Googlebomb

I've not been keeping a very close watch on the confirmation of cabinet appointees, so other than checking the progress on the headlines, I'm not as well acquainted with the Gonzales-for-Attorney-General story as I probably should be. As near as I can tell, we're looking to replace Scary-After-He-Got-The-Job-But-Pretty-Much-Just-Kooky-Before John Ashcroft with Scary-Even-Before-He-Has-The-Job-Which-Might-Be-A-Stepping-Stone-To-The-Supreme-Court Alberto Gonzales. Even with my limited following of the case, I'm seeing this as an overall bad idea that somehow is going to come to pass anyway. Some days, the whole political process seems to just go through the looking glass.

That said, I'm as eager to exploit the quirks of technology as the next person, and Google's technology is ripe for the pickings. The entire concept of Google searches is that it is completely automated, based on the number of links to a page from a given phrase. The more people link to a certain page using certain words, the more relevant the Googlebots think that site is to that phrase. For instance, I would make a link with the phrase "Monterey Bay Penguin Cam," like so, that leads you to the webcam in the Monterey Bay Zoo penguinarium. The Googlebots chalk that link up as one more vote for that site being relevant to the phrase "Monterey Bay Penguin Cam." Now, if you were to go to Google's homepage and do a search for "Monterey Bay Penguin Cam," you're more likely to come up with that site (don't bother, it's already the top site). Now, the Achilles heel of this plan is that the Googlebots assume I will direct you to the webcam in the Monterey Bay Zoo penguinarium with that link and not, for instance, a site on how to grow mulch at home or even the penguin cam at another zoo. Googlebombs exploit that Achilles heel to make a statement by having a whole bunch of people, usually bloggers, use the same phrase to link to the same site. The latest Googlebomb is the attempt to highlight Alberto Gonzales' history with regards to the legality of torturing detainees by making this White House site appear when someone searches for "Tortured logic." That's my contribution right there.

Here's the irony of the whole concept of Googlebombing: It distorts the results of a Google search, and you can't effectively googlebomb without blogs, yet Google owns one of the more popular blogging services. Another thing goes through the looking glass.