Political Google bombs in the 2004 U.S. presidential election
During the 2004 U.S. presidential election, Google bombs were used to further various political agendas. Two of the first were the "miserable failure" Google bomb linked to George W. Bush's White House biography and the "waffles" Google bomb linked to John Kerry's website. Supporters and detractors of the candidates were able to manipulate search engine rankings so that searches for "miserable failure" and "waffles" returned links to the targets' sites.[1]
In 2006, Google altered its searching algorithm to make massive link farms less effective, making search results less politically slanted.[2]
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.
Impact
By creating links to the official presidential biography page[3] with text reading "miserable failure", a relatively small number (possibly as few as 32) of website owners and bloggers was able to make the site appear as the first result when searching for miserable failure.[4]
Political blogger George Johnston of 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.[5] In October 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.
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.[6]
References
- ^ a b Dropping Google Bombs, Sidener, Jonathan June 14, 2004 accesses August 9, 2006
- ^ Google Webmaster Central Blog: A quick word about Googlebombs
- ^ "Biography of President George W. Bush". Whitehouse.gov. Retrieved 2006-07-13.
- ^ BBC News (2003). "'Miserable failure' links to Bush". Retrieved 2006-05-13.
{{cite web}}: Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help) - ^ Mikkelson, Barbara (2003). "Someone Set Us Up the Google Bomb". Urban Legends Reference Pages. Retrieved 2006-05-13.
{{cite web}}: Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help); Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help) - ^ "miserable failure loc: washington dc". Google Maps. Retrieved 2006-07-13.