I’d thought the googlebombs relating to “miserable failure” and “failure” had finally been defused earlier this year. Guess not. Ranking tops in Google right now, the official White House page for US President Barack Obama:

I’ve not heard of any active campaign to linkbomb Obama to the top for these words, so I’m guessing this is fallout from the long-standing “miserable failure” googlebomb that was impacting his predecessor, President George W. Bush.

Below, some key background from our archives:

Google Kills Bush’s Miserable Failure Search & Other Google Bombs from January 2007 provides detailed background on what googlebombing or linkbombing is. In short, it’s a campaign to linking to a particular page with certain words, in hopes of making the page rank for those words. That article also explains how Bush’s biography was bombed into the top results for “failure” and “miserable failure,” until Google put in a solution designed to disable all types of linkbombs (they weren’t trying to help Bush specifically).

Google Says Stephen Colbert Is No Longer The Greatest Living American from May 2007 explains how Google’s solution had a flaw. Rather than running automatically, it required that Google periodically run a linkbomb defusing algorithm. Or so Google said. Some simply felt that the “algorithm” was nothing more than Google making manual edits to remove new bombs, when detected.

Bush – Tops For “Who Is A Failure” On Google from February 2008 shows that Bush was ranking again for a “failure” related query, “who is a failure.” It turns out that this wasn’t a new thing. It was a consequence of earlier “miserable failure” linkbomb that hadn’t been detected, apparently — where changing the order of the words or adding a few more could trigger the bomb to blow up again.

Obama Is “Failure” At Google & “Miserable Failure” At Yahoo from January 2009 shows how Obama inherited the “failure” and “miserable failure” googlebombs from Bush, in part because Obama’s web team redirected visitors looking for Bush’s biography to Obama’s.

That was fixed, and the rankings went away. I’m not sure how long the “who is failure” search has been ranking Obama on Google. It’s puzzling, because his page is isolated from those past Bush links now. A quick rundown on rankings for key terms across the search engines makes things more puzzling:

Google: “Failure,” “miserable failure” and “who is a failure” bring up neither Bush nor Obama in the top 50 results, but “who is failure” ranks Obama #1.

Ask: “Failure” doesn’t find Bush or Obama in the top 50 result. For “miserable failure,” Bush ranks #45. For “who is a failure,” neither ranks. For “who is failure,” Obama ranks #1, as with Google.

Bing: For “failure,” the Bush bio ranks #2 for me. It ranks #3 for “miserable failure.” It ranks #2 for “who is a failure” and “who is failure.”

Yahoo: For “failure,” Bush ranks #11. Bush ranks #5 for “miserable failure.” His bio ranks #16 for “who is a failure.” For “who is failure,” neither Bush nor Obama rank in the top 50 results.

Overall, Bush continues to show up for failure-related terms other than at Google and Ask. With Ask, I suspect this is because they’re taking some of Google’s editorial results. Ask has denied this in the past. But Ask has also prided itself on how in the past, it stood above the other search engines by not showing the same linkbombs that would often appear elsewhere.

So if Bush is the failure based on link analysis but everyone else (or at least Google’s two largest rivals), what’s up with Google? Why’s this happening? Perhaps there’s new link data out there influencing Obama’s page?

Alternatively, it might be something that Ciarán Norris pointed out the last time I wrote about this. There’s still a link that might be transmitting “failure” credit that was aimed at Bush to Obama, at least in how Google counts things.

This was the page that originally was bombed:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html

It now does a 301 permanent redirect to this page:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/georgewbush/

Without the technical jargon, that means if anyone “calls” that original page, they get forwarded automatically to the new location — and search engines are told to transfer anything they know about the old page to the new one.

Unfortunately, in 2006, that “gwbbio.html” was also temporarily redirected here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/

That page now does a 301 redirect here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/president-obama/

My assumption is that some people who wanted to googlebomb Bush used the post-2006 “/president” address, which is still causing problems today for Obama, just as I was expecting might happen:

Of course, they [the Bush White House] had to do a redirect. Too many people had bookmarked the former address of the biography. But rather than redirect to the new biography page, they choose to point at the page used by all US presidents — Bush currently, Obama next and future presidents to come.

