Meta Keyword Blacklist for Search Engines
Posted by Thomas J. Brown at 0707 hrs
A client recently called us in a panic. She works at an OB/GYN office, and their website was showing up in Google when people searched for “Spokane abortion.” This was a problem because, “we don't do abortions,” she told us adamantly. Her office is affiliated with a local Catholic health system, so they definitely don't do abortions.
“Can't you remove us from Google for that keyword?” she asked. We told her no and explained that, since abortions are related to pregnancy, Google is just trying to be helpful. Often times those associations are truly helpful, giving users results they may not have thought to search for on their own. But every once in a while, and in this case in particular, the association is a bad one. Our client was upset because several people had already called their office inquiring about abortions. She was upset that their office was being associated with something to which they were fundamentally opposed.
So what can be done about it? Our client wanted us to add a line to the website saying, in no uncertain terms, that they definitely do not perform abortions. We pointed out to her that the problem with this idea is that they would be adding the word “abortion” to their website, which would only strengthen their association with the term, as far as Google was concerned.
We're all familiar with the keywords meta tag (which Google now ignores anyway), but I've never seen a meta tag for keywords that should be blacklisted. That is, keywords that search engines should not associate with your website.
The implementation of a keyword blacklist meta tag could work in exactly the same way the existing keyword meta tag currently works. The only difference is, of course, that you would only include words and phrases that you do not want search engines to associate with your site.
The benefits of such a tag are obvious, but what are the drawbacks?
Let's say your company sells doughnuts and you're sick of people coming to your site looking for bagels. So you set up a keyword blacklist for your site so that search engines won't list you for the term, “bagel.” Search engines would specifically prevent you from showing up for that term. Now let's say your business model changes, and you start to sell bagels. At this point, you would want search engines to bring up your site for searches that include “bagel,” but because your site has heretofore been specifically disassociated from the term, your site won't show up in the rankings, and once they are, your site will be way behind.
Perhaps more devastating would be if your site got hacked and a keyword blacklist got added without your knowledge. Such an attack wouldn't be limited to sites with an existing blacklist. Because a blacklist tag would (theoretically) become a web-standard, any site would be open to such an attack. Since the the meta tag doesn't appear visually on the site, and since most people don't check their front-end code on a regular basis (especially business owners who aren't tech-savvy), by the time you realize what happened, it could be too late. To use our previous example of the doughnut company, a hacker could add “doughnut” to the site's keyword blacklist, thereby removing the site for all searches for the company's flagship product. Yikes!
A few of ideas on how to prevent such an attack:
- Have a strong password and check your code often. Both good ideas anyway, but kind of annoying for business owners whose time is already in high demand, and nearly impossible for those who don't know what to look for.
- Search engines could include a form on their sites that would allow business owners to tell the search engine, “hey, I used to blacklist this keyword, but now I don't want to do that anymore.” This would speed up the process of getting sites associated with previously blacklisted terms, but it's still open to unwanted tweaking (for example, a competitor could easily tell Google that the doughnut company now wants to be known for bagels).
- Perhaps the best solution would be for each search engine to give site owners the option to maintain a keyword blacklist for each domain. Site owners would prove ownership of the site (Google already has a process for this), and then log in and maintain their keyword blacklist. The primary downsides to this are that business owners would have to maintain multiple keyword blacklists at multiple search engines, and the process is still susceptible to hackers (although for some of us, if our Google accounts got hacked, we'd have bigger things to worry about).
I haven't decided whether or not I think a keyword blacklist is a good idea or not, although I lean toward not. To me, it seems that such a feature is limited in its usefulness, and most business owners probably wouldn't use this. Moreover, in my opinion, the potential for malicious abuse outweighs the benefits.
Christmas Theses Answers
Posted by Thomas J. Brown at 2020 hrs
Below are the much-anticipated answers to the Christmas Theses that Morah and I came up with. If you haven't read the original post, be sure to check it out first.
- Argentum et Aurum: Methods for Appraisal - Silver and Gold - An easy one, especially if you Googled it. I'm particularly fond of the use of the Latin "et" instead of "and."
- The Percussive Habits of Juvenile Males - Little Drummer Boy - Another easy one. We thought about mentioning the boy's nationality (since he was suppose to be present at Christ's birth), but we felt like this was an unnecessary detail. Fun fact: I hate this song more than any other Christmas song. Well, except Christmas Shoes.
- Seasonal Dressings for Interior Passageways - Deck the Halls - Pretty easy, and one of my favorites.
- Septal Anomalies Among Arctic Populations of Rangifer tarandus - Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer - This was one of the first ones we came up with. Again, if you Googled Rangifer tarandus, then the answer should have been rather obvious. We tried to think of a better word for nose, but septal did a decent enough job and had a lovely sound to it.
