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Did Google Delist Me for a Googlebomb?

Jon Swift [PersonRank 1]

Monday, January 14, 2008
17 years ago2,854 views

My page on Jonah Goldberg's book "Liberal Fascism" – Jonah Goldberg's Shining (Liberal Fascism with LOLcats) – was in the Top 10 of search results for the words "Liberal Fascism" a few days ago and and then on Saturday it was completely removed by Google from search results for that term.

I believe it was being unfairly punished because of a Googlebomb that linked to my page despite the fact that I did not initiate or endorse the Googlebomb, my page is highly relevant and popular and was linked to by many bloggers who were not participating in the Googlebomb. Meanwhile, the results of another Googlebomb, a definition for an obscene word from the Urban Dictionary, slipped into the Number One spot for that search, even though it did not even contain the words "liberal fascism" until after January 5, when it was already #8 for a search for that term. Then late on Sunday night after I wrote about the situation and wrote to a number of people at Google, the page miraculously returned. I have written in more detail about the situation here:

http://jonswift.blogspot.com/2008/01/google-bombs-jon-swift.html

Another site wrote about the Urban Dictionary Googlebomb, which seems to contradict Google's assertion that its algorithm blocks pages that don't have the actual words on the page here (this page does have those words now because someone added a definition that included them, but the definition had not yet been voted onto the first page when it already was high in the results for the term "liberal fascism"):

http://www.qwertysqoncepts.com/2008/01/05/somebody-set-up-us-the-googlebomb/
  
And here is a link to my page which went missing:
  
http://jonswift.blogspot.com/2007/06/jonah-goldbergs-shining.html

I believe that Google may have received a lot of complaints about the Googlebomb linking to my site because of a post that referred to that Googlebomb but not the Urban Dictionary one, a post that was linked to by a number of bloggers, as I discuss in my piece. That would explain why my site was removed and not the other site. Did Google manually alter the results after receiving a number of complaints then reverse itself or is there another explanation? Thank you for your attention.

[Signature removed – Tony]

DPic [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

What did Google say when you contacted them?

Jon Swift [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

They have not responded, though someone informs me that they are having a meeting with Google this week and that they plan to bring up the issue.

[Signature removed – Tony]

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