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 google bombs were the "Miserable Failure" google bomb linked to George W. Bush's White House 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 manipulate search engine rankings so that searches for "miserable failure" and "waffles" would return links to the particular targets of the groups trying to influence the search. Dropping Google Bombs, Sidener, Jonathan June 14, 2004 accesses August 9, 2006^[1]
At the end of 2006 Google altered its searching algorithm so that massive link farms are less effective, making search results less politically slanted..

Contents

First political Google bomb of George W. Bush

Conservative response

Google's response

First political Google bomb of John Kerry

Impact

Google's response

Notes

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

Conservative response

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).^[2]

Google's response

Google stated on their official blog:
On January 25, 2007 Google announced, via its official blog, that it had taken action to "minimize the impact of many Googlebombs." A search for "Miserable Failure" no longer displays a link to Bush's biography.^[3]

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. 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^[4] with text reading 'miserable failure', a relatively small number (possibly as few as 32) of website owners and bloggers were able to make the site appear as the first result when searching for miserable failure.
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.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..^[5]

Google's 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.^[6]
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 ^[7] 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 the "Did you mean: French Military Defeats" site. Many other notable googlebombs still exist.

Notes

1. Google Webmaster Central Blog
2. 'Miserable failure' links to Bush BBC News
3. Google's Official Blog
4. Biography of President George W. Bush
5. miserable failure loc: washington dc
6. Googlebombing 'failure'
7. 'Cheating' the search engines Spencer Kelly