Mashable - The Social Media Guide - Latest Comments in Google Declares War on April 1st

Re: Google Declares War on April 1st

Bryce — Tue, 27 May 2008 01:33:58 -0000

Australian current affairs show Media Watch did a very good story on this last night. Transcript/movie: http://www.abc.net.au/media...

Re: Google Declares War on April 1st

John — Tue, 27 May 2008 01:29:57 -0000

The issue here is also that major OLD Media don't do their homework and are as slack as old slags when it comes to truthiness...
Media Watch blew this wide open last night by showing the extent to which Murdoch's media empire just publish and don't check...
There are more to blamer than Google.
http://www.abc.net.au/media...

Re: Google Declares War on April 1st

Ezra Butler — Tue, 27 May 2008 01:21:11 -0000

Keeping up with this story on Mashable has left me wondering about 1 thing. I can (and dare I say "do") create stories that push the line between fact and fiction, but that are factually 100% true. What does this mean: if I would have been doing the money.co.uk campaign, I would have simply paid some 13 yr old to use a credit card and do whatever (perhaps not the hooker scenario, but I think of other similarly shocking, age appropriate actions), and then poof- the story is verifiable and no longer bogus. Is this fiction?
Is reality TV really reality if there is editing in the end? We hear stories that they there is *prodding* in one direction or another, but we can still publish that as *news*! That is, instead, a "well-developed" [sic] PR stunt.
Do we care?
Will my work be filtered? Would my work be considered link-bait as well? (Full disclosure: I do not work on link generation, the point of my content is the content. So I would work in the name of the candy bar that the kid bought 10,000 of with his dad's credit card.)

Re: Google Declares War on April 1st

SearcHâ—†â—‡ EngineS WEB — Tue, 27 May 2008 01:05:09 -0000

The problem with this scenario is that backlinks bring PageRank.

The links to that domain from Digg and hundreds of other sources will easily have made it debut at PR6 - if that article then links to the homepage of the domain - it to gets higher PR.

The goal of Google is to make the SERPs relevant - so tactics like those have to be diminished in their effectiveness to thwart others from imitating them.

They not only help him on Google, but on Yahoo and MSN.

As far as the April Fool's analogy - if it was not designed to deceive and to entertain, then it should be judged by a different standard

Re: Google Declares War on April 1st

Ethan Winters — Tue, 27 May 2008 01:03:18 -0000

and one more from the BBC... http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Re: Google Declares War on April 1st

Ethan Winters — Tue, 27 May 2008 00:59:40 -0000

BBC sure does make up fake stories... http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Re: Google Declares War on April 1st

Dawid — Tue, 27 May 2008 00:51:00 -0000

All over the world legitimate newspapers, websites companies etc allow the exception of april fools. Based upon that i think that google can consistently penalize all instances with the exception of april fools.

Re: Google Declares War on April 1st

Dawid — Tue, 27 May 2008 00:45:35 -0000

And so then google declared war?

Re: Google Declares War on April 1st

Svetlana Gladkova - Profy — Tue, 27 May 2008 00:39:10 -0000

I tend to agree with the last paragraph of your post - after all, Google is a search engine, not a search judge. And if they ever have any intention of actually checking every indexed story for credibility and truthfulness, they will be absolutely buried in tons of work arriving every minute. I believe, they do the job of indexing the web and presenting us with the results quite well - and we should not expect more from them. Everyone is free to judge how credible every single story is and the company that promotes itself by publishing (and getting links to) a false story, it just should not (and I hope will not) work in terms of building a reputation for the company. While what do the companies look for when handling an online marketing campaign? Reputation, I think, and no reputation can be built with such tactics.

Re: Google Declares War on April 1st

Ryan — Tue, 27 May 2008 00:29:32 -0000

Google is the new evil empire.

lessons in brevity