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Adam continued to explain the philosophy behind Googlebombs,
which was backriding on the philosophy of Google itself:
In a bizarre surreal bow to the power of perception on the
web, what you say about a page becomes just as important
as the actual content of the page. The page must be what
other people say it is. That Google adheres to this rule and
is by far the most effective search engine raises many
interesting issues, none of which I will attempt to discuss
or explicate.
Now Google is smart, simply having tons of the same links
with the same phrase on a single page will do nothing. It
requires a multitude of pages to have that link with specific
link text. But this power can be harnessed with a
concentrated group effort.
Adam was only interested in pulling off a prank – a political agenda
didn’t have anything to do with it. So, he urged his readers to
googlebomb his friend Andy Pressman with the words “talentless
hack.” And thus Googlebombs were born.
Of course, it didn’t stop there. Not only did Googlebombs work, they
were also becoming an effective tool in web propaganda.
“Weapons of mass destruction” was a Googlebomb criticizing the US
Iraq politics. Because when you searched for this phrase in Google and
hit the “I’m feeling lucky” button, the following page looked just like a
normal “Document not found” page. But if you were to look closely,
you noticed it read:
(A similar approach had been used as target for the words “Arabian
Gulf,” which returns a “The Gulf You Are Looking For Does Not
Exist. Try Persian Gulf ” message in the style of typical document-notfound
pages.)
Yet another politically motivated Googlebomb was for “French
military victories.” When you clicked “I’m feeling lucky,” the result
page looked just like Google itself, and – mimicking the Google
spelling suggestion tool – asked: “Did you mean: french military
defeats.” (In similar vein, another Googlebomb for “anti-war peace
protesters” suggested “Did you mean: anti-war violent protesters.”)
“Liar” was the word used in a Googlebomb against UK’s Prime
Minister. Entering it into Google brought you to a biography of Tony
Blair, who was also involved in the Iraq war and, like George Bush,
believed the reports on Weapons of Mass Destruction were accurate.
Tony Blair was also the target of a Googlebomb campaign trying to
connect the word “poodle” to him (it was less successful, but if you
restrict your search to UK sites only it might still return Blair’s
homepage today).
Ken Jacobson’s “waffles” campaign was a Googlebomb against United
States Senator and Presidential candidate in 2004, John Kerry, leading
to his official homepage. In response to that, Kerry supporters bought
advertisements on related Google search results urging searchers to
“read about President Bush’s Waffles.”
“Litigious bastards” was one of the more rude Googlebombs. Its
target? The SCO Group, infamous for its attempt to sue companies
like IBM and others who used Linux, as well as Linux users, and its
claim to own intellectual property rights to the Unix operating system.
As far as the campaign’s target goes, the Googlebomb was a success
and managed to propel the SCO homepage to a number 1 spot for the
phrase “litigious bastards.” As is the fate of many Googlebombs, this
one has disappeared by now due to search result rankings undergoing
constant changes.
“Buffone,” another Googlebomb, is Italian for “clown” and was trying
to make fun of Silvio Berlusconi, Italian Prime minister.
Today, there are simply too many Googlebombs around at any given
time to keep track of them all. Many people try to start new ones, and
only some are successful. Others manage to connect their target to the
search phrase they chose, but that isn’t always the hard part. In fact, for
many search phrases it’s trivial to make any page to be the top result in
Google; this is always the case when the phrase is not competitive.
However, it’s not as easy to get people to react on the Googlebomb, let
alone take notice. And even if people take notice, they might start to
counter-googlebomb, which then turns this into a rather meaningless
power game of which campaign attracts more followers to use link text
as needed.