Aside from turning Bush’s search engine problem into a legacy issue for future presidents, the change is also misleading the US public and others. The redirection from the old bio page should lead to the new bio page, not require those using old bookmarks to guess at where the new location is at.

What to do? In looking at my past writings, I realize I never addressed how to handle that “/president” page myself. I don’t think I was expect it to carry much link weight versus the original URL that has been out there so long.

The original page redirects to Bush’s bio, as it should. It might be that it does make sense to keep that “/president” page pointing at whoever is the current sitting president. And they might be forced to inherit whatever linkbombs hit their predecessor in the past.

I told you so. Or I told anyone who cared. I even tried to reach the Obama administration in four or five different ways. Do a search on Yahoo right now for miserable failure, and you’ll find President Barack Obama’s page ranking either in the top spot or the second spot. Given a redirect that Obama’s web team has put into place, he should solidify into that number one spot over time. Eventually, Microsoft’s Live Search should reflect that, as well. And over at Google, Obama will likely gain a top page listing for a search on failure.

I know. There are bigger issues Obama has to deal with. But then again, this is supposed to be the tech-savvy presidency. It should be search engine optimization savvy, as well.

What happened? If you want the long version, see my Bush: Fix Your “Miserable Failure” Googlebomb Legacy Before Obama Takes Office article from earlier this month. It documents how people “Googlebombed” George W. Bush’s biography to rank tops for searches on “miserable failure” at Google and other search engines.

Bush’s web team tried to kill that bomb by redirecting any request for Bush’s biography to a page for all US presidents. I had a slight hope that when the new White House site went up, the bomb might permanently be defused because of how the site was failing to redirect requests for many pages properly (for more on the new White House site’s issues with redirection, see my follow-up article, Despite Inauguration, Google & Others Still Think It’s President Bush, Not President Obama plus Vanessa Fox’s article Making Site Architecture Search-Friendly: Lessons From whitehouse.gov).

Well, they’re redirecting now. Any request for Bush’s old biography that was here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html

is now being redirected to Obama’s biography here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/president_obama/

For the real tech nerds out there, the redirect is a 301 “permanent” one, which means the White House is explicitly telling search engines that the old Bush biography has now been permanently replaced by Barack Obama’s page.

As a result, Obama now inherits all the links containing anchor text with the words “miserable failure” in them. IE, all those links are acting as votes saying that Obama should rank well for those words.

Ugh. Over at Google, almost exactly two years ago, they put in a fix to solve the Googlebombing issue. That dropped Bush out of the top results for those two words (and thus is still keeping Obama out), but then he came back up for the single word failure. That seemed down to Bush’s brief use of the word “failure” on the page (George W. Bush: A Failure Once Again, According To Google explains this more), and once the word was no longer used, it stopped ranking for it — at least until recently.

I noticed earlier this month that the Bush page was once again ranking for “failure,” even though Google’s Googlebomb fix was supposed to prevent this. I never heard back from Google after contacting them informally about why this was happening. And it’s still going on:

Notice how Google is still reporting that the page is about Bush, listed in position three. That’s because it has yet to process the redirect. Because that page redirects to Obama’s page, as with Yahoo, it’s going to inherit all the failure love.

I’m glad the White House has put redirects in place. As I pointed out, the lack of them meant many people trying to find biographies of past presidents such as George Washington were going to get errors. And it’s understandable that it would take them some time to get them in place. My assumption is that on Inauguration Day, the old site was completely removed and the new prebuilt site was installed, with the redirects being something they figured they’d quickly process in the coming days. (Plus, consider the technological “dark ages” they’re found after moving into the White House).

