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Contents 1 Instant chat with anyone on Wikipedia 2 Cornwall 2.1 History 2.2 Physical geography 2.3 Politics 2.4 Flag 2.5 Demographics 2.6 Economy 2.6.1 Tourism 2.6.2 Industry 2.6.3 Creative Industries 2.7 Culture 2.7.1 Language 2.7.2 Cornish studies and literary references 2.7.3 Religion 2.7.4 Music and festivals 2.7.5 Sports and games 2.7.6 Food and drink 2.8 Settlements 2.9 Transport 2.10 Places of interest 2.11 Miscellanea 2.12 See also 2.13 External links 3 The Game 3.1 Rules 3.2 Rule 2 3.3 Origins 3.4 Strategies 3.5 Spread of The Game 3.6 Criticisms 3.7 See also 3.8 External links 4 Google bomb 4.1 Background 4.2 How it is done 4.3 Googlebombing competitions 4.4 Google's response 4.5 Googlebombing in general 4.6 Googlebombing as political activism 4.7 Commercial googlebombing 4.8 The Quixtar Google bombing example 4.9 Search engine bombing before Google 4.10 See also 4.11 External links 4.12 Accomplished Googlebombs 4.12.1 News articles

[edit] Instant chat with anyone on Wikipedia

Peekko is an extension for FireFox that turns any website into a chat room.

[edit] Cornwall

For other uses, see Kernow (disambiguation).

Cornwall
Kernow

Motto: Onen hag oll (Cornish: One and all)
Geography
Status	Ceremonial and (smaller) Non-metropolitan county
Region	South West England
Population - Total (2004 est.) - Density - Admin. council - Admin. pop.	Ranked 40th 517,500 145 / km² Ranked 24th 515,300
Admin HQ	Truro
ISO 3166-2	GB-CON
ONS code	15
NUTS 3	UKK30
Demographics
Population - Total (2006 est.) - Density - Admin. council - Admin. pop.	Ranked 40th 527,216 148 / km² Ranked 24th 524,887
Ethnicity	99.0% White
Politics
Cornwall County Council http://www.cornwall.gov.uk/	Cornwall Liberal Democrats http://www.libdems.org.uk/
Executive	Liberal Democrat
Members of Parliament	Julia Goldsworthy Dan Rogerson Colin Breed Andrew George Matthew Taylor
Districts
Penwith Kerrier Carrick Restormel Caradon North Cornwall Isles of Scilly (Unitary)

Cornwall (Cornish: Kernow) is a county at the extreme South West of England on the peninsula that lies to the west of the River Tamar. In the 20th century there has been a revival of the Cornish language and as one of the six Celtic nations there has been some debate over the constitutional status of Cornwall. (Many Cornish people refer to Cornwall as a Duchy).

The administrative centre and only city is Truro, while the historic capital is Bodmin. Including the Isles of Scilly, located 28 miles (45 km) offshore, Cornwall covers an area of 1,376 square miles (3,563 km²). There is a population of 513,527 with a population density of 144 people per square kilometre, or 373 per square mile.^[1] Tourism forms a significant part of the local economy. However, it is the poorest area in the United Kingdom with the lowest contribution to the national economy,^[2] (just behind Merseyside and the Tees Valley and Durham). Cornwall is the only area in Southern Britain to qualify for Objective One funding (GDP per capita for the region must be below 75% of the EU average).^[3]

[edit] History

Main article: History of Cornwall

The history of Cornwall begins with the pre-Roman inhabitants, including speakers of a Celtic language that would develop into Brythonic and Cornish. After a period of Roman rule, Cornwall reverted to independent Celtic chieftains. The Roman term for the tribe which inhabited what is now Cornwall at the time of Roman rule, the Cornovii, was derived from a Brythonic tribal name which gave modern Cornish Kernow. (For other examples of the survival of Brythonic names noted by the Romans, see Dyfed / Demetae, Cantiaci / Kent , Gwynedd / Veneti and Durotriges / Dorset.) The present English language name of the region derives from suffixing of Old English wealhas ("foreigners, Britons") to the Celtic name.

The site of ancient Belerion, Cornwall, was the principal source of tin for the civilisations of the ancient Mediterranean and evidence has been found of trade with cultures as far off as Phoenicia, located in present day Lebanon. At one time the Cornish were one of the world's foremost experts at mining. As Cornwall's reserves of tin began to be exhausted many Cornishmen emigrated to places such as the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa where their skills were in demand. The Cornish Rebellion of 1497 is attributed to tin miners. The tin mines in Cornwall are now worked-out at current prices, but the expertise and culture of the Cornish tin miners lives on in a number of places around the world. It is said that, wherever you may go in the world, if you see a hole in the ground, you will find a Cornishman at the bottom of it (see Cornish diaspora). Several Cornish mining words are in use in English language mining terminology, such as costean, gunnies, and vug.

Since the decline of tin mining, agriculture and fishing, the area's economy has become increasingly dependent on tourism — some of Great Britain's most spectacular coastal scenery can be found here. Nevertheless, Cornwall remains the poorest part of the United Kingdom and it has been granted Objective 1 status by the EU. A political party, Mebyon Kernow, MK, or 'Sons of Cornwall', was formed in 1951 to attempt to assert some degree of autonomy (see Cornish nationalism); while the flag of St Piran is seen increasingly across Cornwall at protests, demonstrations and generally, the party has not achieved significant success at the ballot box, although they do have a number of district councillors. Two of the current MPs to Westminster — Andrew George, MP for St Ives; and Dan Rogerson, MP for North Cornwall — repeated their Parliamentary oaths in Cornish. Further, there is a caucus of local county councillors who are well known locally for their persistent advocacy of Cornwall's political uniqueness.

[edit] Physical geography

The Cornish coast, being exposed to the full force of the Atlantic Ocean, is composed entirely of resistant rocks, as less resistant rocks have been eroded away. The centre of the county is largely Devonian sandstone and slate. The north east of the county lies on Carboniferous sandstone. Cornwall is particularly known for its igneous outcrops, which include the granite of Bodmin Moor and the areas around Camborne and Land's End, and the dark green serpentine of the Lizard Peninsula. The granite forms high treeless moors on which sheep graze, and the characteristic Cornish cliffs. The alkaline soils of the Lizard support a rare heathland plant, the Cornish Heath, which has been adopted as the county flower.^[4]

Bude and Crackington Haven on the North Cornish coast have given their names to two geological formations — the Bude formation and the Crackington formation. When a tablecloth is pushed inwards, it folds upwards and overlaps; and that it has the spectacular overlapping strata of the cliffs of Bude and Crackington Haven were created during the Carboniferous era. Also of geological importance is the Lizard Peninsula; it contains metamorphic rocks from the Precambrian era (around 640 million years ago in this case) making it the oldest piece of rock in Cornwall.

