Google defuses miserable failure, plus: Topics API replaces FloC, value-based bidding, average search ranking position and more.
Google defuses ‘miserable failure’ Google bomb
In 2007, Google finally defused a “Google Bomb” that had returned U.S. President George W. Bush as its top organic result since December 2003 when searching for [miserable failure].
Originally, Google was of the belief that “We just reflect the opinion on the Web, for better or worse.” Eventually, however, Google came up with an algorithm change to deal with this and other Google bombing “pranks”:
“People have asked about how we feel about Googlebombs, and we have talked about them in the past. Because these pranks are normally for phrases that are well off the beaten path, they haven’t been a very high priority for us. But over time, we’ve seen more people assume that they are Google’s opinion, or that Google has hand-coded the results for these Googlebombed queries. That’s not true, and it seemed like it…
Read Full Story: https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiR2h0dHBzOi8vc2VhcmNoZW5naW5lbGFuZC5jb20vc2VhcmNoLW1hcmtldGluZy1oaXN0b3J5LWphbnVhcnktMjUtMzkyMTU00gEA?oc=5
