September 25th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
An attempt to influence a page ranking in Google with humorous or political intentions is termed as Google bomb (also known as a Google wash). The way Google’s search engine mechanism (algorithm) works, when you associate a name, word or phrase to a particular website, the particular site will be ranked higher in the search yield results.
Take this example, if you do a Google search on the word [failure] or the phrase [miserable failure], the top result is currently the White House’s official biographical page for President Bush. A number of webmasters used the phrases [failure] and [miserable failure] to describe and link to President Bush’s website, thus pushing it to the top of searches for those phrases. In May 2005, the phrase “Google bombing” was added to the New Oxford American Dictionary.
Recently, Google received many complaints from users who assume that this reflected political biasness. This was their response…
We don’t condone the practice of googlebombing, or any other action that seeks to affect the integrity of our search results, but we’re also reluctant to alter our results by hand in order to prevent such items from showing up. Pranks like this may be distracting to some, but they don’t affect the overall quality of our search service, whose objectivity, as always, remains the core of our mission.
Other current/ past examples of Google bombing include
- “Liar” in google.co.uk - returns Tony Blair, the UK Prime Minister, accused of misleading the public over weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
- “Waffles” use to lead to John Kerry’s 2004 election site. I believe it is currently 2nd on the list.
- “Ignorant a**hole” returns the Web site of conservative columnist Cal Thomas.
- “Lying sack of s**t” use to return the Parliamentary Web page of Australian Federal Attorney General Phillip Ruddock.
- “Gastrointestinal dysentery” returns Kres Chophouse & Lounge in Orlando, Florida, a restaurant that fired a server for blogging about work.
- “International sign for choking” use to yield the logo of the Philadelphia Eagles football team in the “Google Images” section, shortly after their defeat in Super Bowl XXXIX. The same search later showed a logo of the New York Yankees baseball team, in reference to their stunning ALCS loss to the Red Sox in 2004. (As of June 2005, neither of these results are returned)
- “Answer to life the universe and everything” isn’t a Google bomb, but an inside joke by Google employees yielding the result of 42. Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fans will understand this one.
Living near Cleveland, Ohio and a big fan of their “bad” sports teams. I tried googling “Sports Curse” in reference to Cleveland’s dreaded bad sports teams, uncanny bad luck of the current and yesteryears… was surprised it wasn’t the top. However, it does come up at 4th spot. [Sigh]
I have another idea - why don’t all of you reading this article Google bomb The Foo Logs by associating it with “good blog”, “great website” or “best blog” :-). Just kidding ofcourse (or am I?) ;-), don’t want to be kicked of Google for “initiating” a Google bomb.
(Sources: Wikipedia, Boise Weekly, The Official Google Blog)
3 Responses to “Google Bombing”
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Loup Dargent said: @ 3:55 pm
September 25th, 2006
Who said Googling was boring? ;-)
I had a taste of [sort of] Googlebombing
when a francophobic troll in a forum asked us
to search for French victories and click
the “I’m feeling lucky” option.
Now, that was clever. :-)
Not the troll’s suggestion,
but the way that page was made
to look like a Google Results one
and, of course, how its creator has managed
to influence the Google search results
so that it would always be the first
result to show when people search
for French Victories and click
on “I’m feeling lucky”.
And it still works… Yikes! :-)
Newsday has also commented on it:
http://www.google-watch.org/newsday.html
So, google is not so infaillible after all ;-p
The Foo said: @ 5:25 pm
September 25th, 2006
that was clever the way the page was made. hmmm, something else to watch out for. yes, google is not infallible afer all! you can be sure that there is ALWAYS a way to break something - no matter how well it is designed ;-)
kristarella said: @ 9:23 pm
September 25th, 2006
42, love it!