Cornwall is the southernmost part of Great Britain, and therefore has a relatively warm and sunny climate. However, being unprotected from the Atlantic it also has more extreme weather. The average annual temperature for most of the county is 10.2 to 12 degrees Celsius (50 to 54 °F), with slightly lower temperatures on the moors.^[5] The county has relatively high rainfall, though less than more northern areas of the west coast, at 1051 to 1290 mm (41.4 to 50.8 in) per year.^[6] Most of the county enjoys over 1541 hours of sunshine per year.^[7]

[edit] Politics

Parliamentary representation for Cornwall is dominated by the Liberal Democrats. Currently all five of the Cornish MPs are Liberal Democrats. The local councils also have a large portion of Lib Dem members. Most local Liberal Democrat MPs and councillors strongly support moves for Cornish devolution, as do some Welsh nationalists.

Although Cornwall is administered as a county of England, an independence movement exists that seeks more autonomy along the lines of the other home Celtic nations. Additionally, some groups and individuals question the constitutional status of Cornwall and its relationship to the Duchy of Cornwall. Cornish nationalists have organised into two political parties: Mebyon Kernow and the Cornish Nationalist Party, and in 2005 Mebyon Kernow became the largest political group on Camborne town council after a by-election. In addition to the political parties the Cornish Stannary Parliament acts as a pressure group on Cornish constitutional issues and Cornwall 2000 the Human Rights organisation works with Cornish cultural issues.

In November 2000 the Cornish Constitutional Convention was formed to campaign for a Cornish Assembly. It is a cross-party organisation including representatives from the private, public and voluntary sectors, of all political parties and none.

Between 5 March 2000 and December 2001, the campaign for a Cornish Assembly collected the signatures of 41,650 Cornish residents endorsing the Declaration for a Cornish Assembly, in total 50,546 including people outside Cornwall. The British government however has no plans at present to devolve more power to Cornwall.

[edit] Flag

Saint Piran's Flag is regarded as the national flag of Cornwall and an emblem of the Cornish people. The banner of Saint Piran is a white cross on a black background. Saint Piran is supposed to have adopted these two colours from seeing the white tin in the black coals and ashes during his supposed discovery of tin. In a history of 1837 Saint Piran's flag was described as the "standard of Cornwall", and another history of 1880 said that: "The white cross of St. Piran was the ancient banner of the Cornish people." The Cornish flag is an exact reverse of the former Breton national flag (black cross on a white field) and is known by the same name "Gwynn ha Du" - white and black.

There are claims that the patron saint of Cornwall is Saint Michael or Saint Petroc, but Saint Piran is by far the most popular of the three and his emblem is internationally recognised as the flag of Cornwall. St. Piran's Day (March 5) is celebrated by Cornish people around the world.

[edit] Demographics

Cornwall's population is 513,527, and population density 144 people per square kilometre, ranking it 40th and 41st respectively compared to the other 47 counties of England. Cornwall has a relatively high level of population growth, however, at 11.2% in the 1980s and 5.3% in the 1990s, giving it the fifth highest population growth of the English counties.^[8] The natural change has been a small population decline, and the population increase is due to immigration into the county.^[9] According to the 1991 census, the population was 469,800.

Cornwall has a relatively high retired population, with 22.9% of pensionable age, compared to 20.3% for the United Kingdom.^[10] This may be due to a combination of Cornwall's rural and coastal geography increasing its popularity as a retirement location, and due to the emigration of younger residents to more economically diverse areas. Migration of pensioners from southern England to Cornwall, and emigration of young Cornish people, is a persistent concern — the Cornish ethnicity figures in the census of 2001 showed that 10.8 per cent of those identifying as ethnically Cornish in the United Kingdom lived outside Cornwall, a relatively high rate in terms of global diasporas, comparable to the experiences of Italy or Greece.

Cornwall is one of the six modern Celtic nations alongside Brittany, Ireland, the Isle of Man, Scotland and Wales. Just under 7% of the population of Cornwall gave their ethnicity as Cornish in the last census,^{[citation needed]} however, in a survey by Morgan Stanley 44% of the population considered themselves Cornish.^[11] Following the 2001 Census, Cornish campaigners made representations to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to provide a clear 'Cornish' tick-box option prior to the next Census to allow people the right to record their nationality as Cornish. ^[12]

[edit] Economy

Cornwall is the poorest area in the United Kingdom. The GDP is 62% of the national average.^[13] Cornwall is one of four UK areas that qualifies for poverty-related grants from the EU (European Social Fund). Today, the Cornish economy depends heavily on its successful tourist industry, which makes up around a quarter of the Cornish economy.

Traditional areas such as china clay extraction have gradually shed workers in recent years.

Educated young people continue to leave the county in numbers and despite Objective One funding the county's economy continues a downward spiral. Objective One funding is due to expire in 2006.

[edit] Tourism

Cornwall's unique culture, spectacular landscape and mild climate make it a popular tourist destination, despite being somewhat isolated from the United Kingdom's main tourist centres. Surrounded on three sides by the Atlantic Ocean, English Channel and Celtic Sea, Cornwall has miles of beaches and cliffs. Other tourist attractions include moorland, country gardens and wooded valleys, and tourism is a significant economic sector.

Five million tourists visit the county each year, mostly drawn from within the UK.^[14] In particular, Newquay is a popular destination for surfers. In recent years, the Eden Project has been a major financial success, drawing one in eight of Cornwall's visitors.^[15]

[edit] Industry

Other industries are fishing, although this has been significantly damaged by EU fishing policies, and agriculture, which has also declined significantly. Mining of tin and copper was also an industry, but today no longer exists, and several defunct mines have applied for status as UNESCO World Heritage Sites.^[16]

[edit] Creative Industries

In recent years Cornwall's creative industries have undergone significant growth, thanks in part to Objective One funding. There is now a significant creative industry in cornwall encompassing areas like graphic design, product design, web design, packaging design, environmental design, architecture, photography, art and crafts.

[edit] Culture

Main article: Culture of Cornwall

[edit] Language

Main article: Cornish language

The Cornish language is closely related to Welsh and Breton, and less so to Irish, Scots Gaelic and Manx. It continued as a living Celtic language until 1777 and the death of Dolly Pentreath, the last person thought to have used only the Cornish language (although this is disputed on a number of counts). The publication of Henry Jenner's "Handbook of the Cornish Language" in 1904 caused a resurgence of interest in the Cornish language. The subsequent revival gathered pace during the twentieth century and, although there has never been a census, most estimates agree that there are now around 4,000 Cornish speakers, around 500 of whom are fluent, and there are several families who have raised their children with the language. Cornish was recognised by the UK government as an official minority language in 2002 and it received government funding in 2005. Although currently less than 0.1% of the population speak it fluently, it is taught in many schools and used in religious and civic ceremonies and has boosted Cornish cultural identity.

