An apt definition
Maybe this is old news to some of you, but I just recieved a forward that instructed me to do the following:
1- Go to www.google.com.
2- Type in failure.
3- Look at it the first listing and laugh at what comes up first.
4- Tell other people before the people at Google fix it.
So I did it. And this is what I found:
And that, my friends, is the power of the Internet. I’m not sure a better definition could be found.
Try it yourself, like the e-mail forward says, before Google fixes this.
(UPDATE: Thanks to frequent commenter Will we have a clear explanation for this — “Google Bombing”. And the best part? It’s never going to change.
From the Wikipedia entry:
A Google bomb or Googlewash is an Internet slang refering to a certain attempt to influence the ranking (called PageRank) of a given page in results returned by the Google search engine, often with humorous or political intentions. Due to the way that Google’s algorithm works, a page will be ranked higher if the sites that link to that page use consistent anchor text. A Google bomb is created if a large number of sites link to the page in this manner.
…
Google bombs often end their life by becoming too popular or well known: they typically end up being mentioned in multiple well-regarded web journals, which themselves then knock the bomb off the top spot. It is sometimes commented that Google bombing need not be countered because of this self-disassembly.
In addition, all major search engines make use of link analysis and thus can be impacted: a search for “miserable failure” on June 1, 2005 brought up the official George W. Bush biography number one on Google, Yahoo! and MSN and number two on Ask Jeeves. On June 2, 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: on January 6, 2006, Yooter reported that Tony Blair is now indexed in the US & UK versions of Google for the keyword ‘liar’.
The BBC, reporting on Google bombs in 2002, actually used the headline “Google Hit By Link Bombers,” acknowledging to some degree the idea of “link bombing.” In 2004, the Search Engine Watch site suggested that the term should be “link bombing” because of the impact beyond Google, and continues to use that term as it is considered more accurate.
Thanks Will!)