This contest is definitely driving me out of my mind…

That’s the right question, that’s the point of all this mess. What the hell is going on? I think that’s not a difficult question, but still I can’t find an answer. Somewhere, can’t remember where, I’ve read an article talking about Google’s intentions to stop Googlebombing (“A Google bomb or Google wash is an attempt to influence the ranking of a given site in results returned by the Google search engine”, according to Googlebombing Definition from Wikipedia). I have to admit it: that flashnews really scared me. The problem is: Google engineers are working hard to modify the Google ranking algorithm in a way that would prevent and avoid Googleboming (some months ago, for example, if you searched on Google for the phrase “miserable failure” the first result in the SERP was the page containing the biography of President George W. Bush). As usual at Google, they don’t want to manually modify SERPs, instead they want to improve their algorithm so to automatically cut off from unsuitable rankings those sites that have been “googlebombed” for political or ethical or satyrical or whatever reasons.

So here we are: Googlebombing shows up a weakness of PageRank, core of Google Ranking Algorithm. But that weakness is not a bug! It’s the heart of PageRank algorithm, it’s the heart of Google, it’s the heart of a great part of the Web as we know it. And if Google Engineers will go and change that easy, brilliant formula it could be the end of the Web as we know it.

Of course it could be a positive change, but still I can’t get it: why is Google being so strict against Googlebombing while many ignoble spam techniques are still alive and keep on counterfeiting SERPs all over the world? There’s obviously something to change in Google Ranking Algorithm, but PageRank works fine and it shouldn’t be modified. There may have been some pressures by politicians (and that would be sad) for Google to immediately stop the phenomenon of Googlebombing. 

But if it’s so, I’ve got a question, somewhere in my mind: why don’t we STOP BOMBING before stopping googlebombing?

By the way, back to the point, that day I was looking for something about Global Warming Awareness (still in the fantascientific year “Oh-My-God 2007″ that seems to be a big problem) and I was quite surprised to see seoblackhat.com in the first positions in that Global Warming Awareness Google SERP. So I stepped into the site and found out that a SEOcontest had just begun: the keyphrase to rank for was (and yet it is) “Globalwarming Awareness2007″…well truly it should be written without quotes, so here it is the REAL keyphrase: globalwarming awareness2007. Try now, if you can, to rank higher than GT team…we’re a big big GIANT, man…Italy rules!

After this moment of ridicolous and pathetic patriotism (lol), let’s back again to the point: globalwarming awareness 2007. The article that was on seoblackhat.com really struck me: in extreme synthesis, the author explained that global warming is nothing but a myth, a fable, a stupid invention. I got easily charmed by these kind of stories, so I searched on Google for “global warming myth” (that story interested me more than the globalwarming awareness2007 seocontest itself) and got covered by tons of interesting documents. I can’t really tell who is wrong and who is right, if globalwarming awareness in 2007 is a serious or a stupid problem, but I can tell you to read this article about globalwarming myth because it tries to show you the whole thing from a completely different perspective.

And that’s the great hint: let’s always try to see things from a different perspective. They could look better.