Blog P.I.

From yesterday’s techPresident Daily Digest:

OpenLeft’s Chris Bowers is back with an update on his latest Googlebombing campaign, this time directed at Rudy Giuliani. Bowers is claiming that because of his and other liberal bloggers’ efforts, two of his targets — an article claiming that Rudy is worse than Bush, and a letter from NYC firefighters to Hizzoner — are now among the top ten Google search results for “Rudy Giuliani.” Is this tactic a method of search-engine optimization (SEO) or gaming the system? William Beutler, who writes Blog P.I. and works for the Fred Thompson campaign, thinks it’s the latter. “It’s not making the pages better, it’s not doing the organic things that Google is supposed to do,” Beutler told the National Review.

Ironically, most of the links in the original didn’t work — if it had been a Google bomb, it would have been a dud. But I digress already. I do appreciate the shout-out, and it’s inspired me to comment on Google bombing and SEO in a little more depth than I could for National Review. And because Chris Bowers seems particularly aggrieved by the comments I made in that article, perhaps this will clarify things.

First and foremost, what Bowers calls “search engine optimization” isn’t, quite. A webmaster implements SEO techniques to make a page he controls rank prominently in search engines, primarily on industry-leading Google. If you’re doing it “white hat,” this means knowing what Google’s bots will and will not respond well to, and acting accordingly. This is not “gaming the system” — this is just playing the game. Bowers and his allies have no control over the pages they would like to see place higher in the rankings, so what they’re doing instead is optimizing the search engine for their pages, rather than their pages for the search engine. There’s no getting around the fact that this is “black hat” SEO. I don’t suppose Bowers particularly cares. His goal is to win elections, and if that makes him an unethical SEO, so be it.

From a technical standpoint, Google bombing is pretty much the same thing as link farming. All that differentiates them is the leftroots are farming with mules, while black hat professionals are using heavy machinery. Bowers still has to push the mules, while the pros merely start up the combines and turn them loose.

If Bowers & co. were in fact doing this with bots, it would be a clear case of fraud — if Google catches you using automated link farms, your site or page may be delisted entirely. But because they are doing it with crowds of like-minded individuals, the practice is technically legit. Bowers could argue, even compellingly, that their linking patterns are just as legitimate as any other. But the coordination is the difference. Google’s results are supposed to be the revealed preference of millions of unconnected individuals. Yet Bowers has replaced Larry and Sergei’s invisible hand with his own, pushing the mule along.

I’ll stop before I mix any more metaphors, but let me add, I blush at the idea of Google trying to “defuse” these “bombs.” Once Google gets into the business of deciding what is organic and what is not, they’ve got a) a Miller v. California dilemma on their hands, and b) too much work because of it. But I have no authority over search engine results, so I will say that I know this one when I see it: The practice of selecting a single critical story from all the coverage about a political candidate and linking it over and over and over to make it more prominent than it would be otherwise is far from organic.

As long as there remains a benefit (or perceived benefit) to Google bombing, amateur politicos will keep it in their toolbox. Unless Google sets up a Gmail account to collect bombing complaints, there’s no way to stop them from doing it. So, as I argued earlier in the year, the only way to counter negative Google bombing is with positive or reverse Google bombing.

P.S. The question still remains, how effective is Google bombing? Here are two quotes, one from the NR story, the other from a Bowers post. Here’s Drew Ryun, son of ex-Rep. Jim Ryun:

When a campaign goes wrong and a five-term incumbent loses, there are a whole lot of things that have gone wrong. So was the Google bombing the sole reason we lost? No. Was it a part of it? Yes, but how big a part I don’t know.

And here’s Bowers, in reply:

Hahahahahaha! Yeah, of course the Googlebomb campaign hurt Jim Ryan’s re-election chances.

Well, I already knew what Bowers thought. But the fact remains, nobody can really tell how influential the practice is. But per my comments in NR, I submit that if you can get a negative link in the top three results for a politician’s name, then you have an effective Google bomb. And you’ll know this one when you see it — because you’ll be guaranteed of actually seeing it.