Real Estate Web Design - Information

Some unscrupulous website operators have adapted googlebombing techniques to spamdexing.

One such technique is the posting of links to a site in an Internet forum along with phrases the promoter hopes to associate with the site. Unlike conventional message board spam, the object is not to attract readers to the site directly, but to increase the site's ranking under those search terms. Promoters using this technique frequently target forums with low reader traffic, in hopes that it will fly under the moderators' radar. Wikis in particular are often the target of this kind of page rank vandalism, as all of the pages are freely editable.

Another technique is for the owner of an Internet domain name to set up the domain's DNS entry so that all subdomains are directed to the same server. The operator then sets up the server so that page requests generate a page full of desired Google search terms, each linking to a subdomain of the same site, with the same title as the subdomain in the requested URL. Frequently the subdomain matches the linked phrase, with spaces replaced by underscores or hyphens. Since Google treats subdomains as distinct sites, the effect of a large number of subdomains linking to each other is a boost to the PageRank of those subdomains and of any other site they link to.

As of 2 February 2005, many have noticed changes in the Google algorithm that largely affects, among other things, Googlebombs. As evidence of this, ponder that only roughly 10% of the googlebombs listed below work as of 15 February 2005. This is largely due to Google refactoring its valuation of PageRank, mostly in an effort to keep up with the encroaching result relevancy of the Yahoo and MSN search engines, which many people claim are not nearly as easy to "hack" as Google.

An example of Google bombing, 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 above has to be qualified, however. A handful of blog links will not Google bomb someone like Amazon.com out of the top results for "books," for example. In fact, Googlebombs have generally had an impact on relatively "non-competitive" terms, where there's no particular page that seems to be necessarily the right answer.

The technique was first discussed on April 6, 2001 in an article by Adam Mathes [1]. 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 a 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". (Ironically, by 2004, Mathes's own site was the number one Google result of this search term. As of 27 December, 2005, it remains first.)

However, the first Google bomb mentioned in the popular press may have occurred accidentally in 1999, when users discovered that the query "more evil than Satan" returned Microsoft's home page. Now, it returns links to several news articles on the discovery.

Ironically, Google bombs often end their life by being too popular or well known, thereby attaining a mention in well regarded web journals and knocking the bomb off the top spot. It is sometimes commented that Google bombing need not be countered because of this self-disassembly.

In addition, the entire notion of "Google bombs" might be better described as "link bombing," given that these campaigns can certainly have an effect on other search engines, as well. All major search engines make use of link analysis and thus can be impacted. So, a search for "miserable failure" on 1 June 2005 brought up the official George W. Bush biography number one on Google, Yahoo and MSN and number two on Ask Jeeves. On 2 June 2005 Yooter reported that George Bush is now ranked first for the keyword 'failure' as well as 'miserable failure' in both Google and Yahoo. And on September 16, 2005, Marissa Mayer wrote on Google Blog about the practice of Google bombing and the word "failure." (See Google's response below) Other large political figures have been targeted for Google bombs such as, Yooter reported on Jan 06, 2006, now Tony Blair is now indexed in the US version of Google for the keyword 'liar'

The BBC in reporting on Googlebombs in 2002 actually used the headline of "Google Hit By Link Bombers," acknowledging to some degree the idea of "link bombing." In 2004, the Search Engine Watch site said that the term should be "link bombing" because of the impact beyond Google and continues to use that term as more accurate.

Accomplished Googlebombs

Recent (as of 2005) and popular examples are: (IN GOOGLE TYPE THESE PHRASES )

