Google on Google bombing

The practice is almost as old as PageRank, Google's initial algorithm: "Google bombing" consists in getting a page to move up search rankings by increasing its number of links. Google has recently given a recap on the subject after a campaign targetting US and French Presidents appreared.

Google search results were initially based on PageRank, an algorithm that classed pages by the number of links pointing towards them, the principle being that if a lot of sites linked to a particular page, it was certain to be of interest.

Webmasters quickly began manipulating PageRank by adding links artificially to a page to make it rise up the search engine’s ranking. Some commercial sites have used the technique to monopolise search results on products they sell so as to increase chance of sales.

More recently, Google bombing has been used for political purposes. In France results for "magouilleur" (French for swindler) were linked to Jacques Chirac, the last French President, and still now a search for "worst failure ever" will send you to the White House site. This is not a unique case: the same search on Cuil, for example, offers a topic on "Présidents of the United States ".

Two years ago, Google modified its algorithm to limit the effects of Google bombing. Fundamentally however the search engine still works in the same way: Google continues to classify pages according to the relative popularity of sites that point towards these pages.

This week, the current French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, fell victim to the technique via a link to an old site used for his candidature in the Presidential elections when a certain injurious phrase is requested.

Google is able to modify the results of certain searches manually – say, for example, to correspond to judicial decisions. However, in the current case, in a press release on the subject, Google say: "we are not enthusiastic about the idea of manually altering our results to prevent such information from appearing".

In fact Google is caught between wanting to avoid being manipulated by bombers and wanting to retain the neutrality of the search engine that is supposed to suggest pages based on technical rather than moral criteria.