"GoogleBombs" de-fused
by Shijaz Abdulla on 27.01.2007 at 16:59
Google has taken action against Googlebombing, the act of hundreds of Internet users linking up specific words with certain web sites in order to produce a desired (and usually comical) search result. To remedy the problem Google altered the algorithm by improving the way they analyze link structures on web sites.
Famous “GoogleBombs” include:
- Searching for the word “failure” producing a link to the current US President, George W. Bush,
- “waffles” with Senator John Kerry,
- “talentless hack” with Adam Mathes, and finally
- stopping the word “Jew” from pointing to a hate site and instead directing users to the Wikipedia entry on Jewish people.
Google says that there have been less than 100 “well-known” Googlebombs since 2001 and overall the problem was a harmless one.
Google claims that the reason that the company has decided to finally give in and fix the algorithm was because too many people had begun to assume that the results displayed were Google’s own opinions and that the company was intentionally associating the terms with various parties.
Further reading: Google’s Explanation