Political Google bombs

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"Miserable Failure"
"Miserable Failure"

During the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election, the google bomb (an Internet phenomenon) was used to further various political agendas. Two of the first google bombs were the "Miserable Failure" google bomb linked to George W. Bush's Whitehouse biography and the "Waffles" google bomb that linked to John Kerry's website. At different times supporters and detractors of these political candidates were able to shift around the results so that searches for "miserable failure" and "waffles" would return links to the particular targets of the groups trying to influence the search.[1][2]

However, Google has altered its searching algorithm so that massive link farms do not work anymore, making search results less politically slanted.

Contents

[edit] First political Google bomb of George W. Bush

U.S. President George W. Bush has been the subject of a variety of Google bombs. "Miserable Failure" was the first. In October of 2003 Democratic partisan supporters[citation needed] launched an effort to create links of "miserable failure" to the official White House biography of President Bush. In about 6 weeks the link to George W. Bush's biography became the first result for "miserable failure" on a Google search. A blogger from Washington has since taken credit for starting this tactic, though the phrase had been in heavy use following its adoption as a catchphrase by the Dick Gephardt campaign.

At various times, conservatives were able to shift search results for "miserable failure" to former President Jimmy Carter, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Michael Moore (former President Carter is second on the list of "miserable failure" - although this may be an artifact of being on the same website as Bush's biography).[3]

The term's exact origin is unknown; it was used in the 1970s by the BBC to describe American intervention in Vietnam, and by the New York Times to describe certain architectural monstrosities. AFL-CIO president George Meany used the term to describe the Nixon Administration's wage and price controls. Its first recorded public application in relation to the Bush administration was by Dick Gephardt, who claimed during a debate, "This president is a miserable failure on foreign policy ... and on the economy. And he's got to be replaced."[4] He used the phrase repeatedly to describe the Administration in the month before the Washington blogger started the campaign.

For a time, Bush's official biography had also become the top result for both "Miserable" and "Failure".

[edit] First political Google bomb of John Kerry

Senator John Kerry has also been the target of Google bombs. The first of these is the "Waffles" Google bomb. In April 2004, Ken Jacobson, then a law school student at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh launched the "waffles" Google bombing of Kerry, in part to retaliate for Democrats' Google bombing of George W. Bush.[1] He encouraged linking of "waffles" to John Kerry's official site.

The term "waffling" is used to describe the back and forth motion of the wings of water fowl prior to landing and is often used to describe a person who cannot decide on a particular course of action. Throughout the campaign, Kerry detractors accused him of changing his position on various issues.

[edit] Google bomb

Main article: Google bomb

By creating links to the official presidential biography page[5] with text reading 'miserable failure', a relatively small number (possibly as few as 32[6]) of website owners and bloggers were able to make the site appear as the first result when searching for miserable failure.[7]

Blogger George Johnston of the political blog Old Fashioned Patriot has claimed to be the coordinator of this particular Google bomb, which began a month after the Dick Gephardt campaign began using the catchphrase "miserable failure" to attack the Administration.[8] In October of 2003 he began to encourage his visitors to participate in the 'bombing'. Democratic partisan e-mailing lists and blogging groups began passing the word to do similar things in the same time period.

By April 12, 2006, an email was circulating noting that searching for "failure" linked to the official president biography page.[9] Left unsaid by the email was the fact that searching for "miserable" did as well.[10]

The bomb has proliferated beyond the Google web search: "miserable failure" returns images of Bush on Google Images and Local and Maps return the "US Executive Mansion" and the White House as the first two results for "miserable failure" in Washington, D.C..[11]

As of May 2006, there is a similar Google bomb on "Worst president ever". However it has been seconded recently.

There are also positive Google bombs such as "Great President."

[edit] Official response

Google originally took the position that it would not alter the result (or any other googlebombed results) because it wished to preserve the integrity of its search engine.[12]

In September 2005, the following ad (written by Marissa Mayer, Google Director of Consumer Web Products) began to appear with the search results, in order to explain the situation here.

The Google article explained the mechanism behind Google bombing, why Google was reluctant to change individual results found by their algorithm, and that this particular googlebomb did not reflect their political viewpoint.

Since January 25, 2007, Google claims to have altered its algorithms to reduce the effect of googlebombing. This change has removed both the 'miserable failure' and 'waffle' googlebombs [13] from the front page as well as many others.[1] Following this change, the first page of Google search results for 'miserable failure' is almost entirely occupied by articles about the googlebomb. Some believe this to be less about changing the algorithms and more about removing specific instances; typing 'French Military Victories' and hitting the 'I'm Feeling Lucky' button will still lead you to to the "Did you mean: French Military Defeats" site. Many other notable googlebombs still exist.

[edit] Translation / International use

Several other governmental office holders have been Google bombed with various translations of "miserable failure" or other similar terms/phrases:

[edit] On other search engines

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b Dropping Google Bombs, Sidener, Jonathan June 14, 2004 accesses August 9, 2006
  2. ^ Google Webmaster Central Blog. Google. Retrieved on January 27, 2007.
  3. ^ miserable failure. Google Search. Retrieved on December 25, 2006.
  4. ^ Democratic Debate Part III: The Economy. PBS Online NewsHour (September 4, 2003). Retrieved on July 13, 2006.
  5. ^ Biography of President George W. Bush. Whitehouse.gov. Retrieved on July 13, 2006.
  6. ^ BBC News (12 2003). 'Miserable failure' links to Bush. Retrieved on May 13, 2006.
  7. ^ miserable failure. Google Search. Retrieved on July 13, 2006.
  8. ^ Mikkelson, Barbara; David P. Mikkelson (12 2003). Someone Set Us Up the Google Bomb. Urban Legends Reference Pages. Retrieved on May 13, 2006.
  9. ^ failure. Google Search. Retrieved on July 13, 2006.
  10. ^ miserable. Google Search. Retrieved on July 13, 2006.
  11. ^ miserable failure loc: washington dc. Google Maps. Retrieved on July 13, 2006.
  12. ^ Mayer, Marissa (9/16/2005). Googlebombing 'failure'. Googleblog. Retrieved on July 13, 2006.
  13. ^ Kelly, Spencer. "'Cheating' the search engines", BBC, 2007-04-05. Retrieved on April 7, 2007.
  14. ^ Mantellini, Massimo (2004-01-19). PI: Contrappunti/ Un fallimento miserabile (Italian). Punto Informatico. Retrieved on September 11, 2006.
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