The politics of Web searches.A few months ago, typing the phrase "miserable failure" into Google (Google, Mountain View, CA, www.google.com) The largest search engine on the Web, founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two Stanford University students. In 1996, they developed their "BackRub" search engine, named after its unique page ranking method (explained below). produced the White House's official biography of President Bush. Shortly thereafter, the same search yielded links to Senator Hillary Clinton Clinton. 1 Town (1990 pop. 12,767), Middlesex co., S Conn., on Long Island Sound; settled 1663, set off from Killingworth and inc. 1838. The school that later became Yale opened here in 1702. of New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of . This online battle is an example of "Google bombing See Google bomb. ": manipulating search engines to produce political commentary. Google bombing takes advantage of how search engines work. Bombers get friends to link from their Web sites (which contain the chosen phrase) to the target site. The more rimes a phrase is linked to a site, the more often a search engine will associate that site with the phrase--even if, as in the case of Bush, the term "miserable failure" does not appear on the White House site. |
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