• 1 returns the internet browser Mozilla Firefox as the top result. Also, searching for 0 returns Internet Explorer in the top results. If this is a Googlebomb, and not a mere coincidence, it would have likely been meant to convey that Mozilla Firefox is the #1 browser, while pointing out that Internet Explorer is worthless.
• "Arabian Gulf" - points to an error look-alike page saying that "the gulf you are looking for does not exist." The page links to the Wikipedia entry on the Persian Gulf, the correct English name for the body of water east of the Arabian Peninsula and south of Iran.
• Aweonao (chilean slang for asshole ) in the Google Image Search service shows chilean right-wing presidential candidate, Joaquin Lavín.
• Awful Announcer brings you to the official website of frequently criticized baseball color commentator Tim McCarver
• "bunch of luddites" - points to the homepage of the Motion Picture Association of America.
• Buffone - unofficial Silvio Berlusconi (Italian Prime Minister) biography. "buffone" is the Italian for "clown". As of 23rd November 2005 this is now 2nd in the list.
• buggy insecure browser used to return the download.com page for Internet Explorer. This was found to be particularly amusing when entered into the address bar of IE's competitor Firefox, which performed an "I'm Feeling Lucky" search that automatically took the user to that page. The download.com link has since slipped from the first few pages of results.
• Despota Cachaceiro used to return the website of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, about the polemic New York Times article.
• Failure - Points to the biography of George W. Bush at the official White House website; above Michael Moore's web site. The term Miserable Failure also leads to Bush's Biography.
• First against the wall - Used to return the Wikipedia entry on Karl Rove.
• Food Nazis - Points to "Center for Science in Public Interest" (which advocates strict regulatory oversight of genetically engineered foods).
• fuckwit used to return John Prescott who is Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He rose through the trade union movement from humble beginnings as a steward in the merchant navy, and is renowned for his straight-talking manner and general aura of incompetence.
• gastrointestinal dysentery returns Kres Chophouse & Lounge in Orlando, Florida, a restaurant that fired a server for blogging about work.
• Gladjakker ("smoothie") returns website of Camiel Eurlings, the leader of the Dutch Christian-Democrat fraction in the European Parliament.
• Great President points to the biography of George W. Bush at the official White House website.
• hell used to put Microsoft's homepage in the top spot. Searching for hell google microsoft returns reference to this.
• Ignorant Asshole returns the website of Cal Thomas. The reason was his column.
• ignorant bigots - returns the official page of Christian Voice, a fundamentalist Christian organisation in the UK.
• Insignifiant (French for "trivial"), returns the official page of Jean Charest, Premier of the province of Quebec, in Canada.
• International Sign for Choking in Google Images search use to yield the logo of the Philadelphia Eagles football team, shortly after their defeat in Super Bowl XXXIX. The same search recently showed a logo of the New York Yankees baseball team, in reference to their stunning ALCS loss to the Red Sox in 2004. (As of June 2005, neither of these results are returned)
• jämmerlicher Waschlappen (German for "miserable washcloth") returns the government page of Christoph Blocher, a Swiss Federal Council
• Jew - JewWatch, an anti-semitic website operated by Frank Weltner, a white power nationalist, currently is the number one hit when searching on Google.com for "Jew", perhaps because of its linking pattern. The Wikipedia entry replaced it for a short time following a Googlebombing campaign organized by Daniel Sieradski, editor of the blog Jew School. [4] [5] [6] Google added an explanation page entitled Offensive Search Results and placed it in the sponsored link section.
• kretyn (which means "cretin" in Polish) - returns the page with information about Polish politician Andrzej Lepper
• iznogoud (a character who wants to become number one) - Points to "Biographie - Nicolas SARKOZY".
• Ladrones (Spanish for "thieves") points to the homepage of SGAE, (Sociedad General de Autores y Editores), the Spanish equivalent of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The SGAE is an extremely unpopular association in Spain since they not only try to prosecute users of P2P applications, but also impose surcharges on the price of physical media such as recordable CDs in order to account for the theoretical losses due to P2P exchanges.
• liar on google.co.uk - returned Tony Blair, the UK Prime Minister, accused of misleading the public over weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. (as of 2005-12-30 Blair is back in first place, with the IMDB page for "Liar Liar" falling back into second place) He is also first in the world rankings at google.com on top.
• litigious bastards gives the homepage of the SCO Group, which initiated the SCO v. IBM lawsuit alleging copyright violation in the Linux kernel. bastards also worked.
• lying sack of shit Used to return the Parliamentary web page of Australian Federal Attorney General Phillip Ruddock. This bomb was suggested by weezil and executed by a number of Australian bloggers in protest of Ruddock's criticism of Mamdouh Habib
• lul (Dutch for 'dick') used to return the web page of the Belgian politician Hugo Coveliers on google.be, after which Coveliers went to the Federal Computer Crime Unit in Belgium.
