Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Miserable Failure Shakeup - The Whitehouse Gets Smart
Google the term 'miserable failure' and you'll find the biography of George W. Bush from whitehouse.gov. That is, until recently. The oldest and greatest example of link bombing has been usurped, and it appears the staff at the Whitehouse is to blame.
For years, the first result for 'miserable failure' was this URL: http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html. Checking the source on this URL today reveals this interesting code:
<meta HTTP-EQUIV=Refresh CONTENT="0; URL=http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/">
This is a client-side meta redirect, so it does not return a 301 or 302 server code.
While some are speculating that this is strategic on the part of the Whitehouse to remove this embarrasment, it looks to me just to be a crude attempt with little strategy. Why do I say that? Well, for starters, the page that you end up on links to the Bio page, which loops back through the redirect. If the Whitehouse staff wanted to strategically eliminate the ranking, they would have changed the URL of the bio page and refrained from using any redirects at all. As it is now, it is possible that Google will end up treating this meta redirect as if it were a 301 redirect, and all the bomber links will be credited to whitehouse.gov/president.
Now that I think of it, that scenario could be strategic if the Whitehouse is anticipating a democrat in office next year.
For years, the first result for 'miserable failure' was this URL: http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html. Checking the source on this URL today reveals this interesting code:
<meta HTTP-EQUIV=Refresh CONTENT="0; URL=http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/">
This is a client-side meta redirect, so it does not return a 301 or 302 server code.
While some are speculating that this is strategic on the part of the Whitehouse to remove this embarrasment, it looks to me just to be a crude attempt with little strategy. Why do I say that? Well, for starters, the page that you end up on links to the Bio page, which loops back through the redirect. If the Whitehouse staff wanted to strategically eliminate the ranking, they would have changed the URL of the bio page and refrained from using any redirects at all. As it is now, it is possible that Google will end up treating this meta redirect as if it were a 301 redirect, and all the bomber links will be credited to whitehouse.gov/president.Now that I think of it, that scenario could be strategic if the Whitehouse is anticipating a democrat in office next year.
