Friday, February 09, 2007

George Bush isn't the only "Miserable Failure"



As we mentioned in class, Google announced a new algorithm in late January that aims to end Google bombing. I was curious what Google bombs used to be out there.

In the UK version of Google the search for "Liar" resulted in links to Tony Blair. And while "miserable failure" resulted in links to George Bush for US Google users, it leads to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s biography when "miserable failure" is written in Hebrew. A search for "Waffle" used to lead to links for J. Kerry. Another successful Google bomb connected "Scientology" and "Operation Clambake."


In a twist on Google bombing a parody web site made a fake website that is the highest result when searching for "French Military Victories." The link leads to a fake Google page that says, “Your search - french military victories - did not match any documents. Did you mean french military defeats?" And in 2003 a search for "Weapons of Mass Destruction" lead to a spoof error page saying, “These weapons of mass destruction can not be displayed.”

Wikipedia shares other Google bombs as well as information on spamdexing, or commercial bombing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb

Here’s another list of Google bombs. http://blog.outer-court.com/googlebomb/

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