Challenge time

[lemasquegris]

Ok, folks.

Can someone explain to me why the first hit to "a miserable failure" goes to GeeDubayah's bio?

I sort of know how PageRank™ works but not well enough to try and figure out if that a result of a bunch of websites with "miserable failure" in their meta tags of the web pages describing Bush linking to his bio or is it an internal h4k?

oops, did I spoil it for everyone?

Well, after seeing it posted 8 times, I figured I'm off the hook for being a spoil sport.

Comments

[colubra.livejournal.com]

It's probably an internal 'hack'.
Though I do find it interesting that the top 19 sites for 'a miserable failure' are that.

[digitalsidhe.livejournal.com]

From the other highly-ranked pages on Google's results, it looks like a lot of bloggers have been going to special efforts to link the words "miserable failure" to the GW Bush bio, specifically to get Google's results to come out that way. And apparently, it's finally paid off.

It's becoming more and more apparent that Google is vulnerable to being gamed in various ways. Of course, it still gives much better results than anything else... but I get the feeling the time is ripe for someone to knock Google out of the top spot, if they don't stay on their toes.

[wurmfood.livejournal.com]

There are companies that specifically figure out what google's page rank system is at the moment and work to exploit it. However, google changes their system every once in a while, partly to improve it and partly to get around the people doing this exact kind of thing.

No spoilers here

[ladyeuthanasia.livejournal.com]

Hun, I don't think anyone who understands how Google works at all believes that this is happening naturally. Then again, I could be wrong. I assumed it was a hack. And a very funny one, too!

[andyrooheavens.livejournal.com]

There's a link here about the project of getting that page to the top of the "miserable failure"'s list:

http://oldfashionedpatriot.blogspot.com/2003_10_01_oldfashionedpatriot_archive.html#106727416975886151