Still, the redirect they are doing is hurting Obama plus not helping those who are still trying to find Bush’s biography where it actually lives. So repeating myself from what I said earlier this month, here’s what should happen:

First:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html

Should be 301 redirected here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/georgewbush/

That will fix the bomb. More important, that’s where Bush’s biography is actually located. There are people who linked to the old address for his biography for non-political reasons. They should be redirected to the correct location.

Next, this page:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/biography.html

was where Bush’s biography moved to when his staff tried to solve the bomb. Rather than point at Obama’s page (as it does now), it should point to this page for all US presidents:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/

The good news is that doing this shouldn’t cause the page for all US presidents to suffer the past Googlebomb. In addition, anyone who bookmarked Bush’s biography under this generic URL can still find it as part of a list of all US presidents.

In other news, I’d earlier covered how the White House wasn’t using the NOODP tag, which meant that Google was listing the White House home page in some cases as if Bush was still in office. The White House still hasn’t made use of that tag, but after Google noticed the issue, they fixed it on their end.

Meanwhile, Yahoo is finally reflecting the new occupant of the White House in its own listings. That leaves Microsoft as the last of the major search engines to still think Bush is in office there:

After two days, I’d have expected Microsoft to have recrawled the home page and reflect an updated listing by now. I’m pretty sure it won’t be much longer until that’s fixed.

Meanwhile, if the White House would like to learn more about redirection, I’d highly recommend attending our 301 Redirect, How Do I Love You? Let Me Count The Ways session at SMX West, Search Engine Land’s search marketing conference running from Feb. 10-12. I’d even be happy to provide a ticket, subject to whatever government rules allow :)

Postscript: As noted in the comments below, a new Googlebomb more positive for Obama is now happening, where he’s ranking for cheerful achievement (see here and here for more)

Postscript 2 (Jan. 23, 7:30am Pacific): As predicted, Obama’s page is now ranking number one for failure at Google:

Postscript 3 (Jan. 23, 8:30am Pacific): Microsoft is now showing an updated description for the White House home page that reflects Obama being in office.

Postscript 4 (Jan. 23, 2:30pm Pacific): Related coverage is begining. See Techmeme, the Wall Street Journal, MediaPost, UPI, the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times.

Postscript 5 (Jan. 23, 3:50pm Pacific): Obama no longer ranks for “failure” on Google. The White House hasn’t changed anything. The link data that Google has been using to rank the Bush page — data inherited by Obama’s page — hasn’t changed. So the Googlebomb fix for this that hasn’t worked since earlier this month just happens to kick in a few hours after I post this article? That’s going to kick off another round of questioning over how “automated” that fix really is, as happened when Stephen Colbert briefly ranked for greatest living american.

Postscript 6 (Jan. 26, 8am Pacific): Google’s Matt Cutts has blogged on an official Google blog and his own blog about the issue, saying:

We do two different things — both of them algorithmic — to handle Googlebombs: detect Googlebombs and then mitigate their impact. The second algorithm (mitigating the impact of Googlebombs) is always running in our productionized systems. The first algorithm (detecting Googlebombs) has to process our entire web index, so in most typical cases we tend not to run that algorithm every single time we crawl new web data. I think that during 2008 we re-ran the Googlebomb detection algorithm 5-6 times, for example….

The defusing algorithm is running all the time, but the algorithm to detect Googlebombs is only run occasionally. We re-ran our algorithm last week and it detected both the [failure] and the [cheerful achievement] Googlebombs, so our system now minimizes the impact of those Googlebombs. Instead of a whitehouse.gov url, you now see discussion and commentary about those queries.

Reasonable enough, and Google’s said similar things before when new Googlebombs have emerged, then disappeared after attention.

But why did the “failure” Googlebomb come back? In comments on his blog, Matt wrote:

What happened there is we re-ran our algorithm in December 2008, and at that time the detection algorithm didn’t flag [failure] as a Googlebomb. We don’t claim that our detection algorithm is 100% perfect; for example, that can happen because the link structure of the web does change over time, as does how we crawl the web.

