Santorum Google Bomb

Analysis of Latest Google Bomb
• Rick Santorum finished in the Iowa Caucus a close
second behind Mitt Romney with 24.5% of the votes.
This was a hard fought victory for Santorum who spent
a considerable amount of time in Iowa campaigning.
However, Santorum has been battling more than just
other the other candidates since 2003. Dan Savage, an
editor and commentator who was angered over
Santorum’s anti-gay statements, created a website
called “spreadingsantorum.com” which defines the
word Santorum as “the frothy mix of lube and fecal
matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.”
Even today, six years after the site was created,
entering the word “santorum” into a Google search,
results in the top ranked site being Savage’s web page,
the equivalent of what is known as a Google bomb.

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What is a Google Bomb?
• A Google bomb uses internet links that associate
the name of a victim with a false, usually
unfavorable site related to the victim. Also known
as googlewashing or spamdexing, a Google bomb
uses certain keywords or phrases to artificially
place a website higher in Google rankings when
someone types those words or phrases into the
search engine. Although Google announced in 2007
that they had made changes to their search
algorithm in an effort to remove Googlebombs, the
Santorum bomb remains.


Effect on Santorum
• Santorum spoke out publicly against the Google bomb as far back as
September 2008, yet the negative site remains at the top of Google’s
page rankings, even above the candidate’s own page and above a
Wikipedia article explaining who Rick Santorum is. The same occurs
when the candidate’s name is entered into other search engines, such as
Bing. Google claims that the ranking is not due to promotion from
Savage, nor is it politically motivated on Google’s part, but is simply
prominent due to public interest. In other words, Google claims that
because people continue to visit the site, it continues to rank highly in
their search algorithm. However, it appears that the Google bomb may
have faded into the background in light of Santorum’s very close second
place win in Iowa, losing by just a few percentage points to Mitt
Romney. It appears that, even though Santorum was the 10th most
searched term during the Iowa caucus (Source:
http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/172069/howis-rick-santorums-
google-bomb-holding-up-now-that-hes-surging-in-the-polls/),
American’s are perceptive enough to realize that the Stewart site is a
personal commentary and that the definition of “santorum” was based
on a personal view and not what the word truly means.


Famous Google Bombs
• Santorum is not the only public figure to be the
victim of a Google bomb. Craig James, a former
ESPN analyst and current political candidate was
recently a victim when a search on his names
brought up sites claiming that Craig James “killed
five hookers at SMU.” The accusation is false but
James’ political opponents created a site to
disparage the candidate and that site slipped
through the Google algorithms designed to block
Google bombs. President George W. Bush was also
a victim of Google bombing when a search for
“miserable failure” brought up his website, even
though the site never mentioned the words.


Has Google Resolved the Problem?
• When Google bombs were first reported, Google
repeatedly stated that such practices did not exist until,
in 2007, they announced changes that were designed to
stop the practice. Google is the most popular search
engine, and its success has brought it’s search
algorithms under scrutiny in recent months. Google
uses different criteria to determine which websites offer
authoritative information and many SEO companies
have learned ways to increase a sites ranking falsely.
Google bombing is successful because the practice
manipulates Google’s search algorithms to push the
negative sites to the top of the search engine rankings.
Although Google is attempting to address the problem,
the fact is that Google bombing still occurs, and some
web surfers may begin to question the validity of
Google’s search results and ultimately switch to a
different search method.


• Despite Google’s announcement that they had
resolved Google bombing attempts, the fact is that
searching Rick Santorum’s last name still results in
Savage’s site ranking at the top of the search results.
This indicates that Google has not completely
eliminated the possibility that Google bombs could
occur in the future and that their algorithms still need
tweaking to prevent such practices in the future.

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Santorum Google Bomb

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Santorum Google Bomb