Stop bombing, not googlebombing
What’s going on?
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?
Filed under: Google
Hi, good!