Some Cornish surnames are prefixed by Tre, Pol, or Pen, as indicated in the rhyme "by Tre, Pol and Pen ye shall know Cornishmen." These come from Cornish language words meaning, respectively, town (or farm), pool, and head (or end).

[edit] Cornish studies and literary references

The Institute of Cornish Studies, established in 1970, is a branch of the University of Exeter, and now part of the Combined Universities in Cornwall Campus at Tremough, Penryn. Philip Payton, professor Cornish studies, has written a history of Cornwall as well as editing the Cornish studies series, and other academics, including Mark Stoyle of the University of Southampton and John Angarrack of the human rights organisation Cornwall 2000, have also produced work on Cornish culture.

A detailed overview of literature is provided by A. M. Kent's 'The Literature of Cornwall'. It covers everything from medieval mystery plays to more recent literary works that draw on the Cornish landscape. Notable Cornish writers include Arthur Quiller-Couch alias "Q", the deaf short story writer, Jack Clemo and D. M. Thomas acclaimed author and poet.

Cornwall also produced a substantial amount of passion plays during the Middle Ages. Many are still extant, and provide valuable information about the Cornish language.

Daphne du Maurier lived in Cornwall and set many of her novels there, including Jamaica Inn, Frenchman's Creek, My Cousin Rachel, and The House on the Strand. Rebecca is sometimes said to be set in Cornwall, but this is not stated explicitly in the novel. She is also noted for writing Vanishing Cornwall. Charles de Lint's novel The Little Country, Winston Graham's series Poldark, Kate Tremayne's Adam Loveday series, Susan Cooper's novels Over Sea, Under Stone and Greenwitch, Mary Wesley's The Camomile Lawn and Gilbert and Sullivan's musical The Pirates of Penzance are all set in Cornwall.

[edit] Religion

Traditionally, the Cornish have been nonconformists when it comes to religion. Celtic Christianity was a feature of Cornwall and many Cornish saints are commemorated in legends, churches and place names.

The Methodism of John Wesley also proved to be very popular with the working classes in Cornwall in the 18th century. Cornwall has shared in the post-World War II decline in British religious feeling.

In 2003, a campaign group was formed called Fry an Spyrys (free the spirit in Cornish) [1]. It is dedicated to disestablishing the Church of England in Cornwall.

[edit] Music and festivals

Cornwall has a rich and vibrant folk music tradition which has survived into the present. Cornwall is well known for its unusual folk survivals such as Mummers Plays, the Furry Dance in Helston, and Obby Oss in Padstow.

Cornish players are regular participants in inter-Celtic festivals, and Cornwall itself has several lively inter-Celtic festivals such as Perranporth's Lowender Peran folk festival[2].

[edit] Sports and games

Cornwall has its own unique form of wrestling related to Breton wrestling.

Cornwall's other county sport is hurling, a kind of medieval football played with a silver ball. Hurling is distinct from Irish Hurling. The sport now takes place in St Columb and St Ives although hurling of a silver ball is part of the beating the bounds ceremony at Bodmin every five years.

Rugby union has the largest following in Cornwall (more so than football), with the Cornish Pirates (recently renamed from Penzance & Newlyn RFC) in National League 1 and hoping to tap into the large amount of Cornish nationalist sentiment). Launceston RFC "the Cornish All Blacks" and Redruth RFC "the Reds" are also in the national leagues and get good support. The Cornish rugby team regularly draws large crowds of supporters, dubbed Trelawny's Army, especially if they are progressing towards a Twickenham final!

The Cornwall County Cricket side compete in the Minor Counties Championship, the second tier National County structure. Talented players, produced by the vigorous County league sides, have frequently found employment in the First Class Counties and two have gone on to represent England.

Due to its large coastline, various maritime sports are popular in Cornwall, notably sailing and surfing. International events in both are held in Cornwall. Cornwall will host the Inter-Celtic Watersports Festival in 2006.

Rock climbing on the sea cliffs and inland cliffs has been popular since the pioneeering work of A. W. Andrews and others in the early 1900s, and is now highly developed.

Euchre is a popular card game in Cornwall, it is normally a game for four players consisting of two teams. Its origins are unclear but some claim it is a Cornish game. There are several leagues in Cornwall at present.

A recent application for a place in the 2006 Commonwealth Games was refused by the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF). The Cornwall Commonwealth Games Association claimed that Cornwall should be recognised with a team, in the way that other sub-state entities such as England, Guernsey and the Isle of Man are. However, the CGF noted that it was not their place to make political decisions on whether or not Cornwall is a separate nation.^[17]

[edit] Food and drink

Cornwall is famous for its pasties (not a pastry dish as it is not sweet; traditionally a Cornish pasty — known locally as simply a pasty or an oggie — contains beef steak, potato, onion and swede with salt and white pepper), but saffron buns, Cornish Heavy (Hevva) Cake, Cornish fairings (biscuit), Cornish fudge and Cornish ice cream are other specialities.

Cornwall is also well-known for clotted cream and local caught fish. The famous UK chef Rick Stein operates a fish restaurant in Padstow.

Older traditional foods include star-gazy pie (a fish-based pie with fish heads and tails sticking through the pasty crust, as though star-gazing) and thunder and lightning (bread with clotted cream and golden syrup).

There are also many types of beers brewed in Cornwall — the St Austell brewery is the best-known — including a stout and there is some small scale production of wine, mead and cider.

[edit] Settlements

This is a list of the main towns and cities in the county; for a complete list of settlements see list of places in Cornwall.

• Bodmin
• Bude
• Camborne
• Falmouth
• Hayle
• Helston
• Launceston
• Liskeard
• Newquay
• Penzance
• Redruth
• Saltash
• St Austell
• St Ives
• Truro
• Wadebridge

[edit] Transport

Cornwall borders the county of Devon at the River Tamar. Major road links between Cornwall and the rest of Great Britain are the A38 which crosses the Tamar at Plymouth via the Tamar Bridge, and the A30 which crosses the border south of Launceston. A car ferry also links Plymouth with the town of Torpoint on the opposite side of the Hamoaze. A rail bridge, the Royal Albert Bridge, built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1859) provides the only other major transport link.

Newquay has an airport which has flights from London Gatwick, London Stansted, Bristol, Manchester, Leeds Bradford, Dublin, Birmingham, Durham Tees Valley. The airport shares RAF St. Mawgan's runways and facilities; however, this is under threat as the Ministry of Defence has announced that military flights will cease at the base from October 2007. The handover of the runway will depend on funding being found to bring it up to civil aviation standards.

Perhaps the best (although expensive) way to travel to North Cornwall is from Cardiff or Swansea on a boat-trip across the Bristol channel, usually to Padstow. Swansea in particular has several boat companies who can arrange boat trips to North Cornwall, which allows the traveller to pass by the North Cornish coastline and its superb sights, such as Tintagel castle and Padstow habour. Very occassionally, the Waverley and Balmoral paddle steamers cruise from Swansea to Padstow.

