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In
January 2007, Google changed their indexing structure so that Google bombs such as "miserable failure" would "typically return commentary, discussions, and articles" about the tactic itself. Google announced the changes on its official blog. In response to criticism for allowing the Google bombs,
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In
October 2003, he began to encourage his visitors to participate in the "bombing". Democratic partisan e-mailing lists and blogging groups began passing the word to do similar things in the same time period. The bomb has proliferated beyond the Google web search: "miserable failure" returns images
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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
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The term "waffling" is used to describe the back and forth motion of the wings of water fowl prior to landing and is often used to describe a person who cannot decide on a particular course of action. Throughout the campaign, Kerry detractors accused him of changing his position on various issues.
116:. "Miserable failure" was the first. In October 2003, an effort was launched to create links of "miserable failure" to the official White House biography of President Bush. In about six weeks, the link to George W. Bush's biography became the first result for "miserable failure" on a
87:'s official White House web site also appeared on the first few results for "miserable failure" on Live Search and Yahoo, and on the first page of results for the word "failure" on Google. The cause of this is disputed, with some claiming it to be the result of a similar campaign.
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Over time, we've seen more people assume that they are Google's opinion, or that Google has hand coded the results for these Google bombed queries. That's not true, and it seemed like it was worth trying to correct that
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Google originally took the position that it would not alter the result (or any other Google bombed results) because it wished to preserve the integrity of its search engine. On
September 28, 2005,
231:(Google Director of Consumer Web Products) began to appear alongside the search results; the blog explains the situation and the company's reason for not manually editing the search results.
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launched the "waffles" Google bombing of Kerry, in part to retaliate for
Democrats' Google bombing of George W. Bush. He encouraged linking of "waffles" to John Kerry's official site.
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A blogger from
Washington has since taken credit for starting this tactic, though the phrase had been in heavy use following its adoption as a catchphrase by the
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to the official presidential biography page with text reading "miserable failure", a relatively small number (possibly as few as 32) of website owners and
172:, a sex columnist and LGBT rights activist, asked his readers to create a definition for the word "santorum" in response to then United States Senator
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indicates that the old page is permanently replaced by the new one, it also inherits all links to it and therefore the ranking for the same keywords.
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were able to make the site appear as the first result when searching for "miserable failure". Political blogger George
Johnston, of
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and Local and Maps return the "US Executive
Mansion" and the White House as the first two results for "miserable failure" in
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was also the target of Google bombs. The first of these is the "waffles" Google bomb. In April 2004, Ken
Jacobson, then a
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were used to further various political agendas. Two of the first were the "miserable failure" Google bomb linked to
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campaign. For a time, Bush's official biography had also become the top result for both "miserable" and "failure".
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rankings so that searches for "miserable failure" and "waffles" returned links to the targets' sites. In 2006,
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from the old White House site (under
President Bush) to the site for President Barack Obama. Because the
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overall quality of our search service, whose objectivity, as always, remains the core of our mission."
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campaign began using the catchphrase "miserable failure" to attack the administration.
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Bush: Fix Your "Miserable
Failure" Googlebomb Legacy Before Obama Takes Office
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Screenshot of the Google search results for "Miserable Failure" in March 2007
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176:'s views on homosexuality, and comments about same sex marriage. See
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Supporters and detractors of the candidates were able to manipulate
331:"Google's (and Inktomi's) Miserable Failure – Search Engine Watch"
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61:'s White House biography and the "waffles" Google bomb linked to
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less effective, making search results less politically slanted.
320:. Searchengineland.com (2009-01-07). Retrieved on 2014-05-29.
301:"Unlike Bush's 'Google Bomb,' Google Quickly Defuses Obama's"
530:"Google Halts 'Miserable Failure' Link to President Bush"
273:, Sidener, Jonathan June 14, 2004 accessed August 9, 2006
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Mikkelson, Barbara; David P. Mikkelson (December 2003).
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search results for "Miserable Failure" in December 2008
76:altered its searching algorithm to make massive
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51:presidential election of the United States
580:2004 United States presidential election
370:"Biography of President George W. Bush"
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454:"miserable failure loc: washington dc"
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178:Campaign for the neologism "santorum"
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90:Others believe it to be a result of
430:"Someone Set Us Up the Google Bomb"
409:"'Miserable failure' links to Bush"
345:"'Miserable failure' links to Bush"
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287:"A quick word about Googlebombs"
112:was the subject of a variety of
382:from the original on 2009-09-17
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474:Mayer, Marissa (2005-09-16).
434:Urban Legends Reference Pages
83:In January 2009, President
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528:Cohen, Noam (2007-01-29).
565:2003 in American politics
497:"Googlebombing 'failure'"
476:"Googlebombing 'failure'"
102:Bombing of George W. Bush
575:Political Internet memes
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164:Bombing of Rick Santorum
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271:Dropping Google Bombs
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198:Old Fashioned Patriot
131:Bombing of John Kerry
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511:"Miserable Failure"
150:Duquesne University
534:The New York Times
517:. 9 December 2003.
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585:History of Google
391:National Archives
219:Google's response
96:HTTP 301 redirect
18:Miserable failure
16:(Redirected from
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537:. Retrieved
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227:written by
208:of Bush on
49:During the
554:Categories
539:2010-05-22
515:Snopes.com
482:2006-07-13
460:2006-07-13
439:2006-05-13
414:2006-05-13
386:2006-07-13
355:2010-05-22
255:References
243:Matt Cutts
170:Dan Savage
154:Pittsburgh
143:law school
139:John Kerry
78:link farms
63:John Kerry
53:in 2004,
405:BBC News
380:Archived
349:BBC News
305:Fox News
194:bloggers
120:search.
184:Impacts
146:student
136:Senator
570:Google
118:Google
74:Google
43:Yahoo!
190:links
152:in
148:at
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