Political Google Bombs In The 2004 U.S. Presidential Election
During the 2004 U.S. presidential election, Google bombs were used to further various political agendas. Two of the first were the "miserable failure" Google bomb linked to George W. Bush's White House biography and the "waffles" Google bomb linked to John Kerry's website. Supporters and detractors of the candidates were able to manipulate search engine rankings so that searches for "miserable failure" and "waffles" returned links to the targets' sites.
In 2006, Google altered its searching algorithm to make massive link farms less effective, making search results less politically slanted.
In 2009, President Barack Obama's official White House web site also appeared on the first few results for "miserable failure" on Live Search and Yahoo, and on the first page of results for the word "failure" on Google. The cause of this is disputed, with some claiming it to be the result of a similar campaign. Others believe it to be a result of URL redirection from the old White House site (under President Bush) to the site for President Barack Obama. Because the HTTP301 redirect indicates that the old page is permanently replaced by the new one, it also inherits all links to it and therefore the ranking for the same keywords.
Read more about Political Google Bombs In The 2004 U.S. Presidential Election: First Political Google Bomb of George W. Bush, First Political Google Bomb of John Kerry, Impacts, Google's Response
Famous quotes containing the words political, bombs, presidential and/or election:
“All over this land women have no political existence. Laws pass over our heads that we can not unmake. Our property is taken from us without our consent. The babes we bear in anguish and carry in our arms are not ours.”
—Lucy Stone (1818–1893)
“My God! The English language is a form of communication! Conversation isn’t just crossfire where you shoot and get shot at! Where you’ve got to duck for your life and aim to kill! Words aren’t only bombs and bullets—no, they’re little gifts, containing meanings!”
—Philip Roth (b. 1933)
“The Republican Vice Presidential Candidate ... asks you to place him a heartbeat from the Presidency.”
—Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965)
“Do you know I believe that [William Jennings] Bryan will force his nomination on the Democrats again. I believe he will either do this by advocating Prohibition, or else he will run on a Prohibition platform independent of the Democrats. But you will see that the year before the election he will organize a mammoth lecture tour and will make Prohibition the leading note of every address.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)