The Isles of Scilly are served by ferry (from Penzance), helicopter (Penzance Heliport) and fixed wing aeroplane (Land's End Aerodrome, near St Just). Further flights to St Mary's, Scilly Isles, are available from Exeter International Airport in Devon.

[edit] Places of interest

Barbara Hepworth Museum Bodmin and Wenford Railway Bodmin Moor Carn Euny Carrick Roads Castle An Dinas Chûn Castle Chûn Quoit Chysauster Ancient Village Commando Ridge, Bosigran Cotehele Eden Project Geevor Tin Mine Godrevy Island Goonhilly Downs The Hurlers Kynance Cove Land's End Lanhydrock House Lanyon Quoit Lappa Valley Steam Railway Looe Island Leach Pottery The Lizard Loe Pool

Lost Gardens of Heligan Mên-an-Tol Minack Theatre Mousehole Mullion Cove Newyn School of Art National Maritime Museum Paradise Park, Hayle Pencarrow Pendennis Castle Penlee House Poldhu Polperro Museum of Submarine Telegraphy Restormel Castle River Fowey River Looe Roseland Peninsula National Seal Sanctuary, Gweek South West Coast Path St Mawes Castle St Michael's Mount Tate St. Ives Tintagel Castle Trelissick Garden Trinity House National Lighthouse Museum Truro Cathedral

[edit] Miscellanea

The Isles of Scilly have in some periods been served by the same county administration as Cornwall, but are today a separate Unitary Authority. The Health Authority covering Cornwall, however, does include The Isles of Scilly in its area of responsibility.

[edit] See also

• Celt
• Celtic nations
• Constitutional status of Cornwall
• Cornish Assembly
• Cornish language
• Cornish nationalism
• Cornish people
• Cornish Rebellion of 1497
• Cornwall Commonwealth Games Association
• Duchess of Cornwall
• Duchy of Cornwall
• Duke of Cornwall
• Earl of Cornwall
• Kingdom of Cornwall
• Legendary Dukes of Cornwall
• List of Cornish people
• List of not fully sovereign nations
• List of topics related to Cornwall
• Mebyon Kernow
• Modern Celts
• Perkin Warbeck
• Cornish Rebellion of 1497 - An Gof
• Cornish Rebellion of 1497 - Thomas Flamank
• Keskerdh Kernow 500
• Cornish Prayer Book Rebellion 1549
• Cornish History
• Cornish Culture and Identity
• The Cornish National Anthem
• Cornish Stannary Parliament
• The Cornish Gorseth (Gorseth Kernow)
• Cornish Duchy
• Cornish Mines & Engines
• Cornish Inventor - Richard Trevithick
• Heavyweight Boxer - Bob Fitzsimmons
• Cornish Music
• Cornish Nationalist Party
• Cornish Rugby
• Cornish wrestling
• Cornish Pasty
• Helston Furry Dance
• Federation of Old Cornwall Societies
• Mining in Cornwall
• West Country dialects

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Cornwall

• The official Cornwall Tourist Board
• Cornwall County Council
• Cornish History
• This is Cornwall, local news
• This is not Cornwall, This is Kernow
• Cornwall 24 - Cornwall's independent news and discussion site
• A Cornish Sourcebook
• Cornwall GB
• Map of Cornwall (Kernow)
• Cornish Objective One

Photographs

• Cornwall Cam
• Cornwall 365 Photographs of Cornwall
• Views of Cornwall Nearly 2000 photos of Cornwall
• Images Cornwall Extensive collection of high quality Cornwall photos

[edit] The Game

The Game is a name commonly used for an abstract mental game in which the object is to forget about the existence of the game itself. This social phenomenon is played by an increasing number of people throughout the world and is inherently memetic.

[edit] Rules

The Game consists of a few simple rules. However, as The Game is propagated mostly by word of mouth, these rules are subject to various additions, deletions, and rewordings. Most players generally abide by at least some version of the following rules:

1. You begin playing The Game when you become aware of its existence.
2. Whenever you think about The Game, you lose.
3. When you lose The Game, you must announce your loss to everyone present.

Loss is only temporary, and players begin winning again as soon as they forget about The Game.

Common causes of loss include the mention of words such as "game" or "lose" as well as things relating to cognition.

The way in which loss is announced tends to be similar within groups of players, often "I (just) lost" or simply "The Game". This is usually preceded by a curse or swear word.

A commonly played fourth rule (especially in the USA) is that following someone's loss, players gain immunity from losing for a certain amount of time (a 'grace period').

Some people score The Game by losing a point for every loss, while all other players present (n) gain either 1 point each, or 1/n points.

Many players believe that you have no choice but to play The Game once you become aware of it. The choice is whether or not you abide by Rule 3.

[edit] Rule 2

Rule 2 is open to a number of different interpretations.

• The broadest interpretation is that any thought involving The Game causes loss. This is hard to define, for example, does thinking about this article count as thinking about The Game? This interpretation also makes it relatively easy to accidently break Rule 3, by thinking about The Game without realising you have lost.

• Another interpreation is that you lose whenever you remember you are playing The Game. This is subtley different from the previous interpretation, it involves becoming aware that you are a participant in The Game. It is still possible to do this without realising that you have lost, and hence accidently break Rule 3.

• A third interpretation is that you lose only when you realise you have lost. This seemingly paradoxical version of Rule 2 is often chosen by experienced players as it makes accidental cheating impossible. This is because it is possible to think about, and even discuss, The Game without a realising you have lost.

Another aspect of Rule 2 that is commonly disputed is whether you should lose if you have been reminded of The Game by someone else's loss.

[edit] Origins

The ultimate origins of The Game are unclear, and may never be known. A number of people have claimed to be the creator and, although unlikely, it is possible that The Game was created independently at different times and in different places. At The Game Tree, a website dedicated to tracking The Game back to its originator, the longest recorded player of The Game is one Mike Codling, who claims to have been playing since 1993. He was told that it originated as the "East Finchley game":

"Three young men, following a heavy night out in the west end, accidentally took the wrong branch on the northern line, and found themselves stranded at East Finchley. As they had no money, they decided to wait on the platform until the first morning service to take them back into town. To help the time pass, they decided to play a game, and one suggested that they should try to forget about where they were, and that they were playing a game, and the first one to think about the game, or about East Finchley, was the loser." [3]

However, neither the provenance of the quote nor the identity of Mike Codling can be verified with credible evidence.

