Google Management Article

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

[Marcia]

Capitalizing on the fervent public interest in Google, columnist David Radin deals Google a sharp jab below the belt in his article. Mr. Radin's given us a perfect example of modern-day yellow journalism [google.com] at it's best.

While many investors impatiently await Google's IPO auction, the view from inside might be more negative than it appears. For instance, as of this writing, if you do a Google search for "out of touch management," the first result you'll find is the Google management team.

[post-gazette.com...]

Mr. Radin gives his flavor of enlightened interpretation at the close of the article

Google itself may be altruistic -- but the potential for abuse is immense. They have already "experimented" by listing Froogle shopping results above competing results from their advertisers -- a definite abuse of privilege. And rogue employees can abuse the collected data, just as they changed the search results to suggest their own management as out of touch.

So be at least a little scared until Google becomes more candid.

Here's the search he's talking about:

out of touch management [google.com]

Point of interest: do the search with the toolbar, highlight the search term and notice the density, number of occurences, keyword proximity and distribution of the keywords in headings and text throughout the page and in the page title.

[percentages]

Marcia, thanks for the amusement, which is always fun, but all you have really done is highlight the incompetence of Google, which is a just reflection on the article involved, but you did do a better job!

For the millionth time.....guys you need to look at the content, we all know how to manipulate the off page stuff, but maybe the on-page stuff will sling some of us into a loop!

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You can't win by definition, so why waste so much time fighting a lost battle?

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[Marcia]

percentages, the point he's trying to put forth is that the search results were mischievously hand tweaked from the inside, when in fact Google was Googlebombed. ;)

Their on-page stuff is wonderful, even though that phrase doesn't appear on the page the main word does in all the right places, apparently. If it were SEO'd for that search it might not be doing so well.

[loanuniverse]

Marcia is right, the writer of the article makes reference to manipulation from the inside, when in fact that page was Googlebombed with links like:

Help end Google Bombs. Send a message to out-of-touch executives.

I just don't get it how can Google be incompetent and at the same time be the leader SE.

[HitProf]

Uhm.. can anybody proof this is being done from within?

From the Register, yesterday:
"The New York Times report contained one fact which intrigued us. It attributed the Googlebomb that Google Watch's Daniel Brandt created - search for "out of touch executives", or "out of touch management" - to Google's own staff."

[theregister.co.uk...]

[HughMungus]

They have already "experimented" by listing Froogle shopping results above competing results from their advertisers

I keep wondering how this froogle results vs. advertisers thing is going to work itself out. I mean, do people who get listed on Froogle pay anything for the privelege?

[Marcia]

OK, now let's see how hard this is to do.

You'll please notice the title of this thread and the fact that the exact phrase was used in outbound anchor text - and deliberately put in bold font for my own personal amusement. ;)

#2 for google out of touch management
[google.com...]

#4 for out of touch management
[google.com...]

Then let's scan through to eyeball the random number of occurrences of the term and words here. How much does it actually take to Googlebomb for an obscure phrase, if there's even just a tiny bit of "optimization" and the natural use of language, just in the normal course of conversation?

How many links would it take to move Google out of the #1 position there? My guess is that one, maybe two or three links would do it and they wouldn't all necessarily have to be the exact phrase.

[satanclaus]

Yep very nice Marcia. Entertaining to boot.

[paybacksa]

uh oh... Marcia's noticing the semantic advantage I've been enjoying sans backlinks. Now she's talking about it too! Bummers... pretty soon it will be as hard to achieve organically through content as it is to get banklinks, since everybody will be doing it!

[paybacksa]

(deleted because redirection killed the fun)