I typed in Hillaryclinton.com on AOL Search -- powered by Google -- and up pops Obama's web site ( See below) inviting me to;
"Help elect Barack Obama President of the United States"
It must be quite a surprise to people who are trying to support Hillary and give her money.
They don't want to help Obama, they want Hillary.
How could this happen? Simple.
Obama has smarter tech guys and more money. With sponsored links, the more you bid on key words or phrases, the higher they will pop up on search engines. Obama has more money to bid higher for Hillaryclinton.com than Hillary has. Or maybe some good supporters in Google or AOL.
This is not unusual in the dog-eat-dog world of search wars. If you type in British Airways, the first hit that often comes up is First Class Flyer, a nice travel newsletter, but not British Airways. When I type in United Airlines, I get Expedia, Orbitz and Cheapoair, before I got to the United site. Every search is difference. The same results don't come up all the time, but Obama pops up first on AOL more than not. It doesn't work in Google.
But wait wait!
Aren't politicians suppose to more ethical than crass commercial pandering. Isn't Obama's campaign for hope and honesty.... and not deceiving or ripping off other people?
How could ripping off Hillaryclinton.com --- outbidding her for her own name and redirecting them to Barackobama.com --- be anything less than completely straightforward?
What if somebody typed in Huffingtonpost.com and Mattdrudge.com came up instead.
Reminds me of the time when Dick Tuck --- the Democratic prankster --- dressed up as a railroad engineer in 1972 and waved Richard Nixon's train on in the middle of speech Nixon was delivering off the back. These tricks used to happen all the time.
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Chicken Little, the sky is not falling. I can assure you that the Obama campaign does not have the leverage to tweak Google's PageRank algorithm. Google is multi-billion dollar corporation that is not going to sabotage their flagship product (their search engine) on behalf of an upstart presidential campaign.
Well the "google bombing" must only be happening on AOL where the campaign paid for advertisement. I did the search on Google instead of AOL and only Clinton sites were within the top 20 results.
The key difference in Obama's campaign vs. Clinton's is that he's leveraging technology that Hillary just didn't, at least in the beginning of her campaign. Now that she sees what type of difference its making in Obama's campaign she's using those methods more.
I'm an Obama supporter but I'm a bigger Democrat. I've not been happy with the way the campaign has been going for the Democrat's of late, but I won't let a poorly run campaign negate the work that the Clintons have done in the past either. This contest started with Clinton and Obama saying they differed in very few arenas. Now it seems they are trying very hard to make it seem like they are very different. Personality wise they are, politically, they differ very little.
Don't let them give you hell, Blake. Everybody's an expert on computers today, LOL!
I became a software engineer before there was such a thing as a PC, and have taught a great many people things from simple to very complex about computers. There is always more to learn.
I think your article is interesting, by the way. Brings up aspects of marketing and ethos. Reminds me of a course I took in 76 called, "Values, Technology, and Society". We got to explore such diverse topics as cable television, particle accelerators, and the programs they used at SRI for 'remote viewing'.
Anyway, as an Obama supporter, I really wonder if his campaign is getting his money's worth from this tactic. :-)
Some one is dishonest here - I typed in "Hillaryclinton.com" on search window and I got Hillary's office campaign site. indie17 are you really an Obama supporter or you are just out there to smear his name? And Blake Fleetwood seems just out there make false accusations against Obama - well readers here are not as stupid as you wish. You may get more respect to post your little attack on AOL site.
Hey, redirecting to Obama's website is hardly a dirty trick. As a web business owner, I can tell you, you never know for sure how to prevail in the search engine wars... You can try, but there's a mystery to how it all works. Maybe Google supports Obama! I know I do. http://www.cafepress.com/sugarbelleshop/4226338
Even just googling it, leaving AOL out of the equation..the sponsored links list Obama's site above Clinton's site. They are paid ads, so obviously the Obama camp ponied up more for their link than did the Clinton camp. Although, it does seem a bit disingenuous, political advertising is rife with "one-upmanship" when it comes to your opponent..Obama's claim to be above such tactics and otherwise, notwithstanding. All's fair in love and war..er,uh..I mean politics?
P.S. More disconcerting to me are the conveniently placed ads here on HuffPost..paid or not, via google or not. It seems a bit hypocritical in a supposed balanced and open forum for political/social discussion, albeit even one with blog posts by those speaking in favor of one candidate or the other! Because, by far, there is a glut of Barack Obama ads...Just saying what I'm seeing, peeps!
Yeah, took some tech geniuses to hijack their website. What a devious plan! Or maybe they just bought better advertising on GoogleAds and used Hillary's name as a keyword. BRILLIANT!
