Room With A View

The past few days I’ve been listening to podcasts from Alan November’s Building Learning Communities conference. Yesterday I listened to Alan’s session on web literacy and was struck by the concept of Google Bombing. It has huge implications for teaching, and learning. When Google searches it searches for the number of sites that link to a particular website. The more sites that link to a website, the higher up the list the site will appear on a Google search. In essence it’s a popularity contest. People have figured out how to manipulate Google to move their sites higher up the Google ranking and therefore, have more people visit them. This is Google Bombing. It’s possible for a site to bluff its way higher up the Google ranking without deserving to be there. As most people only look at the first page of a search, a lot of good sites will be missed. People need to be aware of how Google searches so they can take necessary precautions. For more on Google Bombing read the BBC article on how George W. Bush was google bombed or Search Engine Watch’s Google’s (and Inktomi’s) Miserable Failure.