Search for “Miserable Failure” = George W. Bush

It’s true.  According to Search Engine Land, this story is particularly interesting and goes back quite a few years.

Here’s how it happened. When the Googlebomb campaign started back in December 2003, people were told to use the words “miserable failure” and link to Bush’s biography here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html

That page started ranking very highly for “miserable failure” and in September of 2006, the White House had had enough. They moved his biography to a new page here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/biography.html

As for the old page, it was removed and any requests for it were “redirected” to the main page for the current US president here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/

Of course, those behind the move thought that dropping the old page would kill the bomb. It could have, if they hadn’t redirected the old page to a new location.

They had to do a redirect, though, as millions of people had bookmarked the former address of the biography. Instead of redirecting to the new biography page, they choose to point at the page used by ALL U.S. presidents…Bush currently, Obama next and future presidents to come…oops.

Now, the “miserable failure” Googlebomb has been fixed over at Google. However, should any future administration ever use either the words “miserable” or “failure” on the U.S. president’s home page, there’s a pretty good chance that the page will start to rank highly again for terms like “failure” or “miserable” or even “miserable failure.” Using those words effectively overwrites Google’s “fix” for Googlebombs.

Meanwhile, the two other major search engines, Yahoo and Microsoft, continue to rank Bush tops…

So what can be done to fix the problem?  I recommend you head on over to Search Engine Land and read….the rest of the story.