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] and popular examples are, among others: ] and popular examples are, among others:
* - hoax, DNS Error look-a-like page saying "weapons of mass destruction cannot be found". * - hoax, Internet Explorer Error look-a-like page saying "weapons of mass destruction cannot be found".
* - hoax, Google look-a-like page saying "no results found for french military victories, did you mean french military ''defeats''?" * - hoax, Google look-a-like page saying "no results found for french military victories, did you mean french military ''defeats''?"
* - whitehouse.gov biography of ]. * - whitehouse.gov biography of ].

Revision as of 18:08, 6 April 2004


A Googlebomb is an attempt to influence the ranking of a given site in results returned by Google. Due to the way that Google's algorithm works, a website will be ranked higher if the sites that link to that page all use consistent text. Googlebomb is used both as a verb and a noun.

For example, if a user registers many domains and all of them link to a main site with the text "... is a living legend" then searching for "living legend" on Google will return the main site higher in the ranking, even if the phrase "living legend" doesn't appear on the main site. A common means of exploiting this is through weblogs, where although the entry may disappear from the main page quickly, the short-term effects of a link can dramatically affect the ranking of a given site. Empirical results indicate that it does not take a large number of websites to achieve a Googlebomb. The effect has been achieved with only a handful of dedicated weblogs.

The technique was first discussed on April 6, 2001 in an article by Adam Mathes. In that article, he coined the term "Google bombing" and explained how he discovered that Google used the technique to calculate page rankings. He found that a search for "internet rockstar" returned the website of Ben Brown as the first result, even though "internet rockstar" did not appear anywhere on Brown's webpage. He reasoned that Google's algorithm returned it as the first result because many fan sites that linked to Brown's website used that phrase on their own pages.

Mathes began testing his theory by setting out to make the website of his friend Andy Pressman the number one result for a query of "talentless hack". He gave instructions for creating websites and links to Pressman's website with the text of the link reading "talentless hack". Sure enough, as other webloggers joined in his Googlebombing campaign, Pressman's website became the number one result in a Google search for "talentless hack".

Recent and popular examples are, among others:

  • weapons of mass destruction - hoax, Internet Explorer Error look-a-like page saying "weapons of mass destruction cannot be found".
  • french military victories - hoax, Google look-a-like page saying "no results found for french military victories, did you mean french military defeats?"
  • great president - whitehouse.gov biography of George W. Bush.
  • litigious bastards - homepage of the SCO Group.
  • Jew - Misplaced Pages entry for the word Jew, in an effort to displace the #1 spot held by JewWatch, an anti-Semitic group.
  • Buffone - Silvio Berlusconi (Italian Prime minister) Biography. "buffone" is the Italian for "clown".

Best results are obtained when using the "I'm feeling lucky" button, which automatically redirects the user to the first result.

In some cases, the phenomenon has produced competing attempts to use the same search term as a Googlebomb. As a result, the first result at any given time varies, but the targeted sites will occupy all the top slots using a normal search instead of "I'm feeling lucky". Notable instances of this include failure and miserable failure. The primary targets have been the Bush biography above (as well as another biography of Jimmy Carter on the same site), Michael Moore's website at www.michaelmoore.com, and the Senate website of Hillary Clinton.

Google has defended its algorithms as simply a reflection of the opinion on the Web, saying that it is not damaging the overall quality of its services. Google has said it expects Googlebombing to return to obscurity and has dismissed it as "cybergraffiti" and just another internet fad.

Searching for miserabile fallimento (italian for "miserable failure") was returning Berlusconi biography, until the webmaster inserted this string "<meta name="googlebot" content="noindex, nofollow" /> " in that page so that google is not allowed to visit and index and return the page.


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