Web review

“Ops, we did it again”.

It seems that Googlebombing is still working, even if Google announced stronger filters to avoid it.
Many italian bloggers decided to link “merda” (the italian word to say “shit”) to the official italian tourism portal (Italia.it), after they knew that this modest government site costed 42 millions of Euros.
So, if you are Googling for “merda” from Google Italia today, you’ll get Italia.it as the very first search result: nuts to SEO experts

I don’t know if tomorrow it will be the same (and if this result is worldwide), so here’s a screenshot for the history
Another very funny element is the sponsorized link on the right (“… that we’re not”), featuring RItaliaCamp, the antagonist and no-profit site, born to re-think Italia.it in a social, collaborative and useful way.

(vai alla versione italiana di questo articolo)

Finally, the official italian tourism portal is open.

Roberto Falavotti, the managing director of “Sì Innovazione Italia” said that Italy “invested” 45 millions of Euros to see it completed:

• 21 millions to make italian deparments insert contents;
• 4 millions to aggregate the centralized informations;
• 8 millions to IBM;
• … and the rests to “finalize it”.

For a person like me (I work as web developer), this is a real insult to my intelligence: how a nation can spend 45.000.000 euros (of our money) for a single site? In addition, now it’s really slow (and it doesn’t respect accessibility rules!)… how many servers you can buy with 1 million of Euros?

… and this site (ITALIA.IT) is on U.S. servers.