• Miserabile fallimento - official Silvio Berlusconi (Italian Prime Minister) biography. "miserabile fallimento" is the Italian for "miserable failure".
• Miserable failure , miserable worst president and great president brings up the official George W. Bush biography from the US White House web site. Due to the search query of "miserable failure," the search terms miserable and failure (miserable failure combined) also point to the biography of George W. Bush, with Michael Moore ranking number two. Recently, they've added unelectable to point to the biography on the White House's homepage. Interestingly enough, www.unelectable.com also points to the same page, and is second in Google's Search for "unelectable." See also miserable failure. With the addition of Google Local and Maps, searching for the phrase in Washington DC provides George W. Bush as the first result.
• Mouton insignifiant (French for "trivial sheep") - returns the official page of Jean Charest, Premier of the province of Quebec, in Canada. It refers to his curly hair.
• National Disgrace - returns the official MLB biography of Bud Selig, commisioner of Major League Baseball. The Googlebomb was organized to highlight MLB's poor behavior in the process of moving the Montreal Expos to Washington, D.C. and their hard-line stadium lease negotiation tactics.
• Old Rice And Monkey Nuts returns the website of Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt. The phrase is an obscure reference to Tirath Khemlani, a Pakistani commodities trader who was involved in brokering an improbable US$4 billion loan deal to the Australian Government under Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in 1974. Khemlani was known derisively by his usual line of trade - rice and monkey nuts. As he was involved in commodities and not financial transactions as a rule, it was believed that Khemlani did not have access to the funds as he claimed but would attempt to oblige the Australian Government of the day to pay a huge commission for arranging the proposed loan. The bomb was perpetrated at the suggestion of Ausculture for reasons unknown.
• Opportunist - Links to the web site for the leader of the opposition in the UK.
• Out of Touch Executives - Used to lead to Google's own corporate information page. Out of Touch Management used to work as well.
• Pekeng Pangulo or "fake president" in Filipino returns the official page of Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
• Searching UK domains only for poodle gives you a link to a Tony Blair biography (dropped to sixth at one stage but has now returned to the #1 spot).
• populista (Slovak for "populist") - returns an official homepage of Robert Fico, a left-wing Slovak politician.
• purge princess brings up the Senate Campaign blog of Katherine Harris.
• ¿Quién quiere estafarnos? (Spanish for "Who wants to swindle us?") points to the homepage of Telecom, provider of phone and ADSL services in southern Argentina. This bombing was started at http://bombardeo.blogspot.com because of the company's announcement to limit download transfer to 4 GB per month (for 512 kbit/s connections).
• Raar Kapsel ("Weird Haircut" in Dutch) - Returns the biography of the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Jan Peter Balkenende, who is known for his distinctive hairstyle.
• Santorum - "Spreading Santorum," a campaign to ridicule Senator Santorum by naming a mixture of bodily substances after him (see Santorum controversy).
• Scottish Raj returns the website of Gordon Brown, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer. This googlebomb was initiated by The Campaign for an English Parliament news blog, whose author objected to Brown's calls for a renewed sense of Britishness and ambition to become UK Prime Minister when his native Scotland has its own parliament.
• swivel eyed loons returns the homepage of the UK Independence Party after the phrase - initially used to describe the party by blogger Anthony Wells - was adopted by several British bloggers.
• terrorist sympathizer returns the homepage of Bill O'Reilly, in reference to his comment that "every other place in America is off limits to [terrorists], except San Francisco." Initiated by DailyKos.
• Totalt fiasko - official Göran Persson (Swedish Prime Minister) biography. "totalt" is Swedish for "miserable failure".
• Velky bratr (Czech for "Big Brother") - returns a biography of Stanislav Gross, the Prime Minister of Czech Republic.
• völlige Inkompetenz (in eng. "total incompetence") returns the homepage of Karl-Heinz Grasser, the Austrian minister of finance.
• Waffles - Used to lead to John Kerry's 2004 election site, originated here. A play on Kerry's opponents' accusations that he routinely changed back and forth (or "waffled") between various political positions as convenient.
• Weapons of mass destruction - Internet Explorer Error look-alike joke page saying "weapons of mass destruction cannot be found". (Note: as of 1 December 2004, the joke page, although still available at [7], had fallen to 20th place in the Google search result.)

• Similarly, Armas de destruccion masiva , Spanish for "Weapons of mass destruction", gives a Spanish version of the page above.

• Ληστές , (Greek for "thieves") links to OTE, the Greek Telecommunications Organization. This is the result of a mass blogger protest against OTE's abusive charges.
• French Military Victories returns a page similar to a Google error message done by albinoblacksheep.com making a political statement about France
• ψεύτες , (Greek for "liars"). After the "thieves" the "liars", links to New Democracy, a center-right wing Greek polical party that is in the goverment of Greece at present.
• Miserable , (Spanish for "miserable") links to Official Biography of ex-minister Angel Acebes.