Yes anything we can do is worth the effort. After all Dems and Progressives can chew gum and google at the same time! We can do a lot more than rant this year especially!.

chris, i think this is an excellent idea.  i'll do it on my own low-traffic blog.  just don't be surprised to see the other side doing it as well!

and you might want to post a few suggestions, so we don't have to google every repub candidate (if you don't think that's crossing the line of course)

and long time reader, philly native... first time commenter... thanks for all you do!

-2manychefs

I have though on a few occasion that it would be interesting to start a group/site/blog with this as its primary activity..  Its seems we on the left have an advantage in this area we should exploit..

http://www.rubberstampgerlach.com

I have some SEO experience, and I am sure there are people in this community with knowlege that far exceeds mine..

I suppose every little bit helps. But really how many people who don't use the internet to get their news are suddenly turning on-line to find out about candidates?

My guess is that it's a bit of preaching to the choir, but it certainly won't hurt.

I find it amusing that the ConnecticutforLieberman.com site was actually taken by a satiric "pro-Lieberman" site.

; ^ ) So, it's not a bad idea, but a bit of an inside joke. I imagine that in 20 years time it would be deadly for a candidate to have the #1 site that appears be an opposition site, but in 2006? More of an irritant.

Chris,

Am I right that by Googlebombing you mean having lots of links to a site that tells the truth about Republican candidates?

I think its a great idea.  I'd even suggest we have a tag and page similar to Adwatch, where MyDDers can post about sites that would be good Googlebomb targets.  We might even have a post/thread with general tips for how to maximize the effectiveness of Googlebomb strategies and tactics, similar to the Adwatch instruction page.  I'd prefer something like "truthlink" as a tag rather than "googlebomb," since the latter suggests gaming the system while the former highlights the truth-telling goal that motivates us.

The beauty is that the progressive netroots is big, active and growing (with a possible surge from now till the election), with lots of commenters (and diarists) who can add link reference beyond those in the main posts.  

If posters and commenters were all aware of the value of including links (and of finding good "target" sites and posting about them), and if this strategy spread to other sites, including dkos, etc., we might have a new netroots+search-enabled system for "truth-telling" to the American people.

I love it.

Just be sure we keep on doing the other side of the idea - defend our candidates' good names by always linking to their correct websites when we post about them.

MD-SEN

Link Mike Steele (R) to this site:

http://www.therealsteele.com

Might I humbly propose Google bombing the following names to the following sites:

Deborah Pryce: BadPryce.org
Charles Taylor: TruthAboutTaylor.com
Heather Wilson: WashingtonWilsonWatch.com
Dave Reichert: RubberStampReichert.com
Rick O'Donnell: RadicalRick.org
Dick Pombo: DirtyDickPombo.com

Any more ideas?

Does this tactic seem a little under handed?  I don't know maybe I am old fashion, but I believe in winning the dabate on the issues.  

Speaking of which, Patrick Murphy (D PA-08) just released a similar site to the Gerlach site called ElectionYearMike.com.

It includes some fun games showing how republican incumbent Mike Fitzpatrick took a pay raise while the minimum wage has remained stagnant, how Mike will say anything to get elected, and how he has consistently rejected or cut certain spending initiatives that would help the citizens of PA-08, while funding the pork for the districts of his Republican cronies.

It is good stuff so check it out.  

If you guys want help and have a budget we can make things happen for you.

We are a professional SEO company, and we'd be more than happy to help you guys out.  We don't even want to make any money, just cover our costs.

www.vipsem.com

My name is Jeff, please ask for me if you call.

how do you 'google-bomb" and what does it mean?

If it could help us win then we should do that..More and more people are using the internet for their infos on candidate and we liberal owns the blogosphere, therefore, we should use this to our advantage.

"I have struggled at times to figure out what useful action I can have in the final few weeks of the campaign..."

Do they not have field campaigns where you come from or something?

Chris, if you're wondering what to do, come on out to Nevada and help us elect Dina Titus as Governor and defeat her opponent DC Congressman Jim Gibbons .

Chris--

GoogleBombing specific names to sites that are highly derogatory may be fun and fulfilling, but how many random web surfers are going to click through to sites with obviously negative names like "BadPryce" and "DirtyDickPombo." Not that you shouldn't do this, but here are some additional suggestions for taking advantage of the likelihood that as the election approaches, lots of voters are going to use search engines to find out information about the candidates in their district.

How about:

1. Adding factual information to sites like Wikipedia and Congresspedia (which actually has more meat on its pages on Members of Congress than Wikipedia).

2. Consistently linking to those pages whenever you mention a Member, which will drive up their search engine results.

3. Adding a tool like the Popup Politician, which is a line of Java script that you insert on your site's template, and then it creates a rollover link next to any Member's name that you mention in a post. The rollover produces a small popup box showing the Member's picture, plus links to their page in Congresspedia, their campaign finance profile in OpenSecrets.org and their recent voting record. The nice thing here is once you add the Java script, you don't have to do anything else. See the Sunlight Foundation's blogs for an example of the Popup Politician in action. (Full disclosure, Congresspedia and Popup Politician are both projects of Sunlight, for which I am a consultant.)

Micah

At the risk of repeating myself...

Chris, Matt, Jonathan:

Can we set up a Googlebomb/Truthlink "project" that uses a similar structure to the Adwatch project, where we'd have a generic tag (I'd suggest something like "truthlink") that could be combined with candidate- and race-specific tags that MyDD readers could use to find diary posts and threads that include info, discussion and suggestions related to "truthlinking" strategies and target sites (both pro-Dem and anti-Repub), both in general and for specific campaigns.

There's already some pretty useful and specific info in this thread, but it probably won't be accessible to anyone else once it fades into the archives without specific-enough tagging.

Anyone know how important anchor words are in google bombing? I was thinking about writing a short script that links to about twenty or thirty sites that people could cut and paste into their signature line; that way everytime someone posts a comment (say on kos) the links would go up. I was hoping to make it so the visible words would read "Google Bomb This Election!", with each letter pointing to a different site.

Clearly, that won't be as good as anchor words, like the candidates name, linking to the site -- but who wantst to have a list of thirty candidates as their signature? A single sentance won't clutter things up, looks kind of cool, and might go viral. My question is -- without appropriate anchor words, will something like that be able to impact the page rankings?

Thanks.

can someone please explain to me what does google-bombing means?

I think this is a fine idea. Bombs away everybody!

PS - shrieking harpy

so everytime i post a website linkage, it is google-bombing which improve the google ranking?

for example, if im too link santorumwatch.com, that'll be 1 point for the website?

Look, here it is in a nutshell: You want the website santorumwatch.com to come up in Google any time someone searches for Rick Santorum (if you Google that phrase right now the "Santorum for Senate" site appears as #1). You start posting links all over the web, in which the a tag's href points to santorumwatch.com while the text surrounded by the A tags reads "Rick Santorum". The more places that the Google bots find that text phrase linking to that site, the higher it's ranking in Google's search results. Eventually, if enough of these links are posted, anyone searching for the phrase "Rick Santorum" on Google's search page will see the santorumwatch.com page as the #1 result instead of Santorum's actual web page. Try Googling for the phrase "miserable failure" right now. The #1 search result is GWB's bio page on the Whitehouse's website.

Oh, BTW, please help me proliferate this Google bomb:

shrieking harpy

Just repost the link on as many different web pages as you can.

Thanks.