Government, Giggles, and Googlebombing
The phenomenon known formally as “Googlebombing” or linkbombing was one that stirred as many laughs as it did controversy on the Internet. Basically what the activity entails is artificially placing a webpage in a high rank for search engine results in an unrelated or off-topic field through heavy amounts of linking. The results are often engineered for comedic effect, but the humorous activity has reached such influential levels, the most famous case of which searching the terms “miserable failure” brought up the presidency of George Bush, has Google has even released public statement on its company blog distancing itself from the so called “determined pranksters”. In fact, linkbombing plays an influential role in changing public image of an institution, especially if left unchecked, which is why the Bush Administration tried to redirect the linkbomb by linking Bush’s biography to a page for all US presidents. Although steadily suppressed, linkbombing still occurs occasionally, especially in regards to political matters, with one of the latest incidents featuring President Obama.
Linkbombing represents an important concept in web search, illustrating how links can be engineered to work to promote certain notes to show up in high positions for search queries. By linking to a single page from a variety of hubs, that page gains a cumulatively higher PageRank value, giving it higher priority in certain search queries. Normally, this would be for smaller companies that might want to change their content in order to be more searchable, wanting to gain additional exposure through search engines like Google; however in this case, the nodes are completely unrelated to their respective queries and are positioned for comedic, rather than commercial, effect. Linkbombing also represents a factor that the search industry tries to limit by constantly and confidentially updating their search procedures to counteract webpages engineered to appear artificially high.
Sources:
http://searchengineland.com/yahoo-obama-is-a-miserable-failure-16286
https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/googlebombing-failure.html