Over the weekend, I received quite a bit of mail about this: I do not know how much of this is a response to my past actions in 2006, and / or my current actions srrounding John McCain. It appears that the search engine optimization techniques that I employed in those actions do actually fit the definition of a Googlebomb, so perhpas there is no connection at all. Also, the currnet "Googlebomb" I am employing against John McCain still ranks #9 on searches, so the impact of Google's new formula might be minimal. Then again, considering the amount of R & D Google has, if they are trying to change their formula to stop this specific type of action, eventually they will figure out how to do so.

What is eqaully certain, however, is that there will always be ways to manipulate search engine rankings, even if the days of the googlebomb are numbered. Given that Internet searches for candidate information remain the most common form of political action taken online, it will remain crucially important for campaigns and activists alike to continuously be developing new strategies that will allow them to take advantage of online searches. Rest assured that I will do whatever I can to constantly be developing new techniques in this area myself.

So, long story short, I am going to look into this, and into developing a more comprehensive search optimization strategy before going forward with the next phase of the John McCain googlebomb campaign. This campaign does not end here. If anything, this new development will simply result in a more sophisticated and intelligent strategy. and yes, BlogPac will continue to be essential to these efforts.

Anyway, just thought I needed to make a public statement about this, considering the large maount of queries I was receiving.

So this is it.  We all hit the polls tomorrow, hopefully we've managed to educate a few voters along the way.  This has, for the most part, been incredibly successful, with no response of note from the right while getting coverage from Hardball, CNN, and the New York Times twice, including today (hat tip Sprinkles).  It's been amazing to see this level of specific coordination and cooperation from the diaspora of Dem blogs, made all the more impressive because we pretty much did this on the fly.

Just two more days and we're obviously weilding some influence with so many of these stories camped out for a solid week at or near the top of google searches.  Just one of many ways that we've been able to shape the debate as well as the playing field this time around.  The degrees that separate bloggers from every other voter are being reduced and we're really starting to break through.  Keep it up.  Results on the flip.

What little motion there is has all been positive, and there have really been some excellent ideas thrown out in the past few days to build this into something even bigger next time, so thanks to everyone contributing in that regard.  Since I don't really have anything else to add, I thought it'd be fun to mention some of the storylines that we've been living next to for some of these guys and gals, baked into your full recap on the flip.

Still not a whole lot of movement, mostly because these all seem to be as high as they're getting.  Several great bits of info from the comments yesterday, with Chris Bowers estimating that this will reach 100,000 people before it's all said and done.  Then, aip brought us updates from GoogleRankings, incorporating results from msn and yahoo as well.  A full update of those results are now here.  The support and organization has been great, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.  Just a few more days to go and we're looking pretty darn good.  Results on the flip.

Looking at the data, I see that several of the linked articles are now surpassing the official re-election websites of the target - woo hoo!  Wiki links still seem to have no effect, though.

I'm now using some Perl code to get the rankings through the google API, so my results differ slightly from Lucas O'Conner's updates.  I think automated results tracking is the wave of the future, and would allow us to track, say, a dozen articles per candidate, without these updates taking lots of our useful time.

My program also displays all URLs from the target site in the top 100 to help identify slight URL changes, giving us just a little bigger window into the world of Google.

Back at it again, and without a whole lot to report.  Most of these stories have gotten about as far as they're gonna get, so they're just bouncing around the front page.  The closer we get to the election, the more impact this is gonna have, so we have to make sure we keep up the heat.  You guys have been great and really made this come together when it was really just another in a long line of nice ideas that might not have ever been anything.  We need four more days of kicking ass before we crash through the finish line.

New update shows that, except for several of the new articles, everything is now on the first page of a google search, showing that wow- we've really got some chops here folks.  I'll be focusing on the few with newer links that need a boost in the next several days in my sig line and hopefully in some of my comments, I invite you to do the same if you feel comfortable abandoning your own personal race.