Over at Microsoft, neither the old Bush page nor the new Obama page are now ranking for miserable failure. The Bush page had been ranking for that. Why this no longer happens is unclear.

Postscript 7 (Jan. 30, 2pm): Just noticed that the White House now has implemented redirects as I suggested above. That means I’d expect to see the Obama bio drop for searches on “miserable failure” at Yahoo and Microsoft, where it currently shows (yes, it started again at Microsoft). When? I’d guess between a week and a month.

Postscript 8 (Feb 12, 11pm): Yahoo now shows Bush’s biography as number one for miserable failure, in place of where Obama was showing. At Microsoft, once again, neither the Bush or Obama pages are now ranking at all.

Few realize that outgoing US president George W. Bush has left behind a unique legacy for future presidents, including Barack Obama — that they are all condemned to rank tops for a search on “miserable failure” in major search engines. It’s my hope that Bush will correct this before leaving office, or that Obama will fix it soon after he’s inaugurated. Below, more about the situation and how it could be solved.

Google Kills Bush’s Miserable Failure Search & Other Google Bombs is my article from January 2007 that covers the history of how it came to be that for many years, a search for miserable failure on Google would bring up the official George W. Bush biography. This was due to a “Googlebomb” where many people had linked to his biography using those words in their links.

Didn’t Google fix all that? And if it’s Bush’s biography, how does that impact other US presidents?

Yes, the miserable failure “Googlebomb” was fixed at Google. However, should any future administration ever use either the words “miserable” or “failure” on the US president’s home page, there’s a good chance that page will start ranking tops again for searches like “failure” or “miserable” or even “miserable failure.” Using those words effectively overwrites Google’s “fix” for Googlebombs. My George W. Bush: A Failure Once Again, According To Google article from April 2007 covers this in more detail and illustrates how Bush ended up back at the top of Google despite its Googlebomb solution.

Meanwhile, the two other major search engines, Yahoo and Microsoft, continue to rank Bush tops.

From Yahoo, miserable failure:

And miserable failure at Microsoft Live Search:

Fair to say, the problem isn’t gone. It remains a lurking threat at Google; it’s an active issue at Yahoo and Microsoft. But how does this impact future presidents? Isn’t this Bush’s biography we’re talking about?

Yes, it is Bush’s biography. But in an inept attempt to defuse the Googlebomb, someone in Bush’s White House moved his biography to the page used by the current US president. That means when Bush goes, the next US president (Obama) inherits the problem.

Here’s how it happened. When the Googlebomb campaign started back in December 2003, people were told to use the words “miserable failure” and link to Bush’s biography here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html

That page started ranking tops for “miserable failure,” and in September 2006, the White House appears to have had enough. They moved his biography to a new page here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/biography.html

As for the old page, it was removed and any requests for it were “redirected” to the main page for the current US president here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/

I think those behind this thought killing the old page would break the bomb. It might have, if they hadn’t redirected requests for the old page to a new location.

Of course, they had to do a redirect. Too many people had bookmarked the former address of the biography. But rather than redirect to the new biography page, they choose to point at the page used by all US presidents — Bush currently, Obama next and future presidents to come.

Aside from turning Bush’s search engine problem into a legacy issue for future presidents, the change is also misleading the US public and others. The redirection from the old bio page should lead to the new bio page, not require those using old bookmarks to guess at where the new location is at.

Here’s the solution. First, all past US presidents have their own biography pages on the White House site, URLs that typically end using the president’s initials and which “number” president they were. For example, George Washington, the first US president:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/gw1.html

Ronald Reagan, the 40th president:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/rr40.html

Bush, being the 43rd president, should have a URL like this:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/gb43.html

I don’t understand why he hasn’t had this page all along. As I’ve covered, he did have a unique page originally that ended “gwbbio.html.” The generic “biography.html” page never existed before September 2006. In other words, there’s no long history of the current US president having their biography on a generic page that eventually will be used by other presidents. Instead, it’s entirely a creature that came out of trying to combat the Googlebomb.