[edit] Strategies

It is almost impossible to take conscious steps to avoiding loss without losing. Common strategies focus on increasing the loss of others, such as placing reminders of The Game, like notes saying "The Game" or "You Lose", in locations where other players are likely to come across them. Though the person, in placing the notes, must think about The Game while doing so, and therefore lose, the person calculates that he or she will have forgotten about The Game by the time others find the note, and will therefore cause the other players to lose without losing again themself. Of course, for the player to realize this has worked, he or she would have to lose again. In schools where The Game is played, it is not uncommon to see such reminders written on class whiteboards, or pinned onto notice boards for unsuspecting students to view.

[edit] Spread of The Game

The Game has been heard across the English-speaking world, especially in the United Kingdom and the USA - most evidence suggests that The Game's origins lie in these two countries. It has spread across Europe, and as far afield as Australia, Brazil, Japan and Israel. The Game propagates by word of mouth, and is especially popular in colleges and other places with a high density of young people, some of whom even wear T-shirts with the text "the game" written on them, causing everyone around the wearer to lose upon reading the shirt.

The spread of The Game is being recorded at the Game Tree, with the ultimate goal of finding its origin.

[edit] Criticisms

Many people who come across The Game find it pointless or absurd. Its significant differences from other games make it hard to understand in itself, as well as to why people would choose to play it. The fact that it is hard to score, difficult to devise strategies for, and that there is no final victory, means that it is frowned upon by more competetive game-players. Some would argue that it is not a game at all. Whether there is a choice in playing or not is also hotly debated.

[edit] See also

• Memes
• Memetics
• Chain letter
• Mental event
• Metacognition

[edit] External links

• game - Dedicated to finding the creator of The Game by tracing its spread backwards. Vote on & discuss the rules. <a href="http://losethegame.com/">game</a> <a href="http://losethegame.com/">game</a>
• The psychology of thought suppression and mental control

[edit] Google bomb

A Google bomb or Google washer is a certain attempt to influence the ranking of a given page in results returned by the Google search engine, often with humorous intentions. Due to the way that Google's PageRank algorithm works, a page will be ranked higher if the sites that link to that page all use consistent anchor text. A Google bomb is created if a large number of sites link to the page in this manner. Google bomb is used both as a verb and a noun.

See spamdexing for the practice of deliberately and dishonestly modifying HTML pages to increase the chance of them being placed close to the beginning of search engine results, or to influence the category to which the page is assigned in a dishonest manner.

[edit] Background

An example of Google bombing is if a user registers many domains and all of them link to a main site with the text "... is a living legend". Searching for "living legend" on Google will return the main site higher in the ranking, even if the phrase "living legend" doesn't appear on the main site. A common means of exploiting this is through weblogs, where although the entry may disappear from the main page quickly, the short-term effects of a link can dramatically affect the ranking of a given site. Empirical results indicate that it does not take a large number of websites to achieve a Googlebomb. The effect has been achieved with only a handful of dedicated weblogs.

The above has to be qualified, however. A handful of blog links will not Google bomb someone like Amazon.com out of the top results for "books," for example. In fact, Googlebombs have generally had an impact on relatively "non-competitive" terms, where there's no particular page that seems to be necessarily the right answer.

The technique was first discussed on April 6, 2001 in an article by Adam Mathes [4]. In that article, he coined the term "Google bombing" and explained how he discovered that Google used the technique to calculate page rankings. He found that a search for "internet rockstar" returned the website of a Ben Brown as the first result, even though "internet rockstar" did not appear anywhere on Brown's webpage. He reasoned that Google's algorithm returned it as the first result because many fan sites that linked to Brown's website used that phrase on their own pages.

Mathes began testing his theory by setting out to make the website of his friend Andy Pressman the number one result for a query of "talentless hack". He gave instructions for creating websites and links to Pressman's website with the text of the link reading "talentless hack". Sure enough, as other webloggers joined in his Googlebombing campaign, Pressman's website became the number one result in a Google search for "talentless hack." (By 2004, Mathes's own site was the number one Google result of this search term.)

However, the first Google bomb mentioned in the popular press may have occurred accidentally in 1999, when users discovered that the query "more evil than Satan" returned Microsoft's home page. Now, it returns links to several news articles on the discovery.

Google bombs often end their life by being too popular or well known, thereby attaining a mention in well-regarded web journals and knocking the bomb off the top spot. It is sometimes commented that Google bombing need not be countered because of this self-disassembly.

In addition, the entire notion of "Google bombs" might be better described as "link bombing," given that these campaigns can certainly have an effect on other search engines, as well. All major search engines make use of link analysis and thus can be impacted. So, a search for "miserable failure" on June 1, 2005 brought up the official George W. Bush biography number one on Google, Yahoo and MSN and number two on Ask Jeeves. On June 2, 2005, Yooter reported that George Bush is now ranked first for the keyword 'failure' as well as 'miserable failure' in both Google and Yahoo. And on September 16, 2005, Marissa Mayer wrote on Google Blog about the practice of Google bombing and the word "failure." (See Google's response below) Other large political figures have been targeted for Google bombs such as, Yooter reported on January 6, 2006, Tony Blair is now indexed in the US version of Google for the keyword 'liar'.

The BBC in reporting on Google bombs in 2002 actually used the headline of "Google Hit By Link Bombers," acknowledging to some degree the idea of "link bombing." In 2004, the Search Engine Watch site said that the term should be "link bombing" because of the impact beyond Google and continues to use that term as more accurate.

Nevertheless, "Google bombing" was added to the New Oxford American Dictionary in May 2005.

[edit] How it is done

A google bomb could be achieved easily; this is a possible scenario:

1. The initiator chooses a word to be searched : "cornwall".
2. The initiator chooses the target website : "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kernow".
3. The initiator creates a link like this : <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kernow">cornwall</a>. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kernow">cornwall</a>
4. The initiator places this code in his website, as his signature in forum, in his blogs, etc.
5. The initiator talks to other people about the bomb and tells other people to use the code in their own writings.
6. GoogleBot indexes and ranks, resulting in http://google.com/search?q=liars having the victim's webpage as the first result.

[edit] Googlebombing competitions

In May 2004, Dark Blue and SearchGuild.com teamed up to create what they termed the "SEO Challenge".

The contest sparked controversy around the Internet, as some groups worried that search engine optimization (SEO) companies would abuse the techniques used in the competition to alter queries more relevant to the average user. This fear was offset by the belief that Google would alter their algorithm based on the methods used by the googlebombers.

In September 2004, another SEO contest was created. This time, the objective was to get the top result for the phrase "seraphim proudleduck". A large sum of money was offered to the winner, but the competition turned out to be a hoax.

In .net magazine, Issue 134, March 2005, a contest was created among five professional web site developers to make their site the number one listed site for the made-up phrase "crystalline incandescence". (Read the article here.)

[edit] Google's response

Google has defended its algorithms as simply a reflection of the opinion on the Internet, saying that they are not damaging the overall quality of its services. Google has said it expects Googlebombing to return to obscurity and has dismissed it as "cybergraffiti" and just another internet fad.

