Re: [ga] googlebombing

[rbhauptman@xxxxxxx]

Thank you for the kind and reasonable message.
 
I still think it is appropriate, because it is clear that Mr. Bush is both a failure and a miserable failure. His poll numbers have now dipped below 39%.  Not only isn't he Presidential timber, but he led the United States into a War based on lies, deception, and malice.
 
I don't condone the manipulation of the Internet either, but it is good to see that at least our webmasters are on to him.  And the public is not far behind.
 
Rick Hauptman
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: kidsearch <kidsearch@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Mon, 17 Oct 2005 19:44:32 -0400
Subject: [ga] googlebombing


If you do a Google search on the word failure or the phrase miserable failure, the top result is currently the White House?s official biographical page for President Bush. 
 
We've received some complaints recently from users who assume that this reflects a political bias on our part. I'd like to explain how these results come up in order to allay these concerns. Google's search results are generated by computer programs that rank web pages in large part by examining the number and relative popularity of the sites that link to them. By using a practice called googlebombing, however, determined pranksters can occasionally produce odd results. 
 
In this case, a number of webmasters use the phrases [failure] and [miserable failure] to describe and link to President Bush's website, thus pushing it to the top of searches for those phrases. We don't condone the practice of googlebombing, or any other action that seeks to affect the integrity of our search results, but we're also reluctant to alter our results by hand in order to prevent such items from showing up. Pranks like this may be distracting to some, but they don't affect the overall quality of our search service, whose objectivity, as always, remains the core of our mission.
 
Chris McElroy, President Kidsearch Network missingkids@xxxxxxxxx http://www.kidsearchnetwork.org http://www.missingchildrenblog.com http://www.disastervictims.org