Happy First Birthday, Google Bomb Fix!

Short but sweet — one year ago today, a momentous event that must be
recalled. Google bombing was defused. George W. Bush was no longer a miserable
failure, and other mass link bombing attempts stopped working. For the most part,
the Google bombing fix that Google put into place seems to have continued
working. For those who don’t recall the story, the links below provide
background:

• Google Kills
  Bush’s Miserable Failure Search & Other Google Bombs (the fix goes up,
  plus the Google bombing story)
   
• George W. Bush: A
  Failure Once Again, According To Google (The White House uses the verboten
  word "failure" and starts ranking again)
   
• Google Declares
  Stephen Colbert As Greatest Living American (Despite the fix, Stephen
  Colbert uses super powers to get past it)
   
• Google Says
  Stephen Colbert Is No Longer The Greatest Living American (Google
  kryptonite brings Stephen crashing to earth)
   
• Man Arrested For
  Google Bombing Polish President Into Top Spot For "Kutas" (Penis) (Since
  it was all reported in Polish, it was hard to tell if this was Google bombing
  or not. But it was certainly headline grabbing!)

How about an update? Bush still doesn’t rank tops for miserable failure at
Google, but he does well elsewhere:

• Ask: Bush ranks number 1 for
  miserable failure
• Microsoft: Bush ranks number 3 for
  
  miserable failure
• Yahoo: Bush ranks number 1 for
  miserable failure

Keep in mind, Bush will have an end to his mockery when he leaves office, and
his successor will inherit the link bomb. Why? As my
article explains,
the White House tried to combat the bomb by killing off Bush’s standalone
biography page and redirected requests for it to the general page for US
presidents (not surprisingly, they never responded to several requests I made
for comment on the changes). Long after Bush leaves office, future US presidents
will rank tops for miserable failure because of this, unless they give some
serious thought to how redirections are currently handled.