My recommendation — my hope — is this.

First, that Bush’s biography immediately be moved to a new page here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/gb43.html

Second, change the redirect in place on this old page:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html

It should point at the new page, as a “permanent” redirect. Technical note: stop using a fast meta refresh to do this. Google still seems to treat that as a 301 permanent redirect, while Microsoft and Yahoo seem to treat it as a 302 temporary redirect (see A Short Case Study on Redirects: 301s vs. 302s for more about the differences).

Third, kill this generic biography page:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/biography.html

Instead, redirect that to the main page for all US president biographies here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/

Why? Because while I personally like Obama, voted for him and am pretty positive about his future, if he screws up, I don’t want future US presidents to suffer Googlebombs. Obama’s bio should be on its own standalone page from the start, using the regular URL naming convention:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/bo44.html

Here’s hoping we’ll see some fast action. If you know someone in either administration, please spread the word.

Postscript: I’ve just noticed today that for a search on failure, the US President’s home page currently ranks in the top results:

Google’s Googlebomb fix is supposed to prevent this from happening, as long as the word “failure” doesn’t appear on that page. I don’t see the word there, either currently or in the copy of the page that Google made as part of its search process.

However it happened, it underscores why Bush should stop redirecting requests for his old biography to the current presidential home page. He leaves that page with a legacy of ranking for failure.

Chris Bowers is trying to push in certain articles into the Google search results for a search on [john mccain]. His goal is to “Google Bomb” these articles into the search results before Labor Day. ComputerWorld has a write up on his efforts. But as Danny described in the past, this type of Google Bomb is likely something that Google cannot fix.

There are nine articles Bowers is trying to Google Bomb to the top of the Google search results. Here is a listing of them and where they currently rank now for searches on both [john mccain] and [mccain].

(1) John McCain Votes to Filibuster Minimum Wage Hike : 34th result for [john mccain] and 33rd result for [mccain].

(2) McCain economic policy shaped by lobbyist : 77th result for [john mccain] and 66th result for [mccain].

(3) Bush, McCain plug Social Security : 104th result for [john mccain] and 34th result for [mccain].

(4) McCain blasts Obama’s and Clinton’s attacks on NAFTA : not found for [john mccain] and 44th result for [mccain].

(5) McCain in NH: Would Be “Fine” To Keep Troops in Iraq for “A Hundred Years” : 21st result for [john mccain] and 85th result for [mccain].

(6) McCain: Bush right to veto kids health insurance expansion : 42nd result for [john mccain] and not found for [mccain].

(7) Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition : 62nd result for [john mccain] and 39th result for [mccain].

(8) McCain says overturn the law that legalized abortion : not found for [john mccain] and not found for [mccain].

(9) McCain Defends Bush’s Iraq Strategy : 27th result for [john mccain] and 27th result for [mccain].

Please understand that for all searches I had personalized search off. Also note that Google’s search results are frequently changing in placement for many reasons. In this case, relevant results for John McCain are constantly being included in Google’s index, which may change placement for these results. Plus, as news sites add more stories about the same individual, Google may remove or indent some of those results.

Having said that, Google has been working to address the Google Bomb issue. In the classic George Bush example, the word ‘failure’ was not on the page. But in these cases, John McCain’s name is on the page – so it will be hard for Google to drop out these results in a Google Bomb.

For years, US President George W. Bush was tops on Google for searches on miserable failure until last year’s Googlebomb "fix" solved his problem on Google. But Bush is back, sort of. People are spotting that Bush’s official White House page is ranking tops for who is a failure on Google.

A new Googlebomb? If so, I’ve not seen any reports of people pushing to make this happen. My bet is that all those links out there with anchor text saying "failure" in them are making him come up for a variety of terms combined with "failure." And in fact, he looks to have been ranking this way for some time. (Note: initially I myself thought this was new, then a few minutes after posting, I tried a new search on Google that found evidence of it being long-standing, so I quickly adjusted this write-up).

