Worst failure ever on Google

Official White House Portrait

"Worst failure ever", when placed into Google as a search term, takes you to, as the first result, President Obama's page at the White House site. This really seems a little harsh given that he's only been in office 6 months but then that's the political game for you. Mockery of one's opponents is not just allowed but expected.

The technique used to do this is known as "Google Bombing". It uses a trick in the system to associate a particular page with a particular phrase and it's at the heart of the way that Google itself works. As an example, if we link to the President's page with the phrase "worst ever failure" then Google will associate the page we've linked to, the President's one, with the phrase "worst ever failure". Essentially what has been happening over the last couple of days is that hundreds, if not thousands, of Republican websites have been linking in this manner. In fact, there are two phrases that appear to work "worst failure ever" and "worst ever failure". This thus makes Google think that the President's page is very important indeed for the phrase "worst ever failure" and of "worst failure ever", so much so that it is the first result for either.

The thing is though, this form of Google Bombing is supposed to no longer be possible. Your humble reporter was the instigator of an earlier Google Bomb about a British politician (you can find it halfway down this page of bombs, it's the one that associates the word "f***wit" with the Deputy Prime Minister of the day, although it has to be said that it wasn't done for the reason given there. John Prescott had decided that the way to solve a shortage of housing was to knock houses down, activity worthy of the accolade.) and as a result of that and several others of the same vintage the Google algorithm was supposedly changed. The use of such anchor text would only work if the anchor text actually appeared on the target page. Thus using Britney Spears as anchor text to point to a page mentioning Britney Spears would work, "worst ever failure" to a page that did not have that phrase on it would not.

However, the success of this attempt to link the phrase "worst failure ever" with the President's page would seem to indicate that the algorithm was not changed in this manner: indeed, it makes it likely that the failure of previously successful Google Bombs was to do with manual tweaking of the search results rather than a systemic change. Given that it is currently Sunday, expect the result to disappear tomorrow, when Google all get back into the office. Until then, enjoy: whether you think that the description of the President is accurate or not is one thing, but it's still possible to enjoy the mischief making either way, no?