Google Bombs are a thing of the past

[IDemo]

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/?p=459

After years of dismissing them as an annoyance, the practice of "Google bombing" shouldn't be happening much anymore according to Matt Cutts. They weren't high priority because the queries that trigger them are typically "off the beaten path" and normally wouldn't be stumbled upon by accident.

But that mentality has changed as Google began realizing there were more and more people actually thinking the results for these queries reflected Google's beliefs. The engineers at Google are testing out a new algorithm that should curb the effect of a Google Bomb — and it seems to be working already.

One of the most famous Google bombs is (was) "miserable failure". Up until today, searching for that phrase in Google would give you the biography of George Bush on the official White House website.

What changes to the algorithm did they make though? By the sounds of it, sites that talk about the Google bombs will be returned more frequently than the bomb itself — could that mean sites linking to Google result pages might be weighted a bit heavier now?

[ThatsMyBarack]

1. That's too bad.

Some of that shit was hysterical.

[northzax]

2. well, just testing 'miserable failure'

not even in quotes, gets you pages of discussions about that same google bomb...

[Breeze54]

3. Try 'impeach bush' ....

Results 1 - 10 of about 1,750,000 for impeach bush. (0.05 seconds)

[Ian David]

4. Well, at least "Santorum" is working. n/t