Michael Gray noted something similar to me last month when we were talking about the anniversary of the Googlebomb fix on the Daily SearchCast. Stephen Colbert might have had his greatest living american Googlebomb defused, but switch the words around – living american greatest — and you get him.

Similarly, Bush currently ranks for a variety of queries that use words on his page along with "failure," which does not appear:

• white house failure
• oval office failure
• state of the union failure

Going back to the "who is a failure" search, one weird thing about it is the description that comes up for Bush’s page:

Article from Encarta Encyclopedia provides an overview of Bush’s life.

That description is not actually on Bush’s page. Instead, the page has a meta description tag saying:

The Oval Office contains speeches and statements of President Bush, a description of policy priorities, biographies, and photo essays.

For some reason, Google decided to ignore the meta description tag and instead go with the description of the page from the Open Directory Project as more relevant. Bad choice.

You’ll find the page listed at the ODP here. That listing incorrectly identifies Bush’s page as being an article from Encarta. The White House might want to consider using the NOODP meta tag to prevent this from happening.

You might recall the effectiveness of Google’s link bomb fix was questioned at the end of January, when the Church Of Scientology started ranking for dangerous cult. See Scientologists Google Bombed Or Not? for more background about that. In the comments to that story, you can see that it was indeed something that happened through a recent, active campaign.

The page no longer ranks — though the word "dangerous" still exists on it – so some may believe that Google simply finally made a manual addition to the list of Googlebomb "fixes" that they believe it keeps.

For its part, Google repeatedly and consistently says that Googlebombs are defused on an entirely automated basis. When I asked them about the Scientology case and why it seemed to get through at the time, Google emailed back:

Nearly a year ago, we developed an algorithm that minimizes the impact of many link bombs, or Googlebombs. It is important to note, however, that some of the detection components of this algorithm don’t run every day because Googlebombs are relatively rare.

Again, this is what Google has said before — that every so often, they run this clean-up process to find link bomb out there. But in the case of Bush, it would be odd for "who is a failure" to get defused, since no one appears to have created a pattern of linkage to make that happen in the first place — and it’s already been out there for so long.

For more background on Bush and Googlebombs, see these past stories:

• Google Kills Bush’s Miserable Failure Search & Other Google Bombs
• George W. Bush: A Failure Once Again, According To Google
• Happy First Birthday, Google Bomb Fix!

Just days after the one-year anniversary of Google’s Google bomb fix, a new Google bomb may have gotten through — dangerous cult, bringing up the Scientology web site, as shown above. But is it really getting past the fix? Considering one of the targeted words is being used on the page itself, it’s hard to say.

Both WebProNews and Google Blogoscoped have short stories on the listing. But as I noted in comments at WebProNews, the fix was designed to prevent pages from being Google bombed to the top if they do NOT use the words they are being bombed for on them.

For example, “miserable failure” is the classic Google Bomb that used to bring the US White House page on President George W. Bush to the top of the listings on Google. The Google Bomb fix of last year stopped that. But a few weeks later, the White House made use of the word "failure" on Bush’s page — putting him back on top with Google.

George W. Bush: A Failure Once Again, According To Google explains more about what happened. The key thing is that Bush only ranked for the single word "failure" when this happened, not for "miserable failure."

That brings us to the Scientologist page. It uses the word "dangerous" down at the bottom, as highlighted below:

It could be that the fix isn’t working since at least one of the words appears. That would go against the situation with what was seen with Bush, however. Still, the doubt gives Google wiggle room.

As for "cult," that only appears in links pointing at the page, as Google says if you view a cached copy of it:

See the section highlighted in red. It tells you that the word "dangerous" does appear on the page but that "cult" only appears in links pointing at it.

