Editing Google bombing (section)

{{short description|Practice that causes a webpage to have a high rank in Google}}
{{Multiple issues|
{{More citations needed|date=August 2011}}
{{Globalize|date=June 2015}}
}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=May 2011}}
<!-- Do not add any new examples of Google bombs without first discussing them on the talk page. All Wikipedia contributions must be properly sourced. If you found a bomb by typing it in yourself, it's original research! Post it on the talk page first. -->
[[File:Google Bomb Miserable Failure.png|thumb|300px|right|An example of Google bombing in 2006 that caused the search query "miserable failure" to be associated with [[George W. Bush]] and [[Michael Moore]]]]
The terms '''Google bombing''' and '''Google washing''' refer to the practice of causing a [[website]] to rank highly in [[web search engine]] results for irrelevant, unrelated or off-topic search terms. In contrast, [[search engine optimization]] (SEO) is the practice of improving the [[search engine]] listings of web pages for ''relevant'' search terms.

Google-bombing is done for either business, political, or comedic purposes (or some combination thereof).<ref name="nytimes1">{{cite news|first=Tom Jr.|last=Zeller|title=A New Campaign Tactic: Manipulating Google Data|work=[[The New York Times]] (Late Edition (East Coast))|date=October 26, 2006|page=A.20|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/26/us/politics/26googlebomb.html}} (Note: payment required, weblink goes to abstract.)<!-- replace this with a free source --></ref> Google's [[PageRank|search-rank algorithm]] ranks pages higher for a particular search phrase if enough other pages linked to it use similar [[anchor text]]. By January 2007, however, Google had tweaked its search algorithm to counter popular Google bombs such as "miserable failure" leading to [[George W. Bush]] and [[Michael Moore]]; now, search results list pages about the Google bomb itself.<ref name="googlebomb halt"/> On 21 June 2015, the first result in a Google search for "miserable failure" was this article.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.google.com/search?q=miserable+failure|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20150621133110/https://www.google.com/search?q=miserable+failure&gws_rd=ssl|archive-date = June 21, 2015|title = Miserable failure - Google Search}}</ref> Used both as a [[verb]] and a [[noun]], "Google bombing" was introduced to the ''[[New Oxford American Dictionary]]'' in May 2005.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050516-184202|title=Google and Google Bombing Now Included New Oxford American Dictionary|work=Search Engine Watch|first=Gary|last=Price|date=May 16, 2005|access-date=January 29, 2007|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070127123936/http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050516-184202|archive-date=January 27, 2007|df=mdy-all}}<!--Search Engine Watch article] on addition of "Google Bomb" to dictionary-->.</ref>

Google bombing is related to [[spamdexing]], the practice of deliberately modifying [[HTML]] to increase the chance of a website being placed close to the beginning of search engine results, or to influence the category to which the page is assigned in a misleading or dishonest manner.<ref>{{citation| first1=Zoltán | last1=Gyöngyi | author-link1=Zoltán Gyöngyi | first2=Hector | last2=Garcia-Molina | contribution=Web spam taxonomy | contribution-url=http://airweb.cse.lehigh.edu/2005/gyongyi.pdf | title=Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Adversarial Information Retrieval on the Web (AIRWeb), 2005 in The 14th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW 2005) May 10, (Tue)-14 (Sat), 2005, Nippon Convention Center (Makuhari Messe), Chiba, Japan. | year=2005 | publisher=ACM Press | place=New York, NY | isbn=1-59593-046-9 | author-link2=Hector Garcia-Molina }}</ref>

The term ''Googlewashing'' was coined by [[Andrew Orlowski]] in 2003 in order to describe the use of [[media manipulation]] to change the perception of a term, or push out competition from [[search engine results page]]s (SERPs).<ref>{{cite news|last=Orlowski|first=Andrew|author-link=Andrew Orlowski|url=https://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/04/03/antiwar_slogan_coined_repurposed/|title=Anti-war slogan coined, repurposed and Googlewashed ... in 42 days.|date=April 3, 2003|work=The Register|access-date=January 6, 2007}}</ref><ref name="AdamsMcCrindle2008">{{cite book|author1=Andrew A. Adams|author2=Rachel McCrindle|title=Pandora's Box: Social and Professional Issues of the Information Age|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dXmx97UzO6IC&pg=PA122|access-date=30 September 2012|date=15 February 2008|publisher=John Wiley & Sons|isbn=978-0-470-06553-2|pages=122–123}}</ref>