Tenacious Google Bombs

What do the words "waffles" and "unelectable" have in common? How about "food nazis" and "gastrointestinal dysentery"?

They are Google bombs, otherwise known as link bombs, a clever way for those with an agenda to sneak their message under the radar of an unsuspecting web surfer. They have been around for a few years, and tend to get a little press when they become known. At some point, people figured out that search engines determine which results to place first for particular searches, in part, based on how many links are on the web from identical hyperlink text to a particular page. (The idea is that if you are searching for something specific, the most relevant result to show you first is the one with the one that has the most direct links from that specific term spread over the Web; if everyone's saying this is where to go for this term, it's a reasonable bet that conventional wisdom is an un-biased way to determine which results among many are most relevant.)

Once this became known among the search engine strategists, it spread to those whose goals were not necessarily clicks for their own sites, but to make a point. Because a lot of people like to trust Google's I'm Feeling Lucky button and save themselves the results screen, a message can be driven home rather quickly.

"Waffles" leads to John Kerry's election website and has done so since before the election during which he was consistently accused of changing his positions on issues. The dysentery term leads to the website of a restaurant that had apparently fired one of its employees for blogging about work. And the food nazis reference brings you to the website of an organization that advocates strong regulations of genetically modified crops. As advertisers are well aware, once a connection is made in one's mind, it's entirely possible that someone might avoid a restaurant whose name came up in a search for tummy troubles.

While looking over search terms with a surge in popularity by Alexa users, we occasionally come across one that stumps us. These popular searches make sense when a celebrity dies, has a baby or a wardrobe malfunction, or when there's a natural disaster. A couple of weeks ago, a new one was in the most popular searches and just kept getting more popular. The term was "failure" and a quick search led to the biography of George W. Bush on the official White House website. This biography does not, of course, mention anything about failure, but the point is made as soon as the page loads. The president has been the subject of a number of Google bombs over time. This same biography was the result for: unelectable, miserable failure, worst president, and worst president ever. Failure has also been around, but seems to have made a resurgence as a result of the post-Katrina backlash. (It's interesting to note that this term has for its second result the website of the controversial filmmaker Micheal Moore. A little tennis match among partisans in the blogosphere.)

As the indispensable Wikipedia details, these pranks often correct themselves when they are picked up by the media and their stories explaining the phenomenon become the most linked-to items across the Web. For every "waffles", there is a "nigritude ultramarine" that becomes a has-been in the category. Some, though, like "failure" and "miserable failure" just keep cropping up.

Next time you see a search term across the top of Alexa's homepage that seems to have inexplicable popularity, it might be good for a chuckle.