On a "Miserable Failure" No More

Go ahead. Do it. A Google search on the phrase “Miserable Failure.”

Once upon a time, the phrase “Miserable Failure” would have brought up this page, the official White House biography of President George W. Bush.

But no more.

Google has done away with Googlebombs, the technique of linking to a page by using a very different phrase in order to “game” Google’s search results. “Miserable failure” was one such phrase–hundreds, perhaps thousands of people, myself included, wrote the phrase “miserable failure” and embedded a hyperlink back to Bush’s biography. Google, in their trawl of the Internet, saw that the phrase “miserable failure” meant Bush, and their search results reflected that fact.

A real shame.

But just because Google won’t pull up Bush’s biography with a search of the phrase “miserable failure” doesn’t make the fact that Bush is a miserable failure as a President and as a human being any less true.

Thanks to Alden Bates for linking to the Google article. 🙂

Published by Allyn

A writer, editor, journalist, sometimes coder, occasional historian, and all-around scholar, Allyn Gibson is the writer for Diamond Comic Distributors' monthly PREVIEWS catalog, used by comic book shops and throughout the comics industry, and the editor for its monthly order forms. In his over ten years in the industry, Allyn has interviewed comics creators and pop culture celebrities, covered conventions, analyzed industry revenue trends, and written copy for comics, toys, and other pop culture merchandise. Allyn is also known for his short fiction (including the Star Trek story "Make-Believe,"the Doctor Who short story "The Spindle of Necessity," and the ReDeus story "The Ginger Kid"). Allyn has been blogging regularly with WordPress since 2004.

2 thoughts on “On a "Miserable Failure" No More

  1. And “Santorum” shall always mean “that frothy mix of lube and fecal matter which sometimes results from anal sex.”

    They can’t take that away from me.

  2. That’s still the first result in a Google search on the term “Santorum.”

    I don’t know how Google’s page-rank stats work, but I think it would be a bit more difficult to scrub “santorum” of its Googlebombed meaning. The word “santorum” is part of the URL, the word “santorum” is used on the page. The words “miserable failure” never appeared in Bush’s White House bio–they were simply a random term people appropriated to describe the President.

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