Blogger Alleges CNN Trying to Lower His Google Rank

CNN has launched a sophisticated Google attack designed to lower the rank of posts critical of the network by introducing spam into the comment stream, one blogger alleges. The blogger, Nick Lewis, also tried to catch CNN in the act, according to The Inquirer web site...

Figuring that CNN was using technorati to monitor its campaign he posted a blog post with the words "CNN" and "Spam" in the title, and sure enough the next morning it got 13 hits from a technorati search. The IP address, from New York, has popped back to have a look several times since. He is convinced that there is some CNN plan to take over the blogs for its own purposes.

Somebody out there needs to do some real reporting on this. So far, there's a conspiracy brewing. It seems a little fishy to me, but you never know.

Comments

[Nick Lewis]

Hey Steve, I've had to track down people talking about the Inquirer story to make some corrections(scary, huh...)

The Inquirer made a distortion, my main claim was that CNN appeared to be launching an experimental guerrilla marketing campaign. In my story, I introduced stuffed keywords as speculation, "...may have been left with the intent of setting of google's filters.." One little word "may" can make a huge difference.

The "trap" that was misrepresented in the Inquirer was actually a hunch. I figured if they were using guerrilla marketing tactics, that they'd know what technorati was. So, I simply watched my logs for someone to enter through a technorati or feedster search (bear in mind, that no more than 30 people had read the story at this time).

On the morning of the 19th someone who had never visited my page entered through a technorati search for "Cnn", "spam", and my logs show a very worried behavior; they returned through searching for multiple variations (i.e. "time warner" "spam"), and the followed trackbacks back and forth. The spams immediately halted after that. And that's when I started looking into this a lot deeper. That's not proof, but its not what the Inquirer said, either. Contrary to the Inquirer's claim, I don't think CNN has a "secret plan". Rather I think this was an experiment in trying to create a buzz in the blogosphere.

My actual claim -- CNN experiementing with guerrilla spam -- was based on 13 posts that received a suspicious comment between the days of april 17th to 19th. All of the comments targeted blogs that would be considered "the long tail" (i.e. mid-to-high level bloggers). Whoever left the comments seems to have made a concious effort to avoid a-listers.

The spam frames CNN primetime as "trashy", and nothing more than a "news and gossip show" (which is, of course, the very thing CNN is going after with their Primetime programing). In addition, I spotted four selling hooks in the spam that are designed to get someone to watch CNN primetime, at least once.

Tomorrow, Wired will be publishing a piece about this story. However, the angle of the story is more about how buzz spreads on the internet. I too would like to see an investigation about this by someone who has more resources than myself. However, I fear that their investigation will run into the same dead end that mine has. If anyone has any questions, feel free to e-mail me at netpolitik[at]hotmail[dot]com.

[Randy Charles Morin]

Wow! The Google Wars have begun.

[Connected]

It's interesting how many corporates are checking Technorati to see what is being written about them. I had a postive experience though. I wrote an article about Plaxo asking how they were going to make money http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk/blog/_archives/2005/3/20/456805.html . A plaxo exec 'Techno'd' my story and gave me details of new services they were planning to launch - before Plaxo had even announced them http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk/blog/_archives/2005/3/21/459695.html giving my site a nice exclusive!