Today's Blogometer: The Last Unregulated Cycle For The Net?
MyDD's Chris Bowers has been a brilliant idea factory for the netroots this cycle. His latest project seeks to game Google's known link ranking system to place the most unflattering GOP-related articles at the top of the search engine's results whenever a targeted GOP member is searched. So far, Congress and the FEC have taken a pass on regulating political speech on the internet. If projects such as this one (which while ingenious does seek to game the system to influence lower information voters) proliferate, how much longer before internet speech goes the way of broadcast speech?
Noting studies showing "the number one way that voters use the Internet for political action is to search for information on candidates" Bowers is planning to utilize "widespread embedded hyperlinks" and Google Adwords to "Google Bomb[] The Election." Bowers wants to ensure that Google searches, of the names of 70 targeted GOPers, will produce highly placed negative articles from "non-partisan media source[s]" on each candidate. The project has three steps:
- Step One: ... I will compile a list of seventy articles, one for each targeted race. Every article will focus on a different Republican candidate, and will be written by as generally trusted a news source as possible. It will also present as unflattering a view on the Republican candidate as possible.
- Step Two: Once the database is complete, BlogPac will purchase Google Adwords that will place each negative article on the most common searches for each Republican candidate. Simultaneously, I will produce an article on MyDD that embeds that negative article into a hyperlink that names the Republican candidate. I will then send a copy of that post out to as many bloggers as possible, who can also place the post on their blogs. One posting of this article will be enough.
- Step Three: All further discussion of the Republican candidates in question on all participating blogs should include an embedded hyperlink that will increase the Google search rank of the article on the given candidate.
I don't get how anyone can take Bowers seriously. I don't even bother reading him anymore, he has such laughably piss-poor political analysis.
Fuck you.
Richard Pombo
Who cares? People "game" Google all the time. It's part of life on the internet.
How is this different from "miserable failure", or the classic from five years ago "dumb motherf*cker"? And how is it different from "all star player" pointing to NBA.COM?
Come on. Get a life.
Is this an article about these guys? :
--MD-Sen: Michael Steele
--VA-Sen: George Allen
--VA-10: Frank Wolf
Did Karl Rove think this up? No? Gee, sounds like a down and dirty Republican tactic.