If you search for the word "murder" on Google right now, the first result will lead you to the Wikipedia entry for the term. The second result will lead you to the Wikipedia entry for abortion. What's going on here?
Boing Boing reports that commenters in the popular Internet community Reddit appear to have noticed this phenomenon first and explains that it is most likely the result of Google-bombing.
Google-bombing is a way to influence Google search results by taking advantage of how the search engine's algorithm ranks links. You see, the more frequently a particular phrase or word links to a specific site, the more likely it is that searching for that phrase or word will lead you to that site — even if the two aren't related at all.
There have been several Google-bombing incidents in the past that you may have heard of:
- During the 2004 presidential election, results for the phrase "miserable failure" led to George W. Bush's biography, while searches for "waffles" pointed to John Kerry's official website.
- Back in 1999, a search for "more evil than satan himself" would bring people to the Microsoft web site.
- Searching for "French military victories" still tends to bring people to a page mimicking Google's search results and questioning if the searcher meant to type "French military defeats."
There is no word as to who is behind the murder/abortion Google-bomb as no particular group has taken credit for the act. The folks at woman's interest blog Jezebel suggest that it is most likely a group of anti-abortion activists — which sounds like a reasonable enough guess as no one else has anything to gain from the whole thing.
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- Heartbroken girl gets revenge by turning ex-boyfriend into Internet meme
- Google declares war on lousy websites
Rosa Golijan writes about tech here and there. She may be obsessed with Twitter, but still loves to be liked on Facebook.
