A few months ago if you searched Google on “miserable failure”, you’d find the bio of George W. Bush at the top of the list that was returned. Google tried to communicate that this wasn’t a political statment on their part, it was simply the result of their ranking algorithms putting it topside.
This ranking was the result of what is popularly known as a Google Bomb. People set their websites with a link to the bio page with the phrase “miserable failure” in the visible part of the link. They get their friends to do the same thing, and their friends to…you get the idea. Soon you have thousands of links to the Bush bio site, all with the same visible link or variation of it. The practice is called Google bombing. It was used to push many sites to the top of the ranks.
No more. Google has changed their ranking algorithm to detect such Google bombs and direct you to sites that discuss the practice instead. Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines l will still give you that bio site at the top of the list. Has Google gone Republican?
June 29th, 2007 at 12:12 am
Yeah, however if you search for “click here” on Google and look at the first result it is adobe. “click here” is not on the page.
I think this was a favor to Bush….
September 5th, 2007 at 9:43 am
Not so much. There was a similar google bomb related to John Kerry called “waffles” which has also long since been eradicated, as well as one where you could type “french military victories” and click I’m Feeling Lucky and it would return “Did you mean french military defeats?” Not so much a political issue as just one of google finally cleaning up some crap.
-Bill
(P.S. - I’m a diehard democrat.)