Bloggers for Martin Luther King

A number of bloggers have been dismayed to find that a white supremacist site site containing untruths shows up very highly (No 2 for me) when one does a Google Search for ‘Martin Luther King’. The site in question is martinlutherking dot org which I’m not going to link to and I’d ask you not…

asteriskA number of bloggers have been dismayed to find that a white supremacist site site containing untruths shows up very highly (No 2 for me) when one does a Google Search for ‘Martin Luther King’. The site in question is martinlutherking dot org which I’m not going to link to and I’d ask you not to do so either.

Various bloggers, such as Robert Scoble have joined this campaign to boost genuine sites about Martin Luther King. The technique being used here is ‘Google bombing’ whereby a lot of links from different websites improve the search rankings of a particular website (explanation). ‘Google bombing’ is seen by some as morally questionable, and rightly so, but in this case it could well be the lesser of two evils.

I’m not just going to link blindly to the same links as everybody else, but these are some Martin Luther King Jr links I found worthwhile:

Update: If you do a search for “Hate site distorts King’s dream” you’ll find an article relating to the man behind the martinlutherking dot org name written way back in 2000. Again, I’m not linking there as the zdnet site contains a direct link, and links count as votes in the eyes of search engines.

I’ve given this post the ‘asterisk of special importance’. In an age where Google has largely replaced libraries as a source of information a huge number of young people must click on that site when researching homework and projects and the like. Hopefully most will be able to understand the motives of the website, but I fear a lot won’t.

9 Comments

  1. Having once got onto the offensive site whilst I was trying to help Third Party with somehomework I fully support anything that will stop people coming upon that site.

  2. this is very interesting.

    If memory serves, Google have been known to actively encourage Google-Bombing in such instances as this…

    It used to be that if one searched for ‘Jew’ one got an anti-semite website as the top listing. following a campaign of strategic google-bombing, backed by google, the top result is now much betterer.

  3. Mmm.. this campaign has been kicking around for a good long time now – shame it doesn’t seem to have had much effect.

  4. It seems that we have access to so much knowledge, that wisdom is getting edged further and further from the world. Perhpas we should spend more time looking at the Proverbs: “For Wisdom is more precious than jewels, and nothing else is so worthy of desire” (Prov. 8:11)
    Otherwise we simply accept whatever Google, or anyone else tells us, without weighing it.
    It might stop some of the shouting between Christians too.
    Of course you could argue that just because I read about wisdom in the Proverbs doesn’t make it true…

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