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Democrat election site spamming search engines?

Posted on October 01, 2000

in Reviews & Links

by Martin Burns (MartinB)

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Martin Burns

Member info | Full bio

User since: April 26, 1999

Last login: March 30, 2010

Articles written: 128

Inspecting the source code for Al Gore's election site, I noticed that the Democrat candidate trying to ensure that his site comes up when users search for 'MP3', which reputably is the most common search term across public search engines, by putting it in his meta-tags.

We also find that he's embedding hidden messages into the code - I wonder what happens if you play the following backwards:

<!-----------------------------------------------------------

Thanks for checking out our source code! I plan to use this space to post<br>
special messages to those who are helping to improve our web site -- by making<br>
our site the best it can be. The fact that you are peeking behind the<br>
scenes at our site means you can make an important difference to this Internet<br>
effort. I'm grateful for your help and support in this campaign. Now let's<br>
keep working to build the 21st Century of our dreams!<br>

Al Gore<br>
--------------------------------------------------------------&gt;
Anyone notice any easter eggs in the Republican site?

Martin Burns has been doing this stuff since Netscape 1.0 days. Starting with the communication ends that online media support, he moved back through design, HTML and server-side code. Then he got into running the whole show. These days he's working for these people as a Project Manager, and still thinks (nearly 6 years on) it's a hell of a lot better than working for a dot-com. In his Copious Free Time™, he helps out running a Cloth Nappies online store.

Amongst his favourite things is ZopeDrupal, which he uses to run his personal site. He's starting to (re)gain a sneaking regard for ECMAscript since the arrival of unobtrusive scripting.

He's been a member of evolt.org since the very early days, a board member, a president, a writer and even contributed a modest amount of template code for the current site. Above all, he likes evolt.org to do things because it knowingly chooses to do so, rather than randomly stumbling into them. He's also one of the boys and girls who beervolts in the UK, although the arrival of small children in his life have knocked the frequency for 6.

Most likely to ask: Why would a client pay you to do that?

Least likely to ask: Why isn't that navigation frame in Flash?

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Submitted by aardvark on October 1, 2000 - 22:09.

We all know using 'porn' wouldn't do much for the site rankings, so yeah, MP3 is a good one. It's not really spamming, but it is bad web-karma. And we'll leave out the accessibility features (lack) of the site. I find it interesting that a Scotsman noticed this, and a Canadian approved the article, too. It does appear, however, that the Bush site tracks my screen resolution, bit-depth, and window-size. I would love to know what else is being tracked in that URL (you'll see it when you get there). On the other hand, I think their meta tags are better, but a lack of a title tag doesn't help any.

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Submitted by daverau on October 2, 2000 - 10:13.

If you search for mp3 on the site you will find an audio section where users can listen to speeches and such in mp3, QT, WMP, and Real, making the meta tags actually valid - imagine that.

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Submitted by andyolsen on October 2, 2000 - 10:41.

OK, so Al Gore's site provides mp3 files for download, and his site includes keywords that say "mp3." Golly, gee, what an outrage. *Yawn*. Next!

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Submitted by djc on October 2, 2000 - 11:01.

andy - funny, i noticed that there are also gif, jpg, windows media, and HTML files for download but those are nowhere to be found in the meta-tags as mp3's are... Odd. And Dave, thanks for re-enforcing my point :)

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Submitted by mwarden on October 3, 2000 - 14:18.

This actually has little to do with this site's "spamming", but I have to comment on this (HTML) comment: " ...you can make an important difference to this Internet effort." I hope he's talking about the site itself. I hope he isn't talking about the Internet effort that he's leading, which seems to be one leaning towards censorship. Though, I have to give him props for his stance on sales tax and duties on the Internet and his support for telecommuting jobs. Oh wait, this isn't the political discussion site. Guess I shouldn't hit the "add my comment" button...

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Submitted by MartinB on October 4, 2000 - 15:21.

I read it as "Help the Internet channel of the campaign to get me elected"

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Submitted by MartinB on October 11, 2000 - 06:33.

Not to be outdone in the spam stakes, George W Bush's campaign team have really gone for gold this week, by sending campaign email to an uncleaned mailing list of supposed supporters.

UK news site, The Register are reporting that they have received unsolicited mail to an account they keep specifically for monitoring such activity. And this despite the email carrying notices that "All signups for email communications [are] voluntary".

A perfect illustration of why Safe Harbour is an increasing important matter.

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