The reason Obama's site comes up on searches is because thousands of volunteers all over the country are using its netserve to camaign and organize for Obama, ,you can be sure there is some HRC discussion there, which would cause those postings to show up on a google search for HRC....you been doing this internet thing long Blake?....what a maroon
Why are Hillary Clinton and her supporters ALWAYS "bellyaching" that someone VICTIMIZED "POOR HILLARY?" Why is she always the victim? Is it really that she is losing, and she has to BLAME someone else for her defeat? That's what I believe!!! Hillary and Bill Clinton, narcissists that they are, do not know how to accept blame for ANYTHING that they have done wrong, and have ALWAYS blamed others for their own mistakes (or have had others do it for them!!!) This is getting tiresome!!! I am certain that the people in this country are getting "FLASHBACKS" to the time that the Clintons were in power once before, with this campaign, and are remembering similar complaining and lying, and refusing to accept responsibility. That is why she is behind, and why she will most certainly LOSE the nomination!!! We don't want to suffer the same "slings and arrows" as the last time, and we don't have to, because we have a more perfect candidate in Senator Obama. We won't have to put up with lies, excuses, pandering, and all of the rest of the bad stuff, that goes along with the Clintons, and we will get a fresh face, and an intelligent mind from a man from a new generation of leaders. It sure sounds good to me, and I am working very hard to make it happen!!!
I agree. I heard her speak about her Iraq vote - which she STILL won't admit was wrong (Edwards admitted he was wrong to have supported the war) - and she said "the vote was not an authorzation to invade Iraq!!!
Her Bosnia lie wasn't admitted, it was "sleep deprivation"? ! ? !
Blake, this is Internet advertising, it is not the same thing as hijacking a web site (which is illegal). I realize it is April Fool's day but I think that is a poor excuse for accusing Obama of a crime in your headline. Although I must admit it is pretty much par for the course from the Clinton camp.
He knows that! He just thinks we're stupid enough to believe his propaganda, that poor Hillary is the VICTIM of bashing by Obama!!! We do not believe it, however. It is Hillary who is the ABUSER!!!
I've been on Social Security for a decade and a half, but I realize that if you have a URL already, you don't need to go to a search engine, you simply type the URL into the browser.
AOL isn't for grannies, it's for people who don't have any sense. You might think of this as a clever trick, but it will only going to fool voters in West Palm Beach, not the majority of people in this country.
Nothing, we'd just prefer it if you didn't bring up the internet, unless you were an expert. You tend to only embarrass yourselves with your Stevensesque understanding of these Tubes. I mean, just never ever mention the internet around young people. It's like spontaneously mentioning slavery around black people. You're bound to make yourself look like an ass.
Obviously some dirty tricksters from the Obama-Nation have PAID FOR (!!!) an ad on AOL
that links Obama to searches for Hillary Clinton. Those sneaky rascals! What will they
think of next?
Or just maybe it was some sneaky Clintonistas who bought the ad to link the 'Clinton'
search to the Obama website just to make the Obama-Nation *look* mean & sneaky.
Hmmmmnmm? Will we ever know for sure. (Or maybe it was ROVE! Bwha ha ha ha!)
Also known as (the fine art of) 'Google Bombing'. It's been around, like, forever...
NYT - January 22, 2004
Engineering Google Results to Make a Point
By TOM McNICHOL
TIME was - say, two months ago - when typing the phrase "miserable failure" into the Google search box produced an unexpected result: the White House's official biography of President George W. Bush.
But now the president has a fight on his hands for the top ranking - from former President Jimmy Carter, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and the author-filmmaker Michael Moore.
The unlikely electoral battle is being waged through "Google bombing," or manipulating the Web's search engines to produce, in this case, political commentary. Unlike Web politicking by other means, like hacking into sites to deface or alter their message, Google bombing is a group sport, taking advantage of the Web-indexing innovation that led Google to search-engine supremacy.
The perpetrators succeed by recruiting a small group of accomplices to link from their Web sites to a target site using specific anchor text (the clickable words in a link). The more high-traffic sites that link a Web page to a particular phrase, the more Google tends to associate that page with the phrase - even if, as in the case of the president's official biography, the term does not occur on the destination site. ...
Google Bombing is a little different: it involves attempting to change the ranking of search results by manipulating the search algorithms. In other words, the people doing it aren"t purchasing services from Google.
This article refers to purchasing Google advertising based on keywords. These purchases are what fund Google and AOL searches.
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Posted April 1, 2008 | 07:22 PM (EST)