August 25, 2005

Google Manipulation

It's old news that a search for the word "failure" on Google returns the biography of President Bush as the first result. This works because numerous people have linked to that page using the words "Failure" or "Miserable Failure" as the link text.

Bush supporters, unable to think of something original, decided to counter this Google manipulation by using the same trick to push Michael Moore to the top of the search results for that same query. Currently, his webpage ranks second on the word "Failure". First of all, I find it funny that Bush supporters find Michael Moore to be their greatest enemy, and not an actual political figure who could actually have some real influence.

Anyway, even with this attack on Michael Moore, the Bush supporters have lost again, as I discovered today. By virtue of what is probably some server-side scripting on www.michaelmoore.com, whenever someone tries to visit the Michael Moore website from the Google "Failure" search results, it will redirect the user back to the website of George Bush. Hilarious!

3 comments:

  1. Well they also tried to put Jimmy Carter up there with Michael Moore, but that dropped off recently. lol

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  2. I thought it extremely clever. Moore's webmaster was able to check the referrer and if someone came to Moore's site via a search engine for miserable failure they got whacked.

    On a side note, Bush's biography is the top Google pick for just the word "failure."

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  3. It appears as if this has since been changed. Clicking on the Michael Moore link now actually goes to the Michael Moore page. Anyway, it was a fun little discovery while it lasted.

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