On 18 January 2005 the Google blog entry "Preventing comment spam" declared that Google will henceforth respect a rel="nofollow" attribute on hyperlinks. Their page ranking algorithm now avoids links with this attribute when ranking the destination page. The intended result is that site administrators can easily modify user-posted links such that the attribute is present, and thus an attempt to googlebomb by posting a link on such a site would yield no increase in that link's rank.

On 16 September 2005 Marissa Mayer, Director of Consumer Web Products for Google wrote an entry on Google Blog to those who were offended by the result of President George W. Bush's biography with the search of "failure", "miserable", and "miserable failure", stating that Google has no control over and does not condone the act of Google bombing. Apparently, people who sent in complaints believed that the search results showed Google's political bias.

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. (Source: Google Blog)

[edit] Googlebombing in general

In some cases, the phenomenon has produced competing attempts to use the same search term as a Googlebomb. As a result, the first result at any given time varies, but the targeted sites will occupy all the top slots using a normal search instead of "I'm feeling lucky". Notable instances of this include failure and miserable failure. The primary targets have been the Bush biography above, and Michael Moore's website at www.michaelmoore.com.

Searching for miserabile fallimento (Italian for "miserable failure") was at one time returning Berlusconi biography, but as of 4th January 2006 returns a report on the phenomenon from an Italian news website, portalino.it. The words raar kapsel (Dutch for "funny hair style") return Jan Peter Balkenende's (Dutch prime minister) biography.

Other search engines use similar ways to rank results, so Yahoo!, AltaVista, and HotBot are also affected by Google Bombs. A search of "miserable failure" on the aforementioned search engines produces the biography of George W. Bush listed at the White House site as the first link on the list. Only a few search engines, such as Ask Jeeves!, MetaCrawler and ProFusion, do not produce the same first links as the rest of the search engines. MetaCrawler and ProFusion are metasearch engines which use multiple search engines.

[edit] Googlebombing as political activism

Obviously, some of the most famous google bombs are also expressions of political opinion (e.g. "liar" leading to Blair or "failure" leading to Bush.) In general, one of the keys to Google's popularity has been its ability to capture what ordinary web citizens believe to be important via the information provided in webpage links. However, Google is unable to stop organized or commercial exploitation of their algorithms.

One extremely successful, long-lasting and widespread link bomb has been the linking of the term "Scientology" to Operation Clambake. In this case, the index rating clearly emerges from both the individual decisions of pagewriters and reporters and an organized effort led by the Operation Clambake itself. In this case, the "bombers" believe they may be saving people's lives by giving them important information. The Church of Scientology has also sometimes been accused of an attempt at googlebombing for making a large number of websites linking terms "Scientology" and "L. Ron Hubbard" to each other. [5]

Another famous activist Googlebombing was the use of Googlebombing to knock JewWatch.com, an anti-semitic web site, out of the top site for the term "Jew". The campaign was successful and the top spot now belongs to the Wikipedia entry for Jew.

In 2005 there was a huge scandal going on, because when one would enter the word "Lul" (which is a Dutch word with the same meaning as asshole or prick) you would come to the official website of Hugo Coveliers. Google then decided to remove that searchresult.

[edit] Commercial googlebombing

Main article: spamdexing

Some unscrupulous website operators have adapted googlebombing techniques to do spamdexing. This includes, among other techniques, posting of links to a site in an Internet forum along with phrases the promoter hopes to associate with the site (see Spam in blogs). Unlike conventional message board spam, the object is not to attract readers to the site directly, but to increase the site's ranking under those search terms. Promoters using this technique frequently target forums with low reader traffic, in hopes that it will fly under the moderators' radar. Wikis in particular are often the target of this kind of page rank vandalism, as all of the pages are freely editable.

Another technique is for the owner of an Internet domain name to set up the domain's DNS entry so that all subdomains are directed to the same server. The operator then sets up the server so that page requests generate a page full of desired Google search terms, each linking to a subdomain of the same site, with the same title as the subdomain in the requested URL. Frequently the subdomain matches the linked phrase, with spaces replaced by underscores or hyphens. Since Google treats subdomains as distinct sites, the effect of a large number of subdomains linking to each other is a boost to the PageRank of those subdomains and of any other site they link to.

As of 2 February 2005, many have noticed changes in the Google algorithm that largely affects, among other things, Googlebombs. As evidence of this, ponder that only roughly 10% of the googlebombs listed below work as of 15 February 2005. This is largely due to Google refactoring its valuation of PageRank, mostly in an effort to keep up with the encroaching result relevancy of the Yahoo and MSN search engines, which many people claim are not nearly as easy to "hack" as Google.

[edit] The Quixtar Google bombing example

In 2005, multi-level marketing giant Quixtar began a "Quixtar Web Initiative" to manipulate Google results. The project was considered by many to be a clear and flagrant violation of Google's Quality Guidelines.

According to a web article called Quixtar Admits Google Bombing, a high-level ("diamond") member said that the company had "hired geekoids who were spending their time Google bombing positive info about Quixtar so that the negative sites would be buried way down at the bottom of the Google list when a prospect types in Quixtar [in a search engine]. Nobody will even be able to find the negative sites anymore."

The goal presented was to smother anti-Quixtar sites, such as a consumer protection group, an eBook about Amway and Quixtar, and grassroots movements from ex-Quixtar members that claim Amway and Quixtar are Pyramid schemes, cults, and use deceptive business practices.

Quixtar's attempt to lower the ranking of such negative web sites backfired, and, for a few months, Quixtar's Google results suffered for its attempted Googlebombing.

As of May 2006, a search on Google for "Quixtar " reveals that Quixtar.com is again the number one result.

The organized effort to manipulate search engine results was first brought to light by bloggers which detailed the evidence in an article "So Busted".

Ironically, the site that reported Quixtar's attempt to Google bomb once occupied the first search position under "Quixtar". Often, in fact, a majority of the top ten results for the term "Quixtar" are sites critical of the Quixtar business opportunity and its lines of sponsorship. This is mixed in with real positive results, however, and helps to show both sides of the arguments.

Quixtar's initiative included at least 54 Quixtar Blogs and numerous other company-related sites, character assassination blogs, adoration blogs, and various other pages. Immediately after the exposure many of the blogs shut down or reduced their content.

Some of Quixtar's independent lines of sponsorship have also been among the largest abusers of Google bombing. These independent lines of sponsorship are led by high-level Independent Business Owners, or IBOs, called Diamonds, Crowns, and Crown Ambassadors.

[edit] Search engine bombing before Google

Before Google existed, eccentric USENET poster Archimedes Plutonium, upset with the attention he received from users who found him amusing, posted an angry message to two science newsgroups. He accused these people of "SearchEnginebombing," an offshoot of Emailbombing, that was cluttering the web/USENET with negative comments about him, so a search engine would find more of them than his own postings. Unlike "Google Bombing", the term "Search Engine Bombing" didn't immediately catch on, and initially its use has been primarily limited to Archimedes Plutonium, and USENET posters who mocked him.

