Miserable failure

[Tom]

Just in case you did not watch Channel 4 News this evening, try typing miserable failure (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=miserable+failure) into Google and see what comes up tops - a triumph for those who organize the Kingdom of Nerds.

[David]

:D Nice. And here's how it was done (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3298443.stm) and more details (http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/article.php/3296101) from searchenginewatch.com (http://searchenginewatch.com/)

I'm sure we could use a similar technique for promotional purposes.

[francis]

Works best with "I'm feeling lucky" on Google as it takes you straight to the Whitehouse site.

This also works, as I'm sure you know by now, for "Weapons Of Mass Destruction" and "French Military Victories". As with "miserable failures", the full effect is only realised with the press of the "I'm feeling lucky" button, which takes you to Google's top ranking page.

[francis]

Ooh, a new one! Type in "bush's foreign friends" into Google and hit I'm Feeling Lucky

[Tom]

Kinda subtle! But I got it eventually, and know want to know how they did it.

[David]

That is very clever - I like it. Presumably, it's just a case of useing the search phrase with "former" in a page title or content and then making sure that the same phrase without "former" does not exist.

[francis]

Have a look at the top rated result for fuckwit (http://www.google.com/search?q=fuckwit). We have our own miserable failure now!

[James]

Hilarious. That word does not appear anywhere in the source code. Do you think this is Google staff's doing?

[francis]

No, it'll be the usual linking stragegy. You may even find it's been an organised thing rather than a happy accident.

[James]

How?

fuckwit is not on the site and I couldn't find any sites that "link to" either. Please explain what the strategy might be as I'm lost on this one.

[francis]

It's called Google bombing (http://uber.nu/2001/04/06/). If you look at the original post for this thread, Miserable Failure, you'l see that doing a Google 'I'm feeling lucky' search takes you to the Whitehouse's bio of Dubya (it still does). If you look at the Dubya page, you'll see that the words 'miserable' and 'failure' don't apppear in that either. I'm Feeling Lucky just takes you to the top ranked result for your search, so you could do an I'll Feel Lucky search on fuckwit and get the same result. More from the BBC on Miserable Failure (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3298443.stm).

[francis]

First for the UK was fuckwit Prescott (which sadly doesn't work any more) and now there's Liar (http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=liar).

[Tom]

TB was top of the returns this morning, and gave me a good chuckle, but when I came to show my wife about 5pm he had slipped to 4th position. Pity.

[James]

That's uncovered a discrepancy in Google, Tom.

Search for liar on google.com and Blair is 4th

Search for liar on google.co.uk (web not uk selected) and he's 1st.

Thus proving that google.co.uk web search is NOT the same as a default google.com search. I thought they would be indentical.

[Tom]

Well done: that's the scientific method in action.