Yesterday I wrote a diary about how the Giuliani campaign literally made up a fake grassroots organization called "Firefighters for Rudy" to rebut the charges of negligence and callousness from the IAFF. This is a big deal; the Giuliani team is trying to make Firefighters for Rudy look like a competing organization to the IAFF, when the ratio of membership is approximately 280,000-1. The AP ran a quote from the executive director - and only known member - of "Firefighters for Rudy", without noting that he's a Giuliani campaign aide. Ah, that liberal media.
Anyway, I also cross-posted that diary at my site. And it came and went, but a few other bloggers picked up the story, so at least it seemed like it was percolating under the radar.
And then something funny happened.
In the diary I mentioned that the firefightersforrudy.com domain name was bought a year ago and has been lying fallow. Because of the way I wrote that, if you put "firefightersforrudy" as one word into Google my site's the first thing that appears. Furthermore, the Firefox browser does an automatic Google search on domains it cannot find, and redirects you to the first page it locates. So, if you put "firefightersforrudy" into the Firefox address bar, you are automatically redirected to my site.
I wouldn't have noticed this if Kevin Drum didn't first. But it's a really good thing to know. Google has made no secret that they are cracking down on political Googlebombing. But they can't always find everything. And in this case, using something in your blogs that is run together as one word, along the lines of a URL someone might be looking for, appears to be very successful in getting out the message. This Firefighters for Rudy thing is a fraud, and I'm glad that anyone looking for their website now gets a big fat welcome from me.
In other words, using something like "romneyforpresident" in an otherwise imflammatory article about Mitt Romney is likely to get yourself at or near the top of the Google search, and in Firefox you will automatically receive all traffic from that redirect, as long as there isn't a romneyforpresident.com (which there isn't). That can be a lot of traffic, and a good way around the Googlebomb. And there's not a whole lot Google can do about it that wouldn't be unbelievably labor-intensive.
Incidentally, Tim Brown, the executive director of the nonexistent astroturf group, has another site, The Bravest, which apparently exists solely to sell FDNY swag like T-shirts and bracelets.
And in another funny side note, the IAFF picked up Firefightersforrudy.net and 4 other versions of that domain about a month ago. It's like they knew.
So I'm doing my part to spread the word about Firefighters for Rudy. Are you?