[edit] See also

• Google juice
• Googlewhack
• Spamdexing
• 302 Google Jacking

[edit] External links

• Le Google Bomb
• The Google Bomb Project

[edit] Accomplished Googlebombs

Note that Google results fluctuate regularly and the bombed results may move up and down. Most often they will be displaced by a news article describing the bomb.

Recent (as of 2006) and popular examples are:

• "Arabian Gulf" - points to an error look-alike page saying that "the gulf you are looking for does not exist." The page links to the Wikipedia entry on the Persian Gulf, alternative English name for the body of water east of the Arabian Peninsula and south of Iran.
• Asshole - A short informational filmstrip about the current US Administration.
• Aweonao (Chilean slang for asshole) in the Google Image Search service shows Chilean right-wing presidential candidate, Joaquin Lavín.
• Awful Announcer brings you to the official website of frequently criticized baseball color commentator Tim McCarver
• "Bad Ass Mother Fucker" - A deliberate googlebombing on the part of ni9e.com
• "3536 S Lowe" - Former house of Chicago's Mayor Daley
• Bill Napoli brings up an extremely negative definition of South Dakota Republican Senator Bill Napoli. Created by the Smart Bitches, it is based on comments he made after a bill in the South Dakota State Legislature was passed that, if it stands up to the scrutiny of the United States Supreme Court, will ban abortion in that state.
• "bunch of luddites" - points to the homepage of the Motion Picture Association of America.
• Buffone - unofficial Silvio Berlusconi (Italian Prime Minister) biography. "buffone" is the Italian word for "clown".
• Chuck Norris - A recent attempt to place one of the infamous Chuck Norris 'facts' in the #1 Google ranking for searches on Chuck Norris. This page is not currently ranked on the search engine, and the link points to the third-party target page with no affiliation to Google itself.
• Despota Cachaceiro ("Drunk Ruler" in portuguese) used to return the website of Brazilian president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva.
• Estupidez - Points to former Ecuadorian President Lucio Gutierrez's webpage. The page is no longer supported, though the link still exists.
• Estúpido Populista - Points to Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador Home page.
• First against the wall - Used to return the Wikipedia entry on Karl Rove.
• Food Nazis - Points to Center for Science in the Public Interest.
• French military victories - see French military victories (practical joke). Points to a faked Google page implying there are no French military victories.
• fuckwit returns John Prescott who is Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• gastrointestinal dysentery returns Kres Chophouse & Lounge in Orlando, Florida, a restaurant that fired a server for blogging about work.
• Gladjakker ("smoothie") returns website of Camiel Eurlings, the leader of the Dutch Christian-Democrat fraction in the European Parliament.
• hell used to put Microsoft's homepage in the top spot. Searching for hell google microsoft returns reference to this.
• "Horrid Operating System" - Returns "Microsoft Windows Family" homepage as the first result.
• Ignorant Asshole returns the website of Cal Thomas in response to this column.
• ignorant bigots - returns the official page of Christian Voice, a fundamentalist Christian organisation in the UK.
• International Sign for Choking in Google Images search use to yield the logo of the Philadelphia Eagles football team, shortly after their defeat in Super Bowl XXXIX. The same search recently 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)
• jämmerlicher Waschlappen (German slang for "pathetic wimp" ) returns the government page of Christoph Blocher, a Swiss Federal Councillor.
• Jew - JewWatch, an anti-semitic website operated by Frank Weltner, a white power nationalist, was the number one hit when searching on Google.com for "Jew" in 2005. In early 2006, the Wikipedia entry replaced it following a Googlebombing campaign organized by Daniel Sieradski, editor of the blog Jew School. [6] [7] [8] As of 02 March 2006 the Wikipedia site is again in the number one position, however it appears to be fluctuating regularly. Google added an explanation page entitled Offensive Search Results and placed it in the top sponsored link section.
• kretyn (which means "cretin" in Polish) - returns the page with information about Polish politician Andrzej Lepper
• Iznogoud (a character who wants to become number one) - Points to "Biographie - Nicolas SARKOZY", and "Nicolas Sarkozy" points to "Iznogoud, the movie".
• Ladrones (Spanish for "thieves") and Siempre Ganamos Algunos Euros ("We Always Earn Some Euros") point to the homepage of SGAE, (Sociedad General de Autores y Editores), the Spanish equivalent of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The SGAE is an extremely unpopular association in Spain since they not only try to prosecute users of P2P applications, but also impose surcharges on the price of physical media such as recordable CDs in order to account for the theoretical losses due to P2P exchanges.
• lažnivec (Slovenian for "liar") points to the page of Bojan Požar, Slovenian yellow press publicist.
• liar on google.co.uk - returned Tony Blair, the UK Prime Minister, accused of misleading the public over weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. (as of 2005-12-30 Blair is back in first place, with the IMDb page for Liar Liar falling back into second place) He is also first in the world rankings at google.com on top.
• litigious bastards used to give the homepage of the SCO Group, which initiated the SCO v. IBM lawsuit alleging copyright violation in the Linux kernel. bastards also worked.
• lying sack of shit Used to return the Parliamentary web page of Australian Federal Attorney General Phillip Ruddock. This bomb was suggested by weezil and executed by a number of Australian bloggers in protest of Ruddock's criticism of Mamdouh Habib
• lul (Dutch for 'dick') used to return the web page of the Belgian politician Hugo Coveliers on google.be.
• Masendav - If you search for the word "masendav" ('frustrating' in Estonian) the top result is The Estonian Center Party page. This also used to work when one typed "masendav" in the Firefox address bar, before masendav.com began.
• Miserabile fallimento - official Silvio Berlusconi (Italian Prime Minister) biography. "miserabile fallimento" is the Italian for "miserable failure".
• Miserable failure, miserable worst president worst president ever and great president brings up the official George W. Bush biography from the US White House web site. Due to the search query of "miserable failure," the search terms miserable and failure (each word that comprises miserable failure used on their own) also point to the biography of George W. Bush, with Jimmy Carter ranking number two and Michael Moore third. Unelectable points to the biography on the White House's homepage. Interestingly enough, www.unelectable.com used to point to the same page, and was second in Google's Search for "unelectable." See also miserable failure. With the addition of Google Local and Maps, searching for the phrase in Washington DC provides George W. Bush's residence (Listed as the "US Executive Mansion") as the first result.
• Miserable, (Spanish for "miserable") links to the Official Biography of ex-minister Angel Acebes.
• Mouton insignifiant (French for "trivial sheep") - returns the official page of Jean Charest, Premier of the province of Quebec, in Canada. It refers to his curly hair. Insignifiant also worked
• National Disgrace - returns the official MLB biography of Bud Selig, commissioner of Major League Baseball. The Googlebomb was organized to highlight MLB's poor negotiations the Montreal Expos with in the process of moving to Washington, D.C.
• O Maior Mentiroso ("The greatest liar" in portuguese) returns the portuguese wikipedia article of the Brazilian president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva.
• Old Rice And Monkey Nuts returns the website of Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt. The phrase is an obscure reference to Tirath Khemlani, a Pakistani commodities trader. The bomb was perpetrated at the suggestion of Ausculture for reasons unknown.
• Opportunist - Links to the web site for the former leader of the opposition in the UK, Michael Howard.
• "Out of Touch Executives" - Used to lead to Google's own corporate information page. "Out of Touch Management" used to work as well.
• Pekeng Pangulo or "fake president" in Filipino returns the official page of Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
• Searching UK domains only for poodle gives you a link to a Tony Blair biography (dropped to sixth at one stage but has now returned to the #1 spot).
• populista (Slovak for "populist") - returns an official homepage of Robert Fico, a left-wing Slovak politician.
• Ptasia Grypa (Polish for bird flu) on the first place returns the official website of the Polish president Lech Kaczyński. His surname in Polish roughly means ‘duck’.
• purge princess brought up the Senate Campaign blog of Katherine Harris.
• ¿Quién quiere estafarnos? (Spanish for "Who wants to swindle us?") points to the homepage of Telecom, provider of phone and ADSL services in southern Argentina. This bombing was started at http://bombardeo.blogspot.com because of the company's announcement to limit download transfer to 4 GB per month (for 512 kbit/s connections).
• Raar Kapsel ("Weird Haircut" in Dutch) - Returns the biography of the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Jan Peter Balkenende, who is known for his distinctive hairstyle.
• Santorum - SpreadingSantorum a campaign to ridicule Senator Santorum by naming a mixture of bodily substances after him (see Santorum controversy).
• Scottish Raj returns the website of Gordon Brown, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer. This googlebomb was initiated by The Campaign for an English Parliament news blog, whose author objected to Brown's calls for a renewed sense of Britishness and ambition to become UK Prime Minister when his native Scotland has its own parliament.
• Siedziba szatana (Polish for "Satan's seat") returns the website of Radio Maryja, Polish ultra-Catholic religious and political radio station.
• swivel eyed loons returns the homepage of the UK Independence Party after the phrase - initially used to describe the party by blogger Anthony Wells - was adopted by several British bloggers.
• terrorist sympathizer returns the homepage of Bill O'Reilly, in reference to his comment that "every other place in America is off limits to [terrorists], except San Francisco." Initiated by Daily Kos.
• Totalt fiasko - Used to return the official Göran Persson (Swedish Prime Minister) biography. The phrase is Swedish for "miserable failure".
• Tyhmä lehmä, Finnish for "stupid cow", used to brought up home page of Tanja Karpela, Finnish Culture Minister.
• Velky bratr (Czech for "Big Brother") - returned a biography of Stanislav Gross, former Prime Minister of the Czech Republic.
• völlige Inkompetenz, German for "total incompetence", returns the homepage of Karl-Heinz Grasser, the Austrian minister of finance.
• Vreemdelingenhaat ("Hate for foreign people" in Dutch) - Returns the biography of the Minister of Integration and Immigration, Rita Verdonk, whose policies are controversial.
• Waffles - Used to lead to John Kerry's 2004 election site, originated here.
• Zlodej a klamar (Slovak for Thief and Liar) - returned a personal profile on Slovak National Parliament pages of Vladimír Mečiar, former Prime Minister of the Slovakia, who actually has stolen much money from the slovak nation.
• Weapons of mass destruction - Internet Explorer Error look-alike joke page saying "weapons of mass destruction cannot be found". (Note: as of 25 March 2006, the joke page, although still available at [9], had fallen to 132nd place in the Google search result.)

