose of cookies.
Very few people use the "I'm feeling lucky" button (I remember reading some really low percentage on the Google website, forget what exactly it was) so even getting this site to #1 won't affect discerning users.
All right, you can make the argument that people are stupid and click blindly. Problably. But most people realize after a few seconds if they've gone to an irrelevant result.
Re:I don't understand (Score:5, Insightful)
Should have picked a site that fights addiction (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Are Google et. al. screwed? (Score:3, Insightful)
How would you reverse-engineer it?
Re:You submitted this... (Score:3, Insightful)
Some clever bastard.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Simple solution to Googlebombing. (Score:5, Insightful)
I detailed this elsewhere. All Google has to do is add a filter to its results so that pages that do not actually contain the search word/phrases do NOT show up in result lists.
This used to be standard search-engine behaviour, and because of this, results used to be a lot more accurate (unless they were merely outdated, but even in this case, the results were accurate at one time!).
Re:Googlebombing is part of Google's design flaw. (Score:3, Insightful)
"to be +or not to be" (quotes and all) give you nothing but appropriate answers on the fist page.
Re:Google [ play online poker ] (Score:3, Insightful)
Just clickthrough for wikipedia and its favored poker sites?
Greedy abuse of Wikipedia (Score:4, Insightful)
Again I say "sad". I vote to delete--except that that's pointless, too. The people who want to sucker other people via online gambling are of course much more strongly motivated than people like I am. I'm just annoyed. They're dreaming of striking it rich, if only they can find enough suckers fast enough.
Anyway, the Wikipedia deletion process was too difficult to figure out.
Give me a break.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Are Google et. al. screwed? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Google [ play online poker ] (Score:2, Insightful)
I wouldn't be upset, if google just made those few terms unsearchable.
Re:Googlebombing is part of Google's design flaw. (Score:4, Insightful)
Where is the -1 Patently False moderation tag when you need it?
The reason http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=to+be+or+not
So all that google sees is "not"
Re:Google [ play online poker ] (Score:4, Insightful)
It's NOT because nobody wants to play.
Re:Google [ play online poker ] (Score:2, Insightful)
You know, this might actually be the best solution, do it by hand. It's a social problem, not a technological one. Imagine if, when searching for online poker, viagra, penis enlargement, etc. you get a page like:
"The term $TERM is very commonly used by spammers. This makes our standard search results less useful. Here are some relevant links to the terms.
These links are sponsored by different companies:
-onlinefoo.com
-...
-...
-...
These links have been hand-picked by our employees:
-Wikipedia's page
-Page on online fraud
-Page on going to actual tournaments by playing online
-Page on health risks of viagra
-etc
If you really want to see the automated results, click here."
This would remove the motivation for blogspamming and actually help people who actually want to search for these things, since they'll get relevant results. Google also gets a bit of money in the deal, for them to use to fight whatever lawsuits come up from asshole spammers.
But, maybe that's too easy. Never mind.
Re:Bloggers - Be articulate. (Score:2, Insightful)
The journalism quality has gotten so bad on Slashdot that I have started to wonder if Slashdot editors have all become sadists.
Need to fill more than one slot! (Score:5, Insightful)
brain dead morons (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem:- the bloggers leave pages open to the public, that anybody can modify, and they get spammed by the poker places.
Solution:- Spam google, so that the highest ranked page on the net for 'online poker' is, you guessed it, a user modifiable page, hosted somewhere else. They have made the wikipedia page the most valuable real-estate on the net regarding the given search term, so, now it's wikipdeia's problem, that page is going to be target of constant spam/attack/redirect attempts.
I would have thought the blog types would understand, and target a static page, where this is not a problem. No, they gotta take the problem from thier insignificant little nothing sites, and turn it into a major problem for one of the most significant sites on the internet. Way to go assholes, what a wonderful way to cause a huge amount of problems for a very valuable net resource, that's done nothing to cause problems for your precious 'blog community'.
There is a reason that most folks find the rantings in blogspace a total waste of otherwise useful bandwidth, this is yet another good example. Only the selfish shortsighted stupidity of the blog community would come up with the idea of solving thier problem, by making a wikipedia problem instead.
That's about as smart as an anvil folks, and it's this kind of stupidity that causes most of the world to view blogspace as wasted space. Whoever came up with the idea of google-bombing the term 'online poker' with a wikipedia page, should be taken out back and strung up. Didn't a single one of the bloggers in question have enough intelligence to figure out how big of a problem this is going to create? Now that wikipedia is in the top page, every poker spammer in the world is going to be trying to hijack that page. Are bloggers in general really this dumb ?
[rant off]
Doing my part! (Score:2, Insightful)
It's too bad really. Think about online poker [wikipedia.org] for a minute. Does anyone take the time to play online poker [wikipedia.org] seriously? The answer of course is online poker [wikipedia.org]! If you consider that online poker [wikipedia.org] accounts for 99% of online poker [wikipedia.org] spam then you'd instantly come to the conclusion that online poker [wikipedia.org] is not something you want your children doing. If anything, online poker [wikipedia.org] needs to be outlawed throughout the world. If online poker [wikipedia.org] was outlawed, then perhaps we wouldn't get so much online poker [wikipedia.org] spam.
I don't mean to rant about online poker [wikipedia.org] nonstop, but while we are on the subject of online poker [wikipedia.org], it makes sense to consider one more tidbit of fact. Do you have any idea how many online poker [wikipedia.org] websites there are? I would personally wager that there are more than 10. 10 online poker [wikipedia.org] websites! This in and of itself seems to suggest that online poker [wikipedia.org] has detrimental health effects. If online poker [wikipedia.org] were healthy, I think you would find online poker [wikipedia.org] pamphlets at the doctor's office. Have you ever seen an online poker [wikipedia.org] pamphlet? I didn't think so. Pregnancy, drugs, smoking, and sex, but online poker [wikipedia.org]? Never.
Online poker [wikipedia.org] should be listed as an illegal substance along with online poker [wikipedia.org] spam. Anyone found to be "playing" online poker [wikipedia.org] needs to have their entrails removed and sent to an online poker [wikipedia.org] website owner's home.
Online poker [wikipedia.org]. Bigger than Big Tobacco and deadlier than processed cheese. Online poker [wikipedia.org] is like online communism, except that online poker [wikipedia.org] is a game and not a form of government. Hitler and Stalin both swore by online poker [wikipedia.org] and look where they ended up. They are both DEAD! That's all it takes folks, a little online poker [wikipedia.org] and you're screwed.
A long time ago there was no online poker [wikipedia.org]. It was lightsabers
Re:Google [ play online poker ] (Score:3, Insightful)
That said, it's still obnoxious. I'd like to encourage comments and see more of them. I'd also like to spend more time writing for my blog and less time writing filters for my comments page.
I feel like having to slap those security measures in place makes people less likely to comment and takes away from time that I could be using to add more content to the site.
Re:Google [ play online poker ] (Score:1, Insightful)
Why has our society fallen to the point that it is always the victims fault?