HILARIOUS proof that link-building works - Google Bombing!

[caskofdregs]

Some of you might remember when Googling 'miserable failure' had a #1 ranking - George Bush's website - a hilarious situation that was rectified by Google (according to them, not manually, but by an algorithmic change). If you search for 'miserable failure' now, you'll still find news articles about it.

Now, someone else has done it again!

Virulently anti-gay GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who once told the Associated Press that his problem lies not with homosexuals but “with homosexual acts,” told Politico he has contacted Google to ask that they remove links to sites that define his last name as “the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.”

A campaign led by sex columnist Dan Savage, launched in the aftermath of the homophobic comment noted above, resulted in the construction of the neologism, which has since climbed to the top of Google’s search results for the former Senator’s name both organically, and through google bombing techniques.


“I suspect if something was up there like that about Joe Biden, they’d get rid of it,” Santorum is quoted as saying. “If you’re a responsible business, you don’t let things like that happen in your business that have an impact on the country.”


A Google spokesperson said the search engine’s results were merely “a reflection of the content and information that is available on the web.” He told Politico that the company does not delete search results, adding that “[u]sers who want content removed from the Internet should contact the webmaster of the page directly.


Once the webmaster takes the page down from the web, it will be removed from Google’s search results through our usual crawling process.”

Just thought I'd share this today. The search term itself outranks the Wikipedia entry for Rick Santorum and his own official website, even. This will be interesting to dissect.

[xxxJamesxxx]

Haha funny

James Scholes

[JimmyR]

When I first heard about these things I was amazed and thought google has done it themselves haha. Turned out to be those damn IM'ers :P

[Matt.Lake]

I remember a few years back when I was new to IM and SEO... I was on some SEO forum and noticed a link in one of the posters signatures had the anchor text "muslim" also linked to George Bushes website.

At first I was a bit confused as to why but I soon understood