It is obvious that Google has become a default choice for most searches internationally. Lots of people use Google search engine to get all kinds of information in each second throughout the world. Almost every website would like its webpage to be accessed by the most people, which make its webpage popular. Google search is one of the best ways to popularize it. So the rank of webpage in returned search results is very important. The higher rank the webpage got, the earlier the webpage is shown, and the more chance for people to click its webpage link in Google search results.
Google ranking algorithm ranks the webpage according to how many other pages cite this webpage. Some websites take use of the logic of Google ranking algorithm to increase some webpage rank, which we called Google Bomb. No matter through good citation or bad link, the only way is to increase the links to given webpage to get higher rank. Then the interesting problem is if the rank can be easily manipulated, what does this mean to end users or governments?
This means, both end users and government find an easy way to mislead readers. The official biography webpage of President George W. Bush had been the No.1 rank of Google search in 2006 of the search for phase “miserable failure” or “failure”. The same thing happened to Michael Moore and former US president Jimmy Carter. This Google bomb brought bad reputation to Bush, Michael and Jimmy. The purpose was obvious. I do not know whether this could be regarded as defamation. But I do believe it was exact defamation in another case, Santorum. In this case, one of columnist Dan Savage built a website “santorum.com”, in which, Savage used lots of dirty words to define “Santorum”. While “Santorum” refers to former United States Senator Rick Santorum. Many many people click these links through Google search for the phase “Santorum” every day, because it stands the first position of search result.
Besides what were mentioned above, Google bomb were also used in competition. In Sep 2004, a challenge to search engine optimization was started. It aimed to get the top position of search result for the phase “seraphim proudleduck”. A large amount of money was afforded to the winner. It finally turned out to be a hoax. In Mar 2005, the magazine .Net organized a contest in 5 professional website developers to win the top position of their websites for the search of the phase “crystalline incandescence”. All these contests were the deliberated actions to manipulate Google search results. And the purpose is only one. That is the interfering to the Google search results so that more people will access the specific websites. Of course, we cannot say it is illegal, but at least it is a kind of dishonest activities. More people click a webpage does mean it is popular; in contrast this may be for other reasons. It seems to tell us Google ranking means nothing. Because of Google bomb, we cannot make a judgment that the webpage with higher rank is more popular than other webpage.
As more and more Google bomb happened, the situation is getting worse and worse. In 2006, the most famous lawsuit related Google bomb was published. Sue Scheff won the lawsuit against a woman, who posted hundreds of defamatory comments about Sue and her company. She finally got $11.3 million. What she suffered to her reputation and her business was made up. However, she realized that, to defuse Google bomb, she has to protect herself. To keep her profile, she hired “an attorney as well as an Internet monitoring company, Reputation Defender who manages her online persona”. She said “if you don’t own your own name, someone else will.” Google bomb is not only used to hurt others reputation. It seems to increase good reputation, it also works. Both are unfair to common readers.
As the wide spread of Google search, such influence is unexpected. So many common readers do not know the truth. They just click the webpage link and go through the content of the website, without any idea that it is true or not. The misleading may result in good or bad. Whatever, it brings unfair to the victims through Google search.
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