Miserable failure

Miserable failure was a term applied to the administration of hit for that specific search query [http://www.google.com/searchq=miserable+failure]. More recently, images of Bush now appear at the top of the search page as Google Image results and searching for the word failure by itself brings up his bio.

The trick is possible because Google searches more than just the contents of web pages - it also counts how often a site is linked to, and with what words. When such a tactic is taken to a large scale, as in this case, it is called Google bomb. The blog Old Fashioned Patriot [http://oldfashionedpatriot.blogspot.com/] claims to be the origin of this particular Google bomb.

Google has commented that it will not hand alter the result (or any other googlebombed results) because it wished to preserve the integrity of its search engine.

In retaliation, Bush supporters Google-bombed Jimmy Carter, Hillary Clinton, and Michael Moore with the same phrase. Ironically, some people might misinterpret Michael Moore s listing to mean that Moore was a major person behind the Googlebombing rather than actually being a miserable failure. Lending some believability, Moore has used these words to describe Bush on his site [http://www.michaelmoore.com/]. Furthermore, there was a time when clicking on the Michael Moore webpage from the Google miserable failure search results would redirect the user to the biography of President Bush. This appears to no longer be the case.

In September 2005, the following ad appeared with the search results to explain the situation:

:Why these results :These results may seem politically :slanted. Here s what happened. :www.google.com/googleblog

Some of Google s newer features, Local and Maps, also provide miserable failure results in Washington DC[http://local.google.com/localsc=1&hl=en&q=miserable+failure&near=washington+dc&btnG=Google+Search&rl=1].

On an interesting note, typing miserable failure into other various popular search engines yields similar results: *[http://www.altavista.com/web/resultsq=miserable+failure Altavista] *[http://www.hotbot.com/default.aspquery=miserable+failure HotBot] *[http://search.looksmart.com/p/searchqt=miserable+failure LookSmart] *[http://search.lycos.com/default.asploc=searchhp&tab=web&query=miserable+failure Lycos] *[http://www.metacrawler.com/info.metac/search/web/miserable%2Bfailure MetaCrawler] *[http://search.yahoo.com/searchp=miserable+failure Yahoo!]

It should also be noted that the seventh item listed on the Google page (as of October 28, 2005) is this page, while most other items retrieved are news articles documenting the Googlebombing.