Reaction to the CNN Guerrilla Spam Allegations

Some were extremely skeptical of my claim that CNN was engaging in blog driven Guerrilla marketing, “What, besides pure speculation, links this to CNN or Time Warner?" asks Brooks Jackson, the director of FactCheck.org. "It could be anybody." Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales argued, “Trace the ip number to somewhere or someone interesting, and you've got a story.  As it is, you've got spammers acting in ways that are incomprehensible.” Wales concludes, “Tinfoil hats and black helicopters have more credibility, to my mind.” However, one expert disagrees with Wales’s judgment of the spam. Describing the strategy of the alleged CNN spammers, the blog Spamroll asserts, “Frankly, the premise of the suspicion, and the way it was done, make a heck of a lot of sense.”

The vast majority of the bloggers and publications were not so as quick Jackson and Wales to discredit the story. Though only a minority of them delivered a guilty verdict to CNN; far fewer were willing to argue that CNN was innocent.

“It’s entirely possible that it wasn’t CNN at all,” writes Techdirt, “but either way, the pattern described is somewhat odd.” Techdirt concedes that at the very least, it seems clear that “some less-than-above-board marketers” are experimenting with the tactic. Robert Richmond, editor-in-chief of TechIMO speculates, “If anything, I suspect CNN may be conducting a study on search engine optimizations.” 

Search Engine Watch Blog agreed with Techdirt that there seems to be a marketer’s finger print on the spams. “It’s pretty easy to see why you could think that's a guerrilla PR campaign going on…” writes Danny Sullivan, the editor of Search Engine Watch. However, Sullivan was skeptical of the value of using stuffed keywords to push a blog off of google’s index. “Such a tactic MIGHT work”, Sullivan concedes, “[but it would be] far easier simply to fire up 10 official CNN blog and do optimization and link building to push whatever anti-CNN sites you disliked out of the top results.”

Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association points out, “There is some evidence that SOMEONE is attempting to spoof Google to push down the page rank of blogs that are critical of CNN.” As to whether CNN was in fact guilty as charged, Cox writes, “It would not shock me but there is no concrete proof yet.” Steve Rubel of the influential PR weblog Micro Persuasion cautiously entertains the possibility of CNN’s guilt, “It seems a little fishy to me, but you never know.”

“Did this really happen? I think it very well could have.” asserts Mathew Sheffield of RatherBiased.com, “Maverick employees or rogue marketing companies have been known to do stuff like this.” Sheffield quips, “…the Education Department's paying of radio host Armstrong Williams certainly showed that high-level people can be dumb enough to engage in a boneheaded PR strategy.”

Other bloggers suggested alternative explanations. Random Culture, echoing Sheffield’s opinion, speculates that CNN is involved with a bad company, and that the spam campaign might have been launched without their knowledge. Loren Baker, Editor of Search Engine Journal suggests that instead of CNN, we might be looking at evidence of “some right-wing Fox News fan’s quest to knock CNN pages out of Google results by performing some Google Bowling[1].” Wayne Porter entertained the same notion, “Having been the target of FUD campaigns whose to say it isn't FOX?” But he reconsidered the notion, “Then again FOX really isn't that creative.”

Journalism professor Michele Rosen wonders, “what would be really ironic is if Lewis cooked the whole thing up to generate buzz about his blog.” Rosen adds, “Not that I think it's true, but considering all the possibilities is like playing a game of mental Twister.”

Rosen concludes, “As is most often the case, the truth may remain unknown. But journalists are always fighting this uphill battle. The best any journalist has ever been able to do is to do the research (as Lewis did) and see where it leads. Anyone who doesn't want to call that journalism is fooling themselves.”

Notes:

1. Baker defines “Google Bowling” as: the mischievous spamming on other sites on behalf of your competitor - in turn, getting your competition dropped from Google rankings.