So, Google bombing in action? Another difficulty is that no one so far has said who, when, or even if there was a suggestion that many people start linking this way. Moreover, there are no doubt long-time critics of Scientology that may have been naturally describing it this way in linkage.

If it IS a Google bombing attempt, how widespread is it? Very hard to tell. This search, linkdomain:scientology.org "dangerous cult", tells you there are only 347 pages according to Yahoo that link to the Scientology home page and use that exact phrase. But then again, maybe not. If you actually go and look at some individual pages after doing this, despite telling Yahoo to do a phrase search, it clearly ignores that instruction and brings back pages with both words in any place on them.

OK, let’s explicitly tell Yahoo to find pages that have either word, anywhere on the page, and which also link to the Scientologist page: linkdomain:scientology.org dangerous cult. Now we get 1,470 matches. But keep in mind — these are only pages that have a link to the Scientologist page and also have these two words anywhere on the page. The words are NOT necessarily in anchor text pointing at the page.

How about this search, allinanchor:dangerous cult (or allinanchor:"dangerous cult"), on Google itself, as pointed out in comments at Google Blogoscoped? That only tells you that the Scientology page is one of about 33,000 that has someone, somewhere, using those words in links to it. It’s at the top of the list, of course, which suggest Google finds more links pointing at it this way than other pages (Google itself doesn’t explain how allinanchor searches are sorted).

So, Google bomb or not? Like I said, it’s hard to say. But I’ll see about getting a comment from Google on the situation.

Postscript: See comments below, this was clearly a Googlebombing attempt. Also, Goole sent this:

Nearly a year ago, we developed an algorithm that minimizes the impact of many link bombs, or Googlebombs. It is important to note, however, that some of the detection components of this algorithm don’t run every day because Googlebombs are relatively rare.

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.

Philipp Lenssen reports that a Polish newspaper says that a 23-year-old polish man was arrested for Google bombing.

Marek W. from Cieszyn is accused of somehow causing the Polish president Lech Kaczyński’s web site to rank tops for “kutas,” which translates to penis.

Marek reportedly used software to help produce the ranking. When questioned, he said:

I just wanted to verify my skills and check if the software works

Sadness, Colbert fans! Last month, I reported in Google Declares Stephen Colbert As Greatest Living American how Stephen Colbert had defied Google’s link bombing defenses and rose to be the greatest living American, according to a search for those words at Google. Today, it is no longer so. Google has dissed Colbert.

Google Drops The Bomb: Hand Job or Chron Job? from Jonah Stein over at Alchemist Media, who orchestrated the initial Colbert victory, notes the disappearance.

When Colbert initially ranked, I’d written how odd it was that Colbert was ranking well for terms that didn’t show up on his web page, since Google supposedly put measures in place (see Google Kills Bush’s Miserable Failure Search & Other Google) back in January to prevent Google bombs like this from happening:

So what’s the deal? Wasn’t the Google fix supposed to prevent this exact thing?

Yes, actually. Of course, we’ve had a few exceptions cited, such click here ranking things like Adobe and Apple downloads. Maybe Google’s Matt Cutts will come along to shed some more light on the situation. I suspect the answer will be that the link bomb fix Google uses is more sophisticated than just looking to see if the words people are using in links, when a lot of links suddenly point at a page, actually appear on a page.

Google never explained how Colbert got around the link bomb fix. Now it seems like they’ve either manually made an adjustment — a "hand job" as SEOs like to call it — or made an algorithm change. Since Google routinely denies doing hand jobs, I assume the official response (I’ll try to get one) will be an algo change [now added; see postscript below].

For the record, Colbert remains ranked fifth on Yahoo, first on Live.com and still ignored by Ask.com, for searches on "greatest living american," when looking at the first page of results.

Postscript: Google search evangelist Adam Lasnik sent this official response:

Our effort to defuse Googlebombs continues to be purely algorithmic. We do not make manual changes. We prefer to tune these algorithms to avoid all false positives in exchange for less immediacy and slightly less thoroughness in catching all Googlebombs.

