Have You Heard About The Google Bomb?
Surprised after reading a bomb named after the most popular search engine in the world?
Well Google hasn’t started production of explosives but Google bomb is name of a practice (or you can say a malpractice!) to make alterations in the results which you see after you type a search string on Google search engine. Adam Methes coined the term Google bombing and to your surprise the first Google bomb dates back to 1999 and at that time anyone who typed the search string ‘more evil than satan himself’ found Microsoft’s website on top of search results . Creation of Google bombs can have many motives which include political rivalries, pranks and self promotion.
Google bombing is closely related to spamdexing. Spamdexing means deliberately modifying HTML pages so that there are more chances of that website being placed on top of search results for a particular phrase. Spamdexing can be done in many ways, one of which is to posting unrelated phrases on website so as to modify the relevance of the resources indexed by a search engine. Search engines use many algorithms to display search results. Google uses 'PageRank algorithm' to determine the order in which search results are displayed. According to Google founders Lary page and Sergey Brin, who developed this algorithm, a particular web page is important if there are many links which lead to that web page. This makes sense because if a certain web page has good content about something then other web pages will have links to this page. Now, this algorithm certainly has many flaws one of which is link-farming which means linking to a particular web page without thinking of relevance so as to increase its PageRank . People make use of such flaws to create Google bombs. One of the most famous Google bomb is ‘’miserable failure” which displayed the official biography page of former American president Mr. George W. Bush as top result on the search engines: Yahoo, Google and MSN.
Here is an example:
![[IMG]](proxy.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.crazyengineers.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2011%2F02%2FGoogle_Bomb_Miserable_Failure.png&hash=511e26df4069ccec5d5a9c0046680df0)
Note: Image is the Screen capture of the search results for "Miserable failure" prior to Google altering their search algorithm. The top searched "miserable failure" Google Bomb was canceled out as of 8/21/08.
Well Google hasn’t started production of explosives but Google bomb is name of a practice (or you can say a malpractice!) to make alterations in the results which you see after you type a search string on Google search engine. Adam Methes coined the term Google bombing and to your surprise the first Google bomb dates back to 1999 and at that time anyone who typed the search string ‘more evil than satan himself’ found Microsoft’s website on top of search results . Creation of Google bombs can have many motives which include political rivalries, pranks and self promotion.
Google bombing is closely related to spamdexing. Spamdexing means deliberately modifying HTML pages so that there are more chances of that website being placed on top of search results for a particular phrase. Spamdexing can be done in many ways, one of which is to posting unrelated phrases on website so as to modify the relevance of the resources indexed by a search engine. Search engines use many algorithms to display search results. Google uses 'PageRank algorithm' to determine the order in which search results are displayed. According to Google founders Lary page and Sergey Brin, who developed this algorithm, a particular web page is important if there are many links which lead to that web page. This makes sense because if a certain web page has good content about something then other web pages will have links to this page. Now, this algorithm certainly has many flaws one of which is link-farming which means linking to a particular web page without thinking of relevance so as to increase its PageRank . People make use of such flaws to create Google bombs. One of the most famous Google bomb is ‘’miserable failure” which displayed the official biography page of former American president Mr. George W. Bush as top result on the search engines: Yahoo, Google and MSN.
Here is an example:
Note: Image is the Screen capture of the search results for "Miserable failure" prior to Google altering their search algorithm. The top searched "miserable failure" Google Bomb was canceled out as of 8/21/08.
Replies
You are reading an archived discussion.
Related Posts
Powertransformers are the backbone of any power system. Hyosung has been manufacturing power transformers with a very good quality for about 40 years. Let us have a look into the...
The amount of e-data being generated day by day is increasing at an enormous rate. So, to store this increasing amount of data, we got to provide more and more...
A Screw & Bolt is an integral part of every engineer's toolkit. Every hobby engineer needs them as well. Here's a simpler chart that gives you a quick view of...
If you are thinking of buying a brand new limousine just wait! You need to think over again. Because Xenatec in collaboration with Maybach launched a luxurious coupe model. The...
Biggest IT outsourcing and IT services company in India, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is all set to hire over 37000 engineering professionals this year which includes a large number of...