What is Google Bombing?

Looking at the Wikipedia, a Google bomb is a kind of dishonestly modifying HTML pages to increase the change of them being placed close to the beginning of search engine results. One of the more current examples would be searching for miserable failure. Like already commented by a couple of sites, this search leads to the personal site of George W Bush.

One of the first Google Bombs was actually directed towards Microsoft. The term More evil than Satan lead to Mr. Gates company. Austrias students on the other hands had a lot of fun with the term “Völlige Inkompetenz”. It led to our minister of finance, Karl Heinz Grasser. See the Wikipedia for additional Bombs.

Googles answer

In their Blog entry from September, 9 Google itself played Google Bombing down. Apparently Google honors the text that links to site a lot in their ranking algorithm. That way, a lot of links to a certain site with the same text will bring this site on top of a search of that term.

Googles comment on this practice:

“Pranks like this may be distracting to some, but they don't affect the overall quality of our search service, whose objectivity, as always, remains the core of our mission”

In an additional comment in Wikipedia, its authors comment goes a similar direction:

“Ironically, Google bombs often end their life by being too popular or well known, thereby attaining a mention in well regarded web journals and knocking the bomb off the top spot. It is sometimes commented that Google bombing need not be countered because of this self-disassembly.”

Sources
Found via Linkdump.be on the Google Blog

What is Google Bombing?
Polls