Hacker News Reader

Comment by sincerely | Hacker News Reader

This is actually fascinating (even if it may not be the behavior we expect from our elected leaders). He did the same thing in June where he gave a completely baffling interview [1] about how his hobby was painting models of buses out of used fruit crates.

But people suspected [2] then that it might be a similar strategy, to monopolize the results for "boris johnson bus" searches.

I wonder why nobody else is willing to do this? It seems like it works, and it keeps you in the news...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLcCZjDoWTQ

[2] https://gizmodo.com/did-boris-johnson-ramble-about-model-bus...

View on HN

There is a much simpler explanation. It's actually these cheap news websites engineering articles targetting Boris Johnson popular terms (like Model or Bus), in order to generate clicks and advertising revenue.

But Johnson still seems to deliver suitable quotes on cue. As much as I prefer explanations that involve less assumed cooperarion between actors, I don't see how yours can hold up in this case.

These websites have money to gain for writing these articles targetting SEO keywords on things Boris Johnson says or does.

They will pick up on any term for which they can easily write an article and run with it to get ad clicks.

I don't think Boris Johnson even has to do anything to make this happen, even though he obviously has something to gain in terms that these articles turn the public attention from these issues.

I mean this can be applied to literally almost anything he does or says. At worst, he might be intentionally adding to his speech terms that are easier to apply this technique to.

I suspect it's the work of Grant Shapps: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/grant-shapps-..., a known SEO spammer.

>I wonder why nobody else is willing to do this? It seems like it works, and it keeps you in the news...

The gaming of keywords, offline and online, to influence SERP's has been done before and continues to do so ─ the optics on the practice of Google-bombing is a matter of frequency illusion. As an example, 'Santorum' clearly demonstrated the value and the power it holds. The eponymous search engine has a role to play by favouring newer content e.g. news media involving politics, entertainment and culture.

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-algorithm-history...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_for_the_neologism_%22...

I think other British politicians do it. What do you think websearching for "Jacob Rees-Moog lying" will get you now?

Searching "boris johnson bus" still comes up with a dozen pictures of the Brexit bus, with the "model bus" rambling not 'til below the fold. So it doesn't work all that well.

Boris Johnson has been painting red busses since before I had is own Brexit bus. The Brexit bus wasn't a secret, it was his campaign vehicle. "red busses" only seem obscure to you because you don't live in the UK which is ... full of red busses.

It's insane that people are obsesses with calling "conspiracy!" on Johnson for making an easily verifiable true statement about himself.

> you don't live in the UK which is ... full of red busses.

Well, London certainly is, the rest of the country tends to be mixed between green (arriva) and white/purple (first) these days.

In the days before deregulation, red was indeed the most common colour country-wide, but even then there were abhorrations such as west yorkshire's green and cream - there's another conversation to be had about 1950s and 1960s liveries composed of 'and cream' combinations that probably started with BR (well, the BTC then, which would have been the parent 'company' for most local bus services) 'crimson and cream' carriage livery - known colloquially as 'Blood and Custard'.

What? I think you're misunderstanding.

The weird part isn't that the bus he describes himself painting is red, or that his campaign bus was red, it's that his hobby is apparently painting buses out of empty wine boxes and it sounds like he's making it up on the spot.

"boris" "johnson" "fruit" hm, was it create or... cake?

Makes me wonder what Jean-Claude Junker, head of the EU, is hiding now when he came out with the bizarre statement "he did not have an erotic relationship with the Irish Backstop".

Anyone know?

Surely this has the ability to backfire tremendously

Maybe they are? Devin Nunes went on a ramble the other day rather than discuss Trump.

It’s to boost the signal of nonsense?

So nation states are pretty much at Orwell level?

“Gobbledygook & toot pickles, primrose!” The idiocracy ejaculated! as they launched the nukes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com