Google Goes After Content Farms

Bloggers were paid for links to Chrome

(NEWSER) - Google cracks down on companies all the time for trying to mess with its vaunted search results, and it turns out that itself is no exception: Hundreds of bloggers were paid for putting up sponsored links to Google Chrome, with most of the posts containing the kind of irrelevant "garbage" content that the search king has been trying to push down the search rankings, Search Engine Land reports. Google blamed the clear violation of its guidelines on the ad agencies it hired to promote the browser. More»

Daily Kos seeks to send negative stories to top of rankings

(NEWSER) - Look out, GOP: You're about to get Google-bombed. Liberal activist and Daily Kos honcho Chris Bowers is targeting 98 Republican House candidates in a Google campaign ahead of November's elections. He's urging the blog's readers to find potentially damaging news stories about the candidates and help push them up Google's rankings so that undecided voters will find them. Bowers says the search engine optimization strategy is the 21st-century equivalent of handing out pamphlets. More»

Rise of Web searching spells doom for clever newspaper headlines

(NEWSER) - Back in the day, "drunks with cigars wrote stories," overeducated wiseguys slapped snappy headlines on them, and some hours later, a newspaper appeared on your doorstep. In Internet time, that printed birdcage liner might as well be carved on stone tablets. "Call me a grumpy old codger," two-time Pulitzer winner Gene Weingarten writes for the Washington Post —don't worry, we will—"but I liked the old way better." More»

(NEWSER) - So much of our search engine experience is based on branding, but who would come out on top without all the window dressing? Blind Search may help you figure it out. Designed by a Microsoft employee, it spits out unadorned results from Google, Bing, and Yahoo, only telling you which is which after you’ve voted on a favorite. Ryan Sager of True/Slant, an avowed Google-phile, took it for a spin. More»

Blame Google for the collapse of global financial architecture

(NEWSER) - Microsoft is thrashing Google in new TV spots for its "decision engine" Bing—understandably, since from Microsoft's perspective their rival is single-handedly responsible for the global financial crisis. "While everyone was searching, there was bailing," says an announcer, as images of fleeting Internet memes give way to frenzied traders and foreclosure signs. Apparently, writes Dan Neil in the Los Angeles Times, "the boys and girls at the Treasury were too busy downloading cute squirrel videos to notice the end of civilization." More»