- A Study of Sonic Tonality Among Equine Sleigh Conveyance Alert Systems - Jingle Bells - This one is my favorite because of how ridiculously long the title of the thesis is relative to the title of the song.
- Hominid Structures in Water Solids - Frosty the Snowman - A bit abstract, and we were worried people might not figure it out. We tried to think of a good way to point out that we were talking about Frosty, but we knew that if we mentioned his name it would be far too easy.
- Copious Philanthropy Over the Course of a Fortnight - The 12 Days of Christmas - We worried that people might see "fortnight" and not be able to get the number 14 out of their minds, but just like with Frosty, if we say 12 or dozen, it becomes way too easy.
- Congregative Demonstrations of Well-Wishing with Ulterior Motives for Traditional European Seasonal Postprandial Delicacies - We Wish You A Merry Christmas - The reference to "Traditional European Seasonal Postprandial Delicacies" is, of course, figgy pudding.
- Colorimetry of Pinophytes of Germanic Heritage - O Tannenbaum - Unfortunately we cannot accept O Christmas Tree as a correct answer. The key here was that we specifically mentioned pine trees "of Germanic Heritage," thus a reference to the original German title. I was trying to make a reference to the song's repeated mention of the branches being green with the whole colorimetry thing.
- Recreational Entertainment Among Inuit Populations Versus Western Society: A Comparative Study - "We'll frolic and play, the Eskimo way." (from Winter Wonderland) - This is where it all started. The line got me thinking, "how is the Eskimo way different? Did someone do a study of Eskimo frolicking versus Western frolicking?" After that... Well like I said, Morah and I are huge nerds.
Christmas Theses
Posted by Thomas J. Brown at 0634 hrs
Secular Season's Greetings!
While Morah and I were out shopping for Christmas presents a couple of weeks ago, we were listening to the radio and they were playing Christmas music. The lyrics of one particular song got us thinking, and being the nerds we are, one silly idea snowballed into a list of thesis titles based on Christmas songs.
The sources of the thesis titles are varied; sometimes the thesis title describes the actual song title, but in some cases it describes the general story of the song. The last thesis title refers to a specific line in a particular song. How many can you figure out? Leave your guesses in the comments and I'll post the answers in a few days.
- Argentum et Aurum: Methods for Appraisal
- The Percussive Habits of Juvenile Males
- Seasonal Dressings for Interior Passageways
- Septal Anomalies Among Arctic Populations of Rangifer tarandus
- A Study of Sonic Tonality Among Equine Sleigh Conveyance Alert Systems
- Hominid Structures in Water Solids
- Copious Philanthropy Over the Course of a Fortnight
- Congregative Demonstrations of Well-Wishing with Ulterior Motives for Traditional European Seasonal Postprandial Delicacies
- Colorimetry of Pinophytes of Germanic Heritage
- Recreational Entertainment Among Inuit Populations Versus Western Society: A Comparative Study
RIP: Hattie Phillips
Posted by Thomas J. Brown at 1250 hrs
"Auntie" Hattie Phillips, my third grade teacher, passed away on July 13th, but it wasn't until today that I finally mourned.
You may be wondering why my third grade teacher gets special mention. The reason is that she was a special woman. She touched the lives of thousands of students over the years, and 20 years ago I was lucky enough to be in her class. Let me put into perspective the odds against me: Our graduating class was over 400 students strong. Of the many possible teachers into whose classes I could have been placed, I ended up in hers.
Auntie Hattie was a wonderful, caring teacher, and a woman in whom life was unbelievably abundant. She had an infectious smile, a joyous laugh, and I honestly can't remember a time when she was upset (even when I accidentally pulled a chair out from under her just as she was sitting down).
I don't remember the last time I saw her before I moved away from Hawaii, but I'll never forget the last time I saw her. It was at my 10 year high school reunion, and when I saw her, I nearly ran up to her. As I approached, she saw me coming, dramatically held up a hand, and covered her eyes. "Don't tell me!" she shouted. After a few seconds she pointed at me and said, "Tommy!" I was shocked. Of the thousands of students she taught before and after me, mine was a name and face she never forgot.
Holy Crap, the Website is Back!
Posted by Thomas J. Brown at 1215 hrs
After a nearly 5 month downtime, during much of which my site was offline due hacker activity, the site is finally back online!
The short version is that I was using an older version of MovableType and it got exploited. My site was then being used by criminals to attack outside servers and put up fraudulent bank phishing pages. I had no idea this was happening, of course. The first I heard of it was when my hosting company took the site offline. Having a kid slowed down the recovery process insofar as I had basically no time to devote to getting the site up and running again.
I am pleased to report that the site is now free of exploits (as far as I and my host are aware). That said, I'm not sure when "regularly scheduled" blogging will resume.
But that's a topic for a different post.
