Google Halts ‘Miserable Failure’ Link to President Bush

[cynatnite]

It has been a bad month for anti-Bush snarkiness.

First, the anodyne impressionist Rich Little was selected to address the White House correspondents’ dinner as a follow-up to the scathing routine last year by Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert. Now a favored online tactic to mock the president — altering the Google search engine so the words “miserable failure” lead to President Bush’s home page at the White House — has been neutralized.

Google announced on Thursday on its official blog that “by improving our analysis of the link structure of the Web” such mischief would instead “typically return commentary, discussions, and articles” about the tactic itself.

Indeed, a search on Saturday of “miserable failure” on Google leads to a now-outdated BBC News article from 2003 about the “miserable failure” search, rather than the previous first result, President Bush’s portal at whitehouse.gov/president.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/technology/29google.html?_r=1&ref=politics&oref=slogin

[Skidmore]

1. The WH whined enough?

Don't these people have anything to do besides micromanage PR?

[Tin Man]

2. However, won't be long until "miserable failure" links to troves of articles on Presidency of GWB

...and more specifically, his prosecution of the Iraq War.

[SpiralHawk]

3. Google can't handle the truth

[Chiyo-chichi]

4. That's a shame.

Does this mean that nothing can be Google-bombed any more?

...and Rich Little??! He's still alive? What, the equally un-funny Mark Russell wasn't available?

[zbdent]

5. At least this "google bomb" also dropped

the fact that the Repukes found how to pull this off and caused Hillary Clinton's site to come up a distant second ... if it only eliminated the Bush hits and left the Hillary, that would have been a real piece of crap ...

I guess that the White House was getting a bit pissed off at this, and ordered it shut down.

[NYCGirl]

6. Misleading title — Google's new structure ends ALL "Google Bombs" NT

[blogslut]

9. The article says otherwise

"Despite the changes by Google, some other Google bombs are still operative. A search for “French military victories” still produces a first result that says, “Your search — French military victories — did not match any documents.” Click there and your find a mockup of a Google search page asking the question “Did you mean: French military defeats.”"

[NYCGirl]

10. Just give it time — they should all disappear. NT

[SanCristobal]

18. French military victories wasn't a google bomb,

it was a mock up site that only worked if you hit the "I feel lucky" button.

[Rosemary2205]

7. And yet

if type in the keywords to buy my neice nursing uniforms I end up a million links to uniform porn.

[soswolf]

8. Despite that

I've never liked the googlebomb concept. It relies on a few motivated people manipulating the search results of millions.
We already have a tv "news" network that is run by a motivated few, and influencing millions. Do we really want that on the internets, too?

That being said, I will miss the miserable failure search.

[TomInTib]

11. So google learned something from the Chinese, eh?

Call them what you want. Whores are still whores, no matter what the price.

[Norrin Radd]

12. Should come up with a new Google bomb for the word "impeachment"

linking to his bio.

[4bucksagallon]

13. Try the word "chickenhawk" and it is almost as good.

[Amonester]

14. Just googled AWOL and that link showed up

3rd: http://www.awolbush.com

:web:

[Xenotime]

15. This sounds like a partnership between the WH and Google.

I would tread lightly on the web from now on.

[nolabels]

17. Yea, we be scared

AWOL and the chicken-hawk flock might be looking for places to hide in the near future. I think that plan B that consists of using the rest of the establishment as a buffer zone for the POTUS might fail.

The most telling thing is all them supplicants are running out of ways with the words

Btw, Agent Mike, being succinct and blunt only have slight differences

Arar accepts $10.5M offer
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/175180

[Lisa0825]

16. The G-bomb.... the only bomb Bush was ever against.

:evilfrown: