Official Google Blog: Googlebombing ‘failure’ — If you type “failure” into the Google search engine you get the Biography of President Bush.This is as a result of Googlebombing as defined by Google below. I am not convinced that the company cannot tweak known trickery like this if it wanted to, especially since it’s blog entry (excerpted below) shows up on the page too. But who really cares? Does anyone? It’s a sight gag. Hohoho.
If you do a Google search on the word [failure] or the phrase [miserable failure], the top result is currently the White House’s official biographical page for President Bush. We’ve received some complaints recently from users who assume that this reflects a political bias on our part. I’d like to explain how these results come up in order to allay these concerns.
Google’s search results are generated by computer programs that rank web pages in large part by examining the number and relative popularity of the sites that link to them. By using a practice called googlebombing, however, determined pranksters can occasionally produce odd results. In this case, a number of webmasters use the phrases [failure] and [miserable failure] to describe and link to President Bush’s website, thus pushing it to the top of searches for those phrases. We don’t condone the practice of googlebombing, or any other action that seeks to affect the integrity of our search results, but we’re also reluctant to alter our results by hand in order to prevent such items from showing up. Pranks like this may be distracting to some, but they don’t affect the overall quality of our search service, whose objectivity, as always, remains the core of our mission.
A number of bloggers have suggested that this whole situation just proves that Google is no good and we are all doomed to have search engines that do not work. But who really cares what comes up when you type in the word “failure?” What kind of lamebrain search is that anyway? Cripes.
found by Mad Dog Mike
Does Clinton come up when you type “fellatio” or “blow job”
Uh, have you tried it, yourself?
The typing, that is.
I think it’s funny…
It was funny for a while but Google really ought to fix the issue if they can. It is interesting to note that the 4th result whe your Google “failure” is Michael Moore’s website.
How has Google failed here? I think the result that comes up when you search for ‘miserable failure’ is the best that could be asked for.
#5 Google has allowed it’s results to be hijacked by those that aren’t really providing information. Just because it happens to fit your political agenda matters not a bit.
Let’s say you don’t like MS. Do you think it would be ok if they allowed a Googlebomb to return Apple websites?
I’m surprised they havn’t fixed it because it shows just how their results can be screwed.
Actually, Google can deal with the question — and have done so in the past. Including one example I read here at DU.
Seems to me their collective chuckle about dubya the dumbo overrides other considerations.
This is a ho-hummer.
Before google came around the other major search engines posted paid listings as search results. I lost a great deal of respect for those search engines. I switched to Google for those very reasons. I like the fact that Google chooses not to meddle with search results in all but the most extreme cases.
The “failure” googlebomb is one of the most well known googlebombs. It’s publicity has made it more difficult to “tweak” to fix, because so many people contribute to the googlebomb. Check out the same search on Yahoo!.
Try typing “french military victories”. That is not a lame search, say if someone were searching for battles won by Napoleon. That phrase has been googlebombed to point to a silly fake Google page.
Google is becoming less and less useful as a search engine because of crap like this. Most Google searches now return pages and pages of crap that redirects to Ebay or some other profit-oriented click through site.
Try the same search on Yahoo and see what you get.
Do you remember when the other major search engines were paid by advertisers to get more promenient search results? Google came around and gave us search results with integrity. I applaud their integrity.
It’s a conspiracy of you left coast, hippy smelling, pinko, atheistic druggies. They’re just out to slander and besmear a great man, leader of the free world, and his honorable party.
Wait… I can’t even type this out as a joke. I’m laughing too hard. 🙂
If the most linked items for “miserable failure” is George Bush, why shouldn’t Google display that? I might be missing the point, but I thought a search engine was to point you to the piece of information? If the most links on the web for that phrase is George Bush, then I EXPECT Google to serve up that result. If it would be Bill Clinton, then I’d EXPECT Google to serve up that result. I don’t think this is Googlebombing. I think it is Google reflecting what is on the web. If those on the ‘right’ are mad about this, get your million pages linking “miserable failure” to who you think is the biggest ‘miserable failure’. Google is completely democratic in this regard.
Just FYI, as mentioned before, it does this on Yahoo and ALSO on MSN as well.
At least you get a non-commerce website. Whenever I’m trying to research a topic the first 3-4 pages of results are trying to sell me a product.
The internet has become one large shopping mall.
As Todd mentioned, Google is a very democratic search engine. It’s based on the amount of links to a certain page for that keyword. The problem as noted is that democracy doesn’t always give us the best result for a certain search. For example, type ‘french military victories’ into Google and look at the first result. Shouldn’t the top match for that particular search phrase be more, well, informative?
The bottom line is Google’s algorithms are more interested in showing what’s popular than what’s relevant.
John — I agree with you that “failure” is a lamebrain search. But how about “worst president ever”?
I wonder if the top people in government have something better than Google for searching for relevant information. You have to figure the NSA has been developing this stuff for decades without needing to please the public, marketing concerns or having a coolness factor. It’s strange that they would want Google data which is clearly based on popularity. If the government wants to know what people are searching for all they need to do is search Google. Unless there is something else involved. All the popular stuff is right there in front of you. Google could really make one guy more popular than the other guys. That’s a lot of power concentrated in one corporation. It’s a corporation, so it’s not democratic unless you are a shareholder. It’s like another country and nobody is poor. We are stuck with the poor, but that’s not the United States of Googles fault. Homeless people wouldn’t come up on the democratic Google site searching for failure. Google is totally political and has a lot of bullshit going for it. They’ll make more billions of dollars as the average working wages go down and pensions evaporate. Run little ads for your retirement gramps. Nothing corporate will be associated with ‘failure’ they are the master race. It’s all relevant, some more than the rest.
We’ve gone from group think to google think in ten years. All the hamburgers taste the same, all the beer tastes the same, all the music sounds the same. It’s a nice mathematically ordered world. Next they’ll outlaw dictionary sales on ebay, since the words don’t match Google searches. Include me out.
It’s 10:06 PM EST and here I am thinking how did the NSA become the devil and Google God. The way things are going a Google search of NSA is going to pull up images of hell with the lid lifted. I saw a good bumper sticker today.
United States Marine Corps-Travel Agents to Allah.
You’ll Google it and get Marines shooting babies in the head or something. It’s all apples and oranges and bananas and reading the bible.
***Does Clinton come up when you type “fellatio” or “blow job” ***
No, but if you yell “Bill!” doing your best Hillary imitation he does.
Does Clinton come up when you type “fellatio” or “blow job”
How many american soldiers have died because of Monica.s generosity of giving Bill head?
John:
“I am not convinced that the company cannot tweak known trickery like this if it wanted to…”
You’re right: Google can and does tweak, all the time. See this excerpt –
“They’re going to be OK. They got referred to the right places.”
“You can do that?”
“Yeah, well, I can see how the system responds. And if it doesn’t give the right information, I’ll find better sites and attach them for future queries.”
from http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.05/google.html?pg=2
(Inside the Soul of the Web: 24 hours watching the world look for answers at Google – Michael S. Malone)
I got up this morning and am out of coffee. I figured I’d fix myself some tea. I check the comments here and who do I find but Tea Man. It all makes you wonder what you are going to find next. Good luck finding it.
Google did a decent job of explaining the anomaly at the following link:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/googlebombing-failure.html
It’s the same old Garbage in, Garbage out that happens when someone knows the algorithm and exploits it to their own end.
I’m surprised that your other commenters didn’t figure this out.
Love the BLOG, and Cranky Geeks!
Best of the best
Stan