• Similarly, Armas de destruccion masiva, Spanish for "Weapons of mass destruction", gives a Spanish version of the page above.

• ατσαλάκωτος, (Greek for "non creased") linked to the mayor's office of Municipality of Thessaloniki, a profile page for center-right wing New Democracy mayor Vasillis Papageorgopoulos of Thessaloniki, Greece at present.
• Ληστές, (Greek for "thieves") links to OTE, the Greek Telecommunications Organization. This is the result of a mass blogger protest against OTE's abusive charges.
• ψεύτες, (Greek for "liars") linked to New Democracy, a center-right wing Greek polical party that is in the government of Greece at present.
• Враг народа (Russian for "enemy of the people") - links to the official homepage of Vladimir Putin.
• Найти ближайший туалет, (Russian for "find the nearest restroom") - Russian McDonald's addresses appear as the first link. It is common in Russia to link to McDonald's as a place where one can always find a restroom when no others are around or require an entrance fee.
• Лох, (Russian, "moron") - links to several anti-Putin sites, Russian President.
• link <a href="http://linkbomb.net/">link</a> <a href="ttp://linkbomb.net/">link</a>
• v <a href="http://www.myspace.com/wikination">v</a> <a href="http://www.myspace.com/wikination">v</a>
• cool <a href="http://losethegame.athost.net/">cool</a> <a href="http://losethegame.athost.net/">cool</a>
• sexy <a href="http://www.angelfire.com/hiphop/jenna18f/">sexy</a> <a href="http://www.angelfire.com/hiphop/jenna18f">sexy</a>
• random <a href="http://moc.bravehost.com/">random</a> <a href="http://moc.bravehost.com/">random</a>
• jonty <a href="http://jonty303.livejournal.com/">jonty</a> <a href="http://jonty303.livejournal.com/">jonty</a>

[edit] News articles

• Google Blog 2005-Jan-18 Pr* link eventing comment spam
• Adam Mathes' original webzine article (first attacker)
• Andy Pressman (first victim)
• "Googlebomb Watch" (http://blog.outer-court.com/googlebomb/) - Keeping track of Googlebombs
• Google hit by link bombers - BBC News, March 13, 2002
• Top of the Heap - Business 2.0, July 2002 - Ego bombing
• Web Posters Launch Anti-Bush 'Google Bomb' - ABC News, December 8, 2003
• Engineering Google Results to Make a Point - NY Times, January 22, 2004
• Why Googling 'Waffles' Gets You John Kerry's Web Site - MTV News, May 28, 2004
• Kerry gets served up with 'waffles' - USA Today, April 11, 2004
• Student trying to 'bomb' Kerry - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, April 16, 2004
• Kerry Gets Google-Bombed - Wired News, May 24, 2004
• Dropping 'Google-bombs' - San Diego Union-Tribune, June 14, 2004
• The war on the web: Anthony Cox describes how his spoof error page turned into a 'Google bomb' for weapons of mass destruction. - The Guardian, July 10, 2003