I asked for more clarification on the last part, whether this means Google knew the link bomb fix wouldn’t catch everything but didn’t want filters so tight that they might exclude helpful uses of anchor text. Adam sent:

Correct. We don’t want to impact situations with search results that may be associated with, say, breaking news events… things that have nothing to do with groups of folks (however playfully) attempting to game search results.

And Vanessa Fox from Google Webmaster Central sent:

We know the algorithm isn’t 100% perfect and as new Googlebombs pop up over time, we tune the algorithm to better catch them.

She also added:

Of course, I personally think he’s the greatest living American, but Stephen himself is a champion of democracy, and I’m sure his support of it reaches to the interweb. ;)

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It’s official. Stephen Colbert is the Greatest Living American, or at least now ranks tops for that phrase at Google. It’s all come from the latest Google bombing campaign sparked off in part by Stephen himself. The backstory on this, plus the "I thought Google bombing didn’t work anymore" angle, all below.

Last week at the SES NY conference, I missed getting to see the Colbert Report because, sadly, moderating the Robots.txt Summit meant I wouldn’t get there in time. Someone, anyone, score me tickets next time!

Jonah Stein from Alchemist Media DID go and apparently raised the issue of Google-bombing during the audience Q&A with Mr. Colbert (out of respect, I use the Mr. honorific. So say we all). What would Mr. Colbert like to rank for?

Giant Brass Balls.

Sure, Jonah thought — but why not also truthiness and most important, Greatest Living American, he wrote at the Alchemist Blog.

Search Engine Watch spread the news. The SEOmoz spread it further, complete with more detailed instructions and a bribe.

Today, we spotted News.com noting he was now ranking for the term. Congrats, Mr. Colbert. We salute you.

OK, specifically looking at first page of search results:

• greatest living american ranks the Colbert Nation’s home page tops on Google (fourth on Yahoo, a letter from Stephen third on Live.com and Ask gives him no respect)
   
• giant brass balls ranks the Colbert Nation’s Balls For Kidz page tops on Google (zilch on Yahoo, tops on Live.com and Ask again gives him nothing)
   
• truthiness ranks a Comedy Central clip of him on that topic at seventh (zilch on Yahoo, zilch on Live.com and Ask puts his page at Comedy Central at seventh).

I’ll drill deep on the most important phrase, Greatest Living American. Both Jonah and Rand told people to link to the “Letter From Stephen” page here, like this:

Greatest Living American

But it’s not that page which is ranking on Google. It’s the home page. And that brings us to the entire wasn’t Google bombing killed thing?

The change Google made back in January was designed to stop pages ranking for terms if a lot of people linked to them using those terms but the pages themselves didn’t use the words. Everyone want to call George W. Bush a miserable failure? His page no longer ranks for that since the page itself doesn’t use those words. OK, so it did just rank again recently, due to the White House using one of them. But the word is gone now – and the page has dropped back down in the rankings.

The Colbert Report’s home page uses NONE of the words (because Stephen, who is modest, has no need to declare himself the greatest). Here’s Google confirming that the site ranks for that term solely based on links to it:

See the part at the bottom: "These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: greatest living american."

So what’s the deal? Wasn’t the Google fix supposed to prevent this exact thing?

Yes, actually. Of course, we’ve had a few exceptions cited, such click here ranking things like Adobe and Apple downloads. Maybe Google’s Matt Cutts will come along to shed some more light on the situation. I suspect the answer will be that the link bomb fix Google uses is more sophisticated than just looking to see if the words people are using in links, when a lot of links suddenly point at a page, actually appear on a page.

In other news, Vintage Tub offers Stephen a bathtub:

Allan, if Mr. Colbert doesn’t want it, send it to me here in England! We’re redoing the bathroom right now! I love it!

Postscript: Mission Accomplished—Top Ranking in Google is a hilarious congrats on the effort to all who made